Is the Wholesale Voice industry dead?

“The voice industry is dead, or dying, why continue to invest in it?”...anonymous telecom exec

We’ve heard it so many times before, from so many execs.  

“Wholesale voice is dead”

“We are closing our wholesale voice business”

“Wholesale voice is like empty calories on our network”

“Why would I invest in wholesale voice?”

“I just want to outsource my wholesale voice”

We’ve all heard this refrain from every corner of the industry; from executives, to analysts, to trade publications, yet the industry persists.  Heck, GCS and all of our competitors and industry colleagues persist.  

Yes, the industry has undergone massive upheaval and has suffered the “creative destruction” that advances in technology often impose on industries that had regulatory structures propping them up.  And yes, the industry has lost thousands, if not tens of thousands, of jobs.  But, we are still here and the industry is still here and we don’t see it going away any time soon.  Over the past several months, and years, we have written many times about the rampant speculation and seemingly incurable belief that the industry is dead or dying.  

Our pushback against this notion isn’t just self serving. It is also, we hope, informative. And it looks like some industry analysts agree with us!

The folks over at Global Market Insights are forecasting growth in the wholesale voice carrier market.  According to GMI, “Wholesale Voice Carrier Market size exceeded USD 20 billion in 2019 and is poised to register over 10% CAGR between 2020 and 2026. The global wholesale voice traffic accounted for over 550 billion minutes in 2019 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of above 8% over the forecast period”…

That’s not GCS saying that, that’s an independent market analyst whose sole job is to get these predictions right. 

Bottom line, the industry is not going anywhere and is, in fact, growing and growing at a healthy clip!  That should translate into additional awareness amongst the industry which will lead to investment.  And that’s a good thing for the industry because it means the industry isn’t dead!