When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite - Winston Churchill
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Hard VoIP users top 100 million
ACCORDING TO beancounters at UK-based market research firm Point Topic, the number of worldwide subscribers chatting away on VoIP has broken the 100 million mark.
By the end of September 2009, in fact, 100 million subscribers had already rallied under the VoIP banner, showing 15 per cent growth from the beginning of the year. This number includes only the real VoIP crowd with real handsets, not the lame Skype, Messenger, and VoIPbuster dependent ones, say the company.
Point Topic estimates the number current VoIP subscribers to be around 110 million, indicating continued 10 per cent growth over the past 5 months. The recent financial turmoil seems to have been a catalyst in VoIP adoption as consumers apparently exercised something called 'common sense' and took up the cheaper but potentially better alternative to paying traditional telco tariffs.
In September 2009 the US topped the chart with over 22 million hard VoIP users, closely followed by Japan with 21 million and France with 16 million. France boasts the highest penetration rate with 38 per cent of all fixed lines being serviced by VoIP. Korea scores an unusually low sixth place with just 4.8 million subscribers and the UK barely makes it into the top 10 in 10th place with just under 3 million subscribers.
On the soft side of VoIP, Point Topic also reports that Skype clients racked up over 27.7 billion PC-to-PC minutes of chat, in addition to 3.1 billion Skype Out minutes. This translates into $653 million in revenue for the company, despite 90 per cent of its traffic being free talk time in Skype to Skype minutes.
Telco operators have been resisting VoIP technology, fighting back by lowering rates and offsetting the will to switch services, but it seems VoIP - legal void and technical issues notwithstanding - is here to stay. µ
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I got my VOIP hardware and service from sipgate. I opted for the PAYG setup (didnt have to get the hardware but who wants to switch on a PC to make a phone call) But if I was to add up what I would of spent in line rental it had paid for itself with in 7 months. And I have already had it a year and a half (though I have to admit I dont use it that often) but I cant say enough about the service, got a free local number and all the usual stuff you get with VOIP (free Voip2Voip calls, text messaging, billing information in more or less real time. voice mail, message & call forwarding all from a nice easy to use interface) If you have a cable connection I would tell you not to even bother with phone companies these days. Even if you didnt like sipgate then there are plenty of other VOIP companies out there with there own bells and whisles.
The article doesn't surprise me. I use a Locktec WP04 WiFI VoIP phone and pay less than 8 bucks a month for all my inbound and outbound calls. People think I'm on a landline and I've almost been able to get rid of my cellphone.
I had a Skype WiFI phone but sold it on Ebay as the sound was crap and it took forever to connect. I also couldn't get a phone number in 2 countries I wanted numbers in.
I bought the phone from Yippz.com and got it delivered in 2 days. Once they set up municipal wifi in my area I can officially ditch my cellphone and save over $700 a year!!
The inquirer has really gone downhill, this layout really sucks. I hope they fix it! There are more ads on the first page of this site then all of engadget + tomshardware combined. This site reminds me of what happened to tomshardware. When they changed over to the layout I stopped going to their site. I guess it's time to move on.