SMEs to invest $50 billion in telecom

By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 11 October 2007, 19:30 IST
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Kolkata: Small and medium enterprises across the Asia-Pacific region outside of Japan are planning to invest $50 billion on telecommunications equipment and services this year, reported Business Standard. This increased 5 percent over 2006, according to the latest study by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners. Already Indian SMEs have spent over $5 billion on telecom equipment and services last year. AMI's survey shows that developed markets such as Australia and South Korea, and fast-growing markets like India and China, will account for more than 70 percent of the APeJ telecom spending this year. The market is witnessing a transition from traditional PBX to IP-based PBX. While the base switch is going IP, the end points are moving to IP more slowly. This is due to the higher price of IP end points over digital end points. In 2006, only 8 percent of desk phones of medium businesses in a mature market like Australia had IP phones. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) will reduce the price, making such solutions even more affordable. SMEs are as interested in advanced solutions like Unified Communications as large business. The difference is that SMEs have smaller budgets and need higher justification for spending their budgets on such services. Hosted communications or managed telephony services are set to grow more than three times the growth rate of premises-based equipment among SMEs over the next three to four years. Hence, equipment vendors, telecom operators, and service providers need to work together to provide such hosted solutions to SMBs across the Asia-Pacific region. According to AMI, SMEs in the Asia-Pacific will continue adopt new technologies to remain competitive. Telecom equipment vendors, operators and service providers need to offer products and services using the right model and price points to tap this growing market.

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