From the depths of the Costa Rican jungle to corporate board rooms, there are few areas that the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) industry doesn’t impact. As the weak economy continues, its reach appears to be seeping into the world of VoIP.

 

Here’s a recap of some of the top happenings around the VoIP industry this past week.

 

VoIP services made headlines this week as celebrity in training Patti Blagojevich used an Internet-based calling service to call home from a Costa Rican jungle. That’s right, a jungle.

 

Blagojevich, the wife of ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich spoke with her husband and two daughters using Skype, an online videoconferencing service. The conversation aired during an episode of NBC's "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!” on Thursday, TMCnet reported.

 

Skype (News - Alert) lets users make telephone calls over the Internet. Calls made to other users of the service are free. While there is a fee to make calls to landlines and mobile phones, the free service is catching on.

 

The effort is the latest example of how people are using online services to communicate in real-time. Last month, talk show diva Oprah Winfrey took viewers and her studio audience on a worldwide tour using the online video conferencing service. As TMC (News - Alert) reported, Winfrey dedicated a full episode entitled on Skype, an eBay-owned VOIP service, to showcase its service.

 

While the technology is fun and does wonders to bring families together, it’s also a hot ticket item for hackers in the corporate setting. As TMCnet’s Patrick Barnard reported, firms that come across unexplained long distance charges on their phone bills may be the unlucky victims of VoIP toll fraud. That involves hackers obtaining access to firms’ corporate phone system to secretly make long distance calls.

 

 

While hackers are exploiting vulnerabilities in VoIP and UC security architectures, companies Sipera (News - Alert) are developing solutions and security best practices to help decrease toll fraud activity. For instance, Sipera's  VIPERLab offers advanced VoIP and UC security architecture consulting services, including VoIP penetration testing and comprehensive UC vulnerability assessments.

 

Despite the popularity of VoIP, the sour economy is wreaking havoc on the industry.  According to communications market research firm Infonetics Research, the service provider VoIP equipment market dipped 29 percent to $600.4 million in worldwide revenue during the first quarter. That figure is down 33 percent from the first quarter of 2008, TMCnet reported.

 

Declines are expected in the service provider VoIP market throughout the year, the report states. But some areas will experience pockets of growth, mostly driven by large carriers, it found. The dip in the market is nothing new. As TMCnet reported last fall, global sales of IP phone gear to service providers fell eight percent to $861 million in the second quarter of 2008 compared to a year earlier. The decline from the first quarter of 2008 was steeper still at 10 percent.

 

Likewise, another series of reports found that equipment sales for Voice over Internet Protocol were dull and overall negative, while equipment sales for IP Multimedia Subsystems were bright and stable. According to TMCnet, revenue in 2008 reached nearly $ 775 million, whereas in 2009 it fell by 29 percent to record just over $600 million. The most significant fall was in Q109 over Q108, the report stated.

 

Officials speculate that the poor economy is impact VoIP equipment sales. What’s more, major related projects are nearing end of scheduled deployment, TMC reported. In addition, Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier and Public Telephone and Telegraph companies have had to delay projects because access line deployments have waned and fixed to wireless substitutions are taking place.

 

Meanwhile, IMS equipment, which includes Call Session Control Function servers, Home Subscriber Servers and voice application servers, have registered solid growth in Europe, Middle East, Africa, and excellent growth in the Asia Pacific region. IMS equipment sales are expected to improve by nearly 75 percent this year, versus 2008, bringing in close to $111 million in revenue, TMCnet said.