New research suggests that voice over broadband is the main application driving companies to invest in IMS and VoIP technology.

Worldwide spending on these kinds of networking technology hit $3.9 billion last year, according to a new study by Infonetics Research.

That is 19 per cent higher than spending in 2006, and Infonetics predicts year-on-year growth, culminating in global spending of $8.4 billion by 2011.

"The overall next gen voice equipment market is maturing, as evidenced by single-digit annual sales growth in traditional equipment such as media gateways and softswitches," said principal analyst for VoIP and IMS Stephane Teral.

"But other types of equipment, namely session border controllers, media servers, and voice application servers, will generally grow faster for the next five years," he went on.

Last month, Infonetics published research showing that the enterprise telephony market had grown by 6 per cent between 2006 and 2007, with IP PBX systems equipment sales driving the growth.

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