illume has finished its biannual survey of the UK VoIP provider market which saw continued growth in the SIP/IP market although growth did slow down from previous estimates. The market has added 129,791 trunks since December 2012 to reach a total of 889,966 trunks, a growth rate of 14.6% compared to 22% growth in the same period in 2012.
Growth has been driven by a number of key providers who have seen their position in the market strengthen from 2012. The rest of the providers did also see growth but it is the larger players who continue to drive growth in the market.
The number of providers in the market continues to grow with over 55 SIP/IP providers now offering services. In the future we might see some of these providers start to merge as the market saturates although M&A activity has remained low in 2013.
More providers are using EFM and fibre as their preferred delivery mechanism and illume predicts that the fibre rollout across the UK will become a key driver for SIP/IP services and will be key to the success of SIP. With 54% of UK businesses having the potential for a fibre connection in 2014, we predict that this could see the SIP market start to reach its full potential. EFM is also becoming a key delivery mechanism but due to costs in rural areas and above a certain number of seats, it is not always cost effective.
As the market has evolved, illume are now differentiating the SIP market by dividing it into three different types of service offering:
SIP I (Infrastructure)
SIP I is where a service provider is using SIP to connect services within their own infrastructure.
SIP A (Application)
A SIP Trunking service that focuses on giving the customer access to additional UC applications, including Mobility, CRM, Recording etc. Often sold to customers wishing to have a migration to a hosted solution.
SIP C (Capacity)
A SIP Trunking service that is focused on providing a scalable, flexible Voice access service. Providers offering SIP C type service are focused on offering high capacity and highly resilient SIP access, and less focused on offering access to UC type applications.
Security is also becoming a more important issue for many SIP providers as most have be subject to attacks over the past 12 months. Issues arising from this are usually directed around where the responsibility lies; for example, who opened the PBX? Most providers are offering services that analyse usage patterns to try to reduce the cost of attacks and provide some protection for customers.