Telcos striving to build up their voice over IP (VoIP) profits are unlikely to pass on any savings on capital or operating expenditure to their VoIP customers in the near future, analysts said last week.

Instead, the operators will try to boost revenues by enticing users to buy new value-added services. “The idea is to add more features to a basic VoIP service and then ask for a premium,” said Stéphane Téral of Infonetics Research.

But the operators remain vague about what those services will be and when the network infrastructure will be in place to deliver them.

“If you ask the service providers what new applications and services are likely to be delivered, they don’t know, and neither do I,” said Téral. “The only thing everyone knows is the need to create and launch ‘new services’ to beat the competition.”

Carriers may try to avoid price wars, but are likely to compete fiercely by bundling services with IP-VPN and broadband packages.