Telecoms analyst Point Topic has estimated that the world is now home to over 120 million VoIP subscribers (internet voice calling services), growing by 12.6% during 2010. The UK is the 10th largest market for related services, with the USA, Japan and France being the biggest three markets of all.

Western Europe remains the single largest region for VoIP services in the world and holds 42,656,731 of the total subscriber base (35%). The Asia Pacific region comes in a more distant second on 28% (33,890,259), which is closely followed by North America at 26% (30,795,894.00).


It's easy to see why VoIP has become so attractive, especially when some services often work out as being significantly cheaper (especially for international calls) than the prices offered by many traditional fixed line and mobile providers.

France is a good example of a market that has adopted VoIP on a truly national scale and thus ignited a rapid shift away from older PSTN telephone services. Roughly 93% of broadband subscribers in France also have a VoIP service; considerably higher than either the USA or Japan, where the figures are 30% and 72% respectively.

The growth also shows no sign of stopping, with a $40 billion annual VoIP market expected by 2015. It should be said that Point Topic has not included the figures for Skype style services (663 million registered users), specifically those that require a PC to operate.