Demand by businesses and consumers for VoIP services creates new requirements for advanced carrier infrastructure equipment, such as session border controllers (SBCs). New standards, such as IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) required to support advanced applications such as IPTV and wireless services, will spur growth in this market.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan World Session Border Controller Markets reveals that the market accrued revenues of $123 million in 2006 and estimates this to reach $163 million in 2013, after first peaking at $220 million in 2009.

According to Frost & Sullivan strategic analyst Shirley Hunt, "Carriers are increasingly turning to SBCs as they require a dedicated device to protect critical equipment, such as softswitches and media gateways, from denial of service (DoS) and other attacks."

SBCs enable peering between IP networks, allowing customer traffic to pass through many segments of a network in order to connect to its final destination. SBCs help at these border connections to manage the sessions for security and quality control, translate protocols if necessary and provide seamless service connections.

The growing need for high-speed high-capacity sessions and security border devices is increasing the demand for stand-alone SBCs. As multimedia and wireless traffic add enormous loads, networks require these devices to help handle various applications without degrading quality of service (QoS).