VoIP to account for 61 percent of ILD wholesale traffic in India by 2007

iLocus study on VoIP Market in India, published on the first anniversary of
legalization of VoIP and deregulation of International Long Distance (ILD)
market in India- reveals that VoIP is set to grab an expected 61 percent of ILD
traffic by the year 2007. 

VoIP was legalized along with the deregulation of ILD market in India on the
1st of April 2002, exactly a year ago. During the year, according to the report,
VoIP has gained much ground. Some 220 million minutes of ILD (including incoming
as well as outgoing) were shipped over VoIP equipment from April 2002 through to
December 2002, which is some 6 per cent of overall ILD traffic in 2002. 

The VoIP traffic is forecast to touch 7.1 billion minutes (incoming plus
outgoing) accounting for approximately 61 per cent of ILD traffic by the year
2007. 

As of March 2003, over 90 million minutes of ILD traffic were being handled
by VoIP gateways. Data Access leads in terms of VoIP usage among the service
providers while Vocaltec tops the vendor list. iLocus estimates Vocaltec market
share at 67 per cent for the equipment and 83 per cent in terms of ILD traffic
over VoIP gateways in India. 

Another interesting VoIP market developing in India is the PC-to-phone
market. According to the iLocus report, some 6 million minutes of PC-to-phone
traffic are being originated per month by the Indian ISPs. Caltiger leads the
market with 23 per cent market share. The report estimates April-December 02
PC-to-phone traffic at 35 million minutes forecast to grow to 211 million
minutes by the year 2007. Among the PC-to-phone vendors Net2phone leads with 62
per cent market share.