It has taken probably a decade longer than its proponents expected, but it looks as if booming demand for voice over IP (VoIP) and session initiation protocol-based (SIP) services may finally be chiming the death knell of the TDM-based PBX, in North America at least.

According to Frost & Sullivan, VoIP access and SIP trunking service revenues turned in what the researcher described as “down-turn defying” performance last year, with revenues up 22% at $717.3 million, and customer numbers up 401%.

The sudden surge in IP-based trunking is driven by businesses need to both reduce costs by minimising driving complexity out of their currently multi-protocol voice networks, and by intensifying the centralisation of all application management. For the first time, it seems, corporate users are getting serious about treating voice services as just another kind of digital applications sitting on their increasingly virtualised data center infrastructure.

The trend sounds like bad news for the last remaining corporate “voice networking shops”, and for any vendors still relying on TDM maintenance revenues. However, neither is it entirely good news for IP-based softswitch vendors, as Frost & Sullivan predict a period of intense competition in the PBX replacement market which is likely to generate as many losers as winners.

Frost and Sullivan offered no information on whether the same trends are yet visible in Europe, but with major corporations adopting an increasingly global approach to application management it seems likely that the PBX’s days in may be numbered on this side of the Atlantic as well.