International IPX Data to Grow, Evolution and Potential Remain Unclear

IP exchange (IPX) is the latest buzzword in the LTE (News - Alert) industry, gaining particular momentum in the delivery of IPX services. That's exactly what HOT TELECOM predicts for the period 2012-2015.

With LTE network launches anticipated to accelerate over the next three years and mobile operators looking for International roaming, VoLTE and HD voice solutions, and international IPX data traffic, are expected to increase as well.

Based on its recently released "IPX Trends, Key Players and Traffic" report, international IPX data traffic is expected to grow at a CAGR of 97.2 percent with IPX voice traffic growing at 39.4 percent for the same period.

So what is IPX and why the sudden hype? There does seem to be a lot of confusion about its actual definition, but very simply, IPX is expected to veer toward interoperability of all IP-based services, which would imply a single provider, a single connection and multiple services.

If that's the end result IPX is meant to produce, its growth does seem inevitable, as who in their right mind wouldn't want to manage one partner, one agreement and one invoice for all the IP based interworking and roaming services?

Adopted initially in 2012, the actual growth phase for IPX is anticipated to start in 2013, and by 2015, IPX hubs will have reached a “critical mass in terms of the number of accessible IPX destinations.”

It’s therefore encouraging as it would imply that a larger number of IPX customers can connect to IPX for most of their traffic.

“Looking ahead, we expect IPX to continue evolving from the adoption phase that we saw in 2012 to an actual growth phase, which we anticipate to start in 2013. LTE is seen by many as the catalyst of growth for IPX and even as the killer IPX application by some,” said Isabelle Paradis, president of HOT TELECOM.

The HOT TELECOM report concluded, however, that despite hype and general optimism, LTE for the purposes of IPX services do have more things that are unclear as to its involvement in the industry heading into 2013, than it does guarantees.

For starters, given that a large majority of surveyed customers indicated that they expected to use IPX primarily to transport VoIP and HD voice traffic, while providers wanted them to use to transport video and RCS traffic, there’s trouble ahead.

But this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg and IPX is bound to face some rather rough weather. Still, it can take comfort in the fact that it's bound to grow eventually – to what extent and what direction is anybody's guess.

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