North America Wholesale Voice Carrier Market size crossed USD 3 billion in 2019 and is poised to expand at 10% CAGR from 2020 to 2026.
The market growth is attributed to the rising adoption of smartphones and VoIP-based devices. The rising smartphone penetration is creating new opportunities for wholesale voice carriers to handle the massive VoIP demand generated by these smart devices. This increase in the number of smartphones is resulting in intense VoIP traffic, which is generated due to the use of data-intensive voice calling applications and mobile internet. This increase in data traffic with growing smartphone penetration is supporting the development of wholesale VoIP services.
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The voice termination segment accounted for 70% North America market share in 2019 due to the growing emphasis of telecom service providers on switching to cost-effective wholesale voice carrier services from traditional voice & data services. Voice termination services are increasingly becoming crucial to leverage the growing interest of consumers in high-quality voice calling. With rapid growth in the telecom industry, the demand for voice termination systems is increasing exponentially.
The leased network segment will witness more than 9% growth rate during the forecast period led by the increasing demand for leased network infrastructure in VoIP call termination across the region. Major telecom operators are focusing on leasing a portion of the network from regional players to set up their voice termination facilities in emerging markets. The highly competitive nature of the telecom industry has led to an increase in the number of tier-2 and tier-3 providers who are increasingly leasing network capacities from tier-1 operators to maintain the reduced total cost of ownership and gain profitability.
Transmission switching held a market share of 50% in 2019 owing to the growing demand for traditional voice calls by subscribers. The limited availability of the wireless network infrastructure in rural areas is supporting the demand for traditional switching technology. The majority of the population in rural regions still use traditional voice calls due to the lack of availability of wireless network coverage.
The U.S. wholesale voice carrier market held a dominant revenue share in 2019 and is set to grow substantially through 2026 impelled by widespread availability of the 5G network. The major states in the region including California and Washington have a wide range of 5G network services. There has been an increase in VoIP connections in the region. According to the statistics from FCC, the number of VoIP users was 64.62 million in 2018. Considering the numbers, VoIP service providers serving large enterprises and contact centers are expected to leverage advanced wholesale billing and voice termination solutions.
Some of the leading companies operating in the market include Alepo, AT & T, Inc., BCE Nexxia Corporation, BT Group Plc, CenturyLink, Inc., Deutsche Telekom AG, IDT Corporation, NTT Corporation, Orange SA, Sprint (T-Mobile), Tata Communications Ltd., Verizon Communications, Inc., and Vodafone Group Plc.
Industry players are focusing on strategic partnerships to develop innovative communication solutions. For instance, in May 2020, AT&T Inc. partnered with Cisco Systems, Inc. to launch Webex calling with AT&T services. Webex Calling with AT&T includes unlimited domestic and on-network calling in the U.S. It also features call routing with access to public switched telephone networks.