Two-thirds of European telecommunications operators say converged services will grow to a point where traditional voice traffic will account for less than 50% of their revenue by 2006.
A new study by Yankee Group commissioned by Cisco Systems shows that European telecoms operators have re-evaluated their market strategies and focused their business planning from traditional voice services and circuit-switched networks to the delivery of converged services over more efficient packet-based networks.
Mark Baptiste, director, Service Provider Line of Business at Cisco Systems SA, says although SA is a little behind this trend, there has been significant interest in offering converged services to the local market. He says this will become increasingly prevalent in SA and Africa within the next few years.
He noted that many African countries are already jumping over traditional voice services directly into converged networks capable of carrying voice, video and data.
The Yankee Group research, which encompassed 25 incumbent and alternate operators across 16 European countries, also found that growing revenues and reducing costs were major concerns, broadband is seen as a major launch pad for service development and that most operators are already planning to offer an IP telephony service over the next three years.
The survey indicated that operators are primarily targeting the high end of the business market for new converged services today. "This survey shows that telecoms operators are placing their bets on converged services and packet infrastructures and that the much talked about transformation in telecoms is fully under way," says Mark de Simone, VP of marketing, channels and alliances at Cisco, EMEA.
The survey also points to a major power shift in the telecoms market as customer-facing departments wield growing influence. "The change in telecoms is happening from the street up. This means that operators are increasingly looking first at customer needs and then building a business case to launch a service. This is a major change for the industry that traditionally developed services that the market then followed," says Chris Lewis, VP, EMEA, for the Yankee Group.
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