May 16th, Information Week wrote about an Informa Report predicting that traditional telecoms see a worldwide decline in voice revenues of 16.7% by 2011. That works out to $100 billion. When compared to Adventis prediction of $50 billion by 2009, made earlier this year, it certainly seems credible.
The author of the report, Malik Saadi, noted: “After 2010, PSTN will no longer be the main revenue generator in developed countries. There will be no justification for big operators to reserve a whole network for traditional PSTN voice traffic. This trend will increasingly push operators and network owners to gradually migrate their subscribers from traditional PSTN to VoIP.”
Some operators are already taking action. Skype Journal’s Jim Courtney wrote just last week of data supporting the trend to a Voice 2.0 world. In particular, he quoted numbers from Jon Arnold’s analysis of Telus’ revenue mix, and produced the following graph:
 
Telus is focusing on declining voice minutes in two ways: they are shifting customers to cellular contracts, which have an inherent lock-in, and they’re focusing on data to grow their business. In the short term, wireless is a great strategy. But, as I have noted previously, wireless per minute revenues continue to decline precipitously. Contract lock-in’s only slow the eventually landslide. The true growth area is in data, and consequent to data, Voice 2.0 applications.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
