NEW YORK -- Telecom operators that roll out new services based on next-generation SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) technology are likely to recoup their investments and achieve profitability within two to three years of initial deployment, according to a major new report released today by Heavy Reading, the market research division of Light Reading Inc.

The report, SIP Hosted Services: A Heavy Reading Competitive Analysis, evaluates the carrier business case for launching SIP-based services by estimating the capital and operating expenses involved in service launch and projecting revenues from those services over a five-year period. The analysis is based a unique ROI model developed by report author Margaret Hopkins, Heavy Reading Analyst at Large.

Hosted SIP contact centers have the greatest potential for revenue and profit for telecom service providers, based on the ROI analysis. The report also analyzes profit potentials from SIP-based Centrex service, conferencing services, and unified messaging hosted applications.

The report includes a detailed competitive analysis of all the carrier-grade SIP-capable products now on the market. Product matrices deliver point-by-point comparisons of 78 SIP platforms from 47 different vendors, including Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO), Nortel Networks (NYSE/Toronto: NT), Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), and Alcatel (NYSE: ALA).

Other key report findings include:

SIP will emerge as the basis for a new, scaleable, flexible worldwide communications network. Given the strength and breadth of its support among vendors and service providers, SIP will supplant all other technologies to become the linchpin for future integrated multiservice and multimedia communications, bridging both wireline and wireless networks.

Dozens of vendors now offer SIP-based or SIP-supported platforms, but relatively few of those platforms are truly carrier-grade. Only a handful of SIP platforms for hosted Centrex, contact center, unified messaging, and multimedia conferencing can scale to the number of users that carriers would need to support in a full-fledged commercial deployment.

SIP specialist vendors are capturing some important customer wins at this early stage of the deployment cycle. These customer wins indicate that vendors specializing in SIP can have success selling against incumbent telecom equipment vendors in this market.

SIP Hosted Services: A Heavy Reading Competitive Analysis is priced at $3,495. For more information, or to request a free executive summary, contact:

Dave Williams
Sales Director, Heavy Reading
415-293-8470
[email protected]

Press/analyst contact:
Dennis Mendyk
Managing Director, Heavy Reading
201-587-2154
[email protected]

About Heavy Reading
Heavy Reading is an independent market research organization offering quantitative analysis of telecom technology to service providers, vendors, and investors. Its mandate is to provide the comprehensive competitive analysis needed today for the deployment of profitable networks based on next-generation hardware and software.