By W. David Gardner

TechWeb News

Jan 3, 2006 11:25 AM

VoIP in Asia is expected to grow from $5.5 billion in 2004 to more than $10 billion by 2009, according to an In-Stat report released Tuesday.

Revenue for 85.4 percent of VoIP traffic came from traditional public switched telephone networks in 2004, the high tech market research firm said. In-Stat added that most of the calls were initiated from PSTN terminals or full IP local loops that carry transmission over IP backbones.

"By contrast," said In-Stat analyst Victor Liu in a statement, "adoption of local VoIP services is slow due to regulatory barriers in many countries and the dominance of incumbent players." Liu took note of the situation in Japan where competitive service providers showed that technological advantage can be exploited to introduce new services and attract new customers "in a loose regulatory framework."

Noting that there are some 8.7 million local VoIP lines in Asia, In-Stat said a sizable percentage of long distance calls has already migrated to IP platforms in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore.