Subscriber numbers to retail VoIP services rose by 83% during 2005, from 10.3 million at the beginning of the year to over 18.7 million subscribers by the end, according to new research from Point Topic.
Point Topic’s research also estimates that the number of people who paid for PC-to-phone calls during 2005 is over 4.7 million. It adds that when combined with the retail VoIP total, this increases the overall VoIP paying subscriber totals to just under 24 million, compared with 14.4 million a year previously.
A recent report from Infonetics Research said that VoIP services will have $120 billion spent on them in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific between 2005 and 2009 (see European VoIP Service Revenue To Reach $12.7 Billion In 2009).
Globally, Japan, France and the USA continue to be the dominant players in the VoIP market in terms of subscriber numbers. However, other European nations, including Germany, Holland and Norway saw a significant number of VoIP subscribers by the end of 2005.
The research shows that Asia Pacific has seen the slowest rate of growth in VoIP subscribers, mainly due to Japan showing a slowdown in VoIP growth.
Retail VoIP numbers more than doubled in the US and Canada during 2005, with cable companies collectively adding millions of subscribers.
In Europe, France continues to be the most important VoIP market in Europe, with Point Topic estimating that there are over 2.8 million paying VoIP subscribers there, not including those who use Skype.
Point Topic said that France’s success with local loop unbundling, and the easy to use equipment and easy to understand offers of new entrant carriers Free and neuf made VoIP one part of a good value triple play offering, although France telecom responded quickly in 2005, growing its business from 144,000 subscribers to 830,000.
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Point Topic has also estimated the number of Skype users, based on reported results for Q4 2005, which showed reported revenues of $28.4 million. It says that these would equate to an average of 4.73 million subscribers paying $2 per month during the 3 months of the quarter.
Worldwide VoIP Subscriber Numbers Q4 2005 and Q4 2004
| Region |
Number of VoIP users (‘000s) Q4 2005 |
Q4 2004 |
| |
| Asia Pac |
8862 |
7071 |
| |
| Americas |
4583 |
1389 |
| |
| Europe |
5254 |
1864 |
| |
| |
|
|
| |
| Retail VOIP total |
18699 |
10324 |
| |
| Skype etc* |
4730 |
4050 |
| |
| Total |
23429 |
14374 |
| |
| Notes. Numbers are estimates. VoiceGlo not included for 2005 due to insufficient data on operations. Not all operators publish comprehensive VoIP statistics. |
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