VoIP in the Middle East: Development and emerging trends

VoIP in the Middle East: Development and emerging trends

Several countries across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region have had and continue to have an unfavourable stance towards services like Skype, Whatsapp voice calls and Apple's Facetime. The issue was recently brought to the fore by The New York Times, which suggests that UAE-based ToTok is not so much a VoIP app, but a spying tool. In this article, Sam O'Brien,  senior website optimisation and user experience manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa at RingCentral, a global unified communications as a service (UCaaS)  system provider explains the history and trends of VoIP in the region. 

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has been around since 1973. The first internet phone software was launched in 1995. Industry experts predict a market valuation of over $93.2 billion by 2024.

In enterprise, VoIP has been adopted across the board from Burger King to the White House. Further developments in complementary technologies such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Unified Communication (UC), and machine learning are set to trigger new growth in the VoIP sector in North Africa and parts of the Middle East.

VoIP is still a developing technology, yet it underpins many of the most widely used messaging and social media services. These include