VoIP subscriptions grew by 34 million in 2006

The worldwide VoIP market was swelled by 34 million new subscriptions in 2006, according to new figures from market researcher In-Stat.

And the European VoIP market claimed nearly half of those new users, with some 14 million subscriptions being added during the year.

This compares favourably with the American market which was found to be lagging behind Europe in terms of growth, with just four million subscriptions in the US over the same period.

In light of these figures, In-Stat predicted that the US market will only make up around 18 per cent of the total number of VoIP subscribers in the world by 2011.

Keith Nissen, an In-Stat analyst, said: "The European VoIP market is being aided by local loop unbundling (LLU), the introduction of cable telephony and triple-play service bundles, as well as operator consolidation."

However, he bemoaned the slow growth in America, saying that "no-one seems interested in selling anything other than plain-old-telephone-service" in the country.

Other results of the In-Stat study found that, within Europe, western countries were seeing the largest numbers of new users - with France, Germany and the Netherlands reporting the fastest growth in 2006.