Right now, Vonage has about 6,000 customers, but the company hopes that number will grow to 100,000 by the end of 2003. In fact, Forrester Research estimates that by 2006 more than 4 million homes will have abandoned their local phone companies for services like Vonage - more than the 3 million who are expected to abandon the Baby Bells for cell phones by that date.
In Honduras, only about 44 of every 1,000 people had a phone in 1999, the latest year for which figures are available from the World Bank Group's development indicators database. In neighboring Nicaragua, the figure is 30 of every 1,000; in Guatemala, 55; and in El Salvador, 76.
Internet phone service is not only more readily available than normal phone service, it's significantly cheaper, too: 5 to 10 cents a minute, vs. the $1 to $1.50 per minute charged by monopoly telephone providers. In Honduras, where per capita income was about $850 in 2000, it's an obvious bargain. ...
International long-distance revenues in Latin America have fallen significantly, from $3 billion in 1997 to $2.5 billion this year, according to Pyramid Research. ...
By 2006, nearly half of cross-border voice traffic will be carried through Internet services, according to forecasts by IDC Corp. analyst Elizabeth Farrand.
The market for desktop IP telephony (which includes IP phones, call managers and converged PBXs but not enterprise VoIP gateways or service provider kit) was worth $98 million throughout EMEA. Synergy estimates $52 million of these sales came in the UK, and it projects yearly growth in the market of between 50-60 per cent, a figure Cisco describes as "conservative". ... To date, Cisco has shipped more than 500,000 IP phones and more than 6,000,000 VoIP ports.