Even though the traditional phone has served us well for more than a century, individual consumers and businesses are abandoning the platform for wireless and IP telephony in droves. However, the infrastructure that is in place is being repurposed to provide broadband speeds with DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) services to deliver the very IP telephony that will be responsible for its eventual demise. The infrastructure used to deliver VoIP vary from country to country, and in the Netherlands the growth is being driven by DSL.

Dutch DSL VoIP grew by more than two million connections in the first quarter of 2015, a gain of 1.3 percent. According to Telecompaper’s latest Dutch Fixed Telephony Market report, the Dutch market grew by half a percent with 6.27 million mass market – consumer and small office/home office (SOHO) – lines.

The growth of VoIP over fiber on the other hand grew by 6.9 percent; this is attributed to the packaged services operators are providing. The report went on to say triple play services offering TV programming, Internet and telephony are better positioned to take advantage of the current demand consumers are looking for.

The total VoIP market in the country for the quarter grew by 1.5 percent to 5.38 million lines. The decline of traditional phone lines for the same period diminished by 6.7 percent in PSTN/ISDN lines and a 3.7 percent drop in Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) connections.

As reported by Telecompaper, operators in the country are fast approaching full saturation points and this has resulted in slower growth. Cable operators have already started losing market share because they have reached their saturation point as to the number of fixed lines they can sell from here on. They are focusing more on growing their revenue instead of acquiring connections.

“The cable operators have started to lose market share, confirming our analysis that they have reached a saturation point in terms of how manymore fixed lines they can sell,” said Kamiel Albrecht, Telecompaper analyst and author of the report.

While DSL and fiber haven’t reached that point, the analysis in the report revealed starting in 2015 and 2017 both platforms will respectively see the same saturation effects. This will result in the overall fixed telephony market to show a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of -0.7 percent over the five-year period 2015-2019.

The rate in which new technologies are developing will probably result in VoIP being replaced by something faster, cheaper and more effective, sooner than later. This really makes you appreciate the longevity of traditional phones as it slowly starts disappearing from our homes and businesses.