US VoIP Numbers To Increase
A new forecast from eMarketer estimates that 46% of US broadband households in 2011 will subscribe to a VoIP service, equating to 41.3 million VoIP subscribers.
“In addition to paid subscriptions, millions of broadband households are regularly utilizing free internet voice services from companies such as Skype, which recently reported 171 million registered users at the end of 2006, up nearly 100 million from a year earlier.”
| Residential Broadband, VoIP and IPTV subscribers in the US and Worldwide, 2006 & 2011 (Millions) | ||
| 2006 | 2011 | |
| US | ||
| IPTV | 0.3 | 4.8 |
| VoIP | 9.8 | 41.3 |
| Broadband | 54.6 | 89.9 |
| Worldwide | ||
| IPTV | 4.9 | 41.1 |
| VoIP | 37.8 | 152.6 |
| Broadband | 251.1 | 497.4 |
| Note: Paid subscribers only | ||
| Source: eMarketer | ||
In other research, ABI Research said that VoIP telephone services should have a subscriber base of over 267 million in 2012 (see VoIP To Reach 267 Million Subscribers Worldwide).
EMarketer quotes a forecast from the Telecommunications Industry Association which says that VoIP subscribers will account for over one-third of all US landline subscriptions in 2010, up from approximately 10% in 2006.
Macklin added that the worldwide growth of IPTV will be patchy as it requires considerably more bandwidth and technical knowledge than VoIP.
EMarketer forecasts 41.4 million IPTV households worldwide in 2011, up from approximately five million in 2006.
A recent forecast from Screen Digest said that subscriptions to IPTV services across Europe will almost double from 2.9 million in 2006 to 5.6 million in 2007 (see European IPTV Market To Double).