Worldwide VoIP service revenue jumped 66 percent to $15.8 billion in 2006 after more than doubling in 2005, and is expected to more than triple by 2010, said Infonetics Research in its recent "VoIP Services and Subscribers" report.
Hosted VoIP services continue to outpace managed IP PBX services by far, with residential services fueling the market, but the business segment also is growing, and will continue to, the report indicated.
"Asia Pacific has been leading the VoIP services scene for a couple of years, with Japan's SoftBank pioneering the service and taking a strong lead, but the EMEA and North America regions have gained some ground at the expense of Asia in the last two years,” said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics Research and lead author of the report. “The Latin
American-Caribbean region is also posting impressive growth and gaining share."
According to the report, the number of worldwide residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers nearly doubled between 2005 and 2006, to 46.5 million, 46 percent of which are in Asia Pacific.
The report also noted that 71 percent of worldwide VoIP service revenue came from residential/ SOHO customers in 2006, with 29 percent from business customers.
France Télécom, NTT, Time Warner Cable and Vonage are among the VoIP service providers with the largest market share.
