Key to success? Don't call it VoIP


Twenty-four million people worldwide pay to use retail voice over IP (VoIP) services, new research has shown.


The number of retail VoIP subscribers jumped more than 80 per cent to 18.7 million during 2005 - or 24 million if you add users of PC-to-phone services such as Skype, according to Point Topic's IP Telephony report.


Based on reported revenues, the analyst estimates that one-sixth of VoIP subscribers used Skype in the fourth quarter of 2005.


The Asia-Pacific region has the largest share of VoIP users but the fastest growth is seen in Europe and the US.


The number of VoIP subscribers in Europe grew nearly threefold to 5.3 million during 2005 and is expected to pick up even more in 2006.


France has the highest VoIP adoption in Europe with 2.8 million paying subscribers, led by new carriers Free and neuf selling easy-to-use VoIP services - though incumbent France Telecom's VoIP push has also proved fruitful as it raised subscriber levels more than fivefold in 2005.


In the UK, BT's VoIP offering had "relatively few" subscribers by the end of 2005 but was picking up in early 2006, said the analyst.


One key success in the US, according to Point Topic, is marketing the service not as 'VoIP' but describing it in simple terms customers understand such as 'digital telephone'.



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Here are world's top ten VoIP providers by sub count


My colleagues over at IT Facts are out today with a list of VoIP subscribers by country, region and provider.


Parsing the information, (which comes from market research firm Point Topic), we see that as of the first quarter of this year, the top ten VoIP providers listed by number of customers were:

According to the overall numbers, there were some 17,400,000 VOIP subscribers worldwide in 1Q of this year- up 3 million from 14,400,000 in 1Q 2004.


Source: ZNet