Chennai: The proliferation of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services across the Asia Pacific region will dramatically increase in the coming years as the telecommunications market opens its doors to competitive service providers, according to a latest market study.

"This opening up of the market, coupled with the increasing differential between Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and VoIP tariffs, will ignite VoIP services to revenue growth rates exceeding 320 per cent in the coming years," according to the latest market study conducted by Frost & Sullivan.

The study says that the IP telephony services market is expected to expand at a Combined Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of about 90.5 per cent, reaching 243.17 billion minutes of traffic for the year 2006. In terms of revenue, the CAGR would be around 77.1 per cent touching $ 14.89 billion within the same period.

"The tariff decline will be the result of an increasing competitive market place, amongst traditional carriers and new service providers," Nitin Bhat, who spearheaded the study, says.

The study report says that deregulation has proved to be the biggest enabler for the proliferation of the service, making the Asia Pacific region one of the fastest growing markets in the world for IP telephony services.

PTI