Service providers today starting to ramp up services in anticipation an explosion in popularity of WebRTC. Gartner (News - Alert) even projected by 2017, digital services will make up 17 percent of leading service providers’ revenue - a $225 billion market.

This past week, a panel at the WebRTC World Conference & EXPO, “Does WebRTC Broaden the Definition of Service Providers?” explored what the future may hold for this burgeoning market.

The Panel was composed of Disruptive Analysis Founder Dean Bubley, Director of Product Marketing for Digital Services at Comverse Mohan Palat (News - Alert) and Ingate Systems CEO and CTO Karl Stahl. The discussion was lively, as the future poses a complex challenge for redefining roles—such as, would it be fair to consider a Web hosting company that also provides telco services a service provider?

By leveraging WebRTC, the definition of service provider is expanded and opens the door to new revenue streams. WebRTC allows a service provider to rapidly create new services, monetize new services and API’s will play a vital role in this process.

Palat illustrated that by utilizing aWebRTC gateway and RCS API one can quickly offer a slew of services from RCS and WebRTC to mobile services, third party services, and enterprise services in a rich and engaging format.

Ingate’s Stahl also discussed the effects we will see on unified communications. A SIP trunk provider becomes a virtual mobile operator by connecting WebRTC clients to the enterprise PBX environment. WebRTC smartphone clients and OTT over LTE (News - Alert) and Wi-Fi provide superior voice quality to that of today’s mobile standards. He continued to explain that WebRTC softclients are coming as apps as well as Web clients—and, coming soon to iPhone (News - Alert).

The key take away from this discussion is simple, the digital transformation is happening, and WebRTC is playing a key role in providing service providers with the opportunity to ride the fourth wave of monetized services. The definition of service providers is ever-evolving into what fits our always-on, always-plugged in lifestyle. Stay tuned, as this ascent is just beginning, and as we sit at base camp the view from the summit is unimaginable.