VoIP growing in leaps and bounds

“VoIP,” perhaps only this year a need-to-know bit of office jargon, is well on the way to becoming an honest-to-A.G. Bell household word. Um, acronym. According to an international survey recently undertaken by broadband communications services analysts Point Topic entitled “IP Telephony,” the voiceover internet protocol business is in fine shape.

Headline statistic was naturally the increase in retail VoIP subscribers, a huge 83 percent rate in 2005, from 10.3 million at the beginning of the year to over 18.7 million subscribers worldwide by December’s end. Including the 4.7 million customers paying for PC-to-phone calls during 2005, the overall VoIP paying subscriber totals to almost 24 million, quite a jump over the estimated 14.4 million for 2004.

The survey is reportedly the first to publish detailed operator-by-operator figures for the worldwide VoIP market. Among the oodles of numbers generated by the fine folks at Point Topic, the survey shows that Japan, France and the USA are far ahead of the pack in VoIP subscriber numbers. Strongest relative growth was reported for Germany, the Netherlands and Norway; the study abstract hints that “many markets, especially in the USA and Europe, should see significant growth in VoIP during 2006.”

Regionally speaking, Europe remains the most unpredictable (but most interesting) VoIP market. France, listed as “the most important VoIP market in Europe,” may well in fact be most important in the world. Point Topic places more than 2.8 million paying VoIP subscribers exclusive of Skype users. Point Topic credited La Republique’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.” France Telecom also reported massive growth 2005, increasing its VoIP subscriber base from 144,000 to a whopping 830,000.

As reported above, some Nordic countries are entering the fray, but VoIP is slow to capture imaginations in Italy and the United Kingdom. Not too surprisingly, the Asia Pacific region shows slow growth. The Japanese VoIP market dwarfing all others in the area has plateaued for the time being while the Chinese market remains essentially non-existent. Surely, it’s just a matter of time, though. Point Topic notes that several operators in China have trial services available now, and an asterisk must always be placed thanks to complex government restrictions that inevitably delay technological advance in China. In North America, retail VoIP numbers increased over 200 percent in the United States and Canada iin 2005.

VoIP specialist Vonage is noted as largest single operator in the region, cable companies are piling up “millions of subscribers.” Monster multi-media firm Time Warner signed up almost 900,000 subscribers during 2005 alone. According to Point Topic, US telecom firms have “begun to deploy VoIP services in some territories, but have not released VoIP figures.” Full details of the report are available at www.point-topic.com.

Point Topic Ltd is a UK-based private company founded in 1998 with a mission statement promising “to provide focused information on broadband communications services.” Point Topic is based in Ovum’s London offices.