Subscriber VoIP booming in South Korea

Subscriber Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is booming in popularity in the Asian country of South Korea, it has emerged.

According to national regulator the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the South Korean VoIP subscriber base exceeded three million at the start of March.

This has grown from two-and-a-half million in December 2008 and is expected to expand even further as national telecoms carrier KT moves further towards VoIP.

A KCC spokesman told the Korea Times that improvements made to "number portability policies" mean that VoIP users will "likely rise by an even faster clip after May".

"At the current rate, the number of VoIP [subscribers] at the end of the year is likely to surpass earlier predictions of five million," the spokesman added.

"There is also immense room for growth among business users, who tend to have higher average revenue per user rates than household users and lower churn rates."

A recent Frost & Sullivan report indicated that hosted VoIP passed one million connections in the US at the end of last year.