Spending on wireline voice services among small businesses in the U.S. will approach $16 billion by 2015, according to recent research conducted by In-Stat (News - Alert). This figure represents nearly 50 percent of all spending in this category.

Small businesses, or companies with 5 to 99 employees, account for around half the GDP and more than half the employment in the U.S. Among these businesses, the hospitality and food vertical is projected to spend the most on wireline voice services, reaching $2 billion by 2012. Also, enterprise spending in the government segment will reach $4.7 billion by 2015.

In addition to these findings, In-Stat’s research points to toll-free service expenditures increasing by $134 million over the 5-year forecast.

SOHO will spend $267 million on other services in 2015. This spending comprises audio-conferencing services, outbound calling services, and pre-paid calling.

One of the biggest threats, the report says, is VoIP which is emerging to battle for long distance services.

“Wireline voice, although not growing in any significant way, is holding steady across all sizes of business,” said Greg Potter, in a statement.  “One service segment we see that could be vulnerable due to alternative technologies like VoIP is international long distance services. Even though the total dollar spend remains high, we see negative growth over the forecast period.”

Recently In-Stat also announced the results of a research on enterprise business spending on IT and telecom services. The research found that enterprise business spending on IT and telecom services, which include cloud computing, wireless, wireline voice, wireline data, and business IP/VoIP, will grow nearly 6 percent in 2011.

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