Top 10 VoIP Providers Named

I came across an entry from Russell Shaw today listing the Top 10 VoIP Providers by subscription count. The Top 10 is based on research provided by Point Topic.

1. Skype - 5,300,000

2. Yahoo! Japan - 4,517,000

3. VoiceGlo - 605,000

4. Free (France) - 600,000

5. Vonage - 535,000.

6. FastWeb (Italy) - 528,000

7. Cox - 413,000

8. Time Warner - 372,000

9. Cablevision - 364,000

10. Neuf (France) - 297,000

According to Point Topic, there were over 11 million people using retail VoIP service for at least some of their telephone calls at the end of March 2005. That’s an increase from just over 5 million at mid-2004 according to Point Topic research published in December 2004.

This number is based on a total of publicly available figures for VoIP subscribers, combined with estimates where subscriber numbers were not available. Many of these estimates are based on a conservative 10 percent growth from Q4 2004 to Q1 2005. The total does not include PC-based ‘soft-client’ services like Skype and VoiceGlo.

The release goes on to say that more than half of that number is in Japan. Yahoo! Softbank provides the majority of the services to the 7.2 million Japanese VoIP subscribers.

After Japan, the American cable sector is numerically the most important VoIP sector, with around 2.1 million subscribers.

France is the largest market for VoIP in Europe, with 1.2 million subscribers by the end of the first quarter. Most of these lines are provisioned by Free and Neuf.

For more information, and for a complete breakdown of VoIP subscribers by geography, check out Point Topic’s report, Retail VoIP More Than Doubles in 9 Months.