VoIP subscribers double

The number of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) subscribers worldwide doubled last year from 19 million to 40 million, the latest statistics from market analyst Point Topic show.

France had a total of 6.6 million subscribers by the end of the year, thanks in part to a liberal regulations regime, a feature it shares with European fellow-traveller Sweden.

Bundled products were the most popular way of making VoIP calls in France, with 4.3 million callers using a PSTN (public switched telephone network) line.

But another 2.3 million used an unbundled, stand-alone line.

Almost a quarter of France's voice traffic emanating from fixed-line phones used VoIP technologies, and a long-term decline in subscriptions to fixed-lines, as users migrated across to mobiles for all their telephony, was stalled.

Germany lagged behind their neighbour slightly, with 3.5 million VoIP subscriptions.

UK user figures, meanwhile, were contested, with the regulator Ofcom reporting just 300,000 users via BT in August 2006, whereas BT said it had over 1 million by the third quarter.

But hi-tech Japan led the way globally with 13.75 million subscribers by the end of 2006, significantly more than the USA's 8.9 million.