According to a recent Point Topic analysis, VoIP currently has a remarkable 120 million subscribers worldwide- a number that is growing at a rapid speed. So fast in fact that the same analysts are predicting that by 2015, the VoIP market will generate an impressive $40 billion.

“The growth of VoIP has been bumpy but shows signs of acceleration,” said John Bosnell, senior analyst at Point Topic. “VoIP has all the hallmarks of a classic substitution commodity. This is where customers look at the service that is delivered by a new product and decide that it meets, or exceeds, the service they are currently receiving and when it is appropriately priced they will switch from one to the other.”

The Point Topic report revealed that there was a global growth in VoIP of 12.6 percent during 2010 and it’s with the demand for VoIP in the market, it’s only going to increase. The report also noted that by 2010, more than 50 percent of telephony traffic originating on fixed networks was started on a VoIP phone in France.

“France has been something of a test bed for VoIP. Driven by an active supplier base that has made VoIP available to a large percentage of the population over the last decade, providers have been rewarded with significant take-up,” added Bosnell.

According to Point Topics, all projections about the size and value of the VoIP market should be approached with caution. At this stage in the development of the market there are so many variables that forecasting models can easily be off by a significant margin. For example, an increasing number of subscribers are doing without a fixed line telephone service at all, relying instead on mobile.

“We expect there to be over three quarters of a billion fixed line broadband subscribers by the end of 2015, in theory all of them are targets for VoIP,” said Bosnell. “Given a number of assumptions, relatively consistent ARPU, regulatory easement, a cautious set of projections and so on, we expect the global fixed line VoIP market to be generating at least $40 billion a year in five years’ time.”

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Stefanie Mosca is a Web editor for TMCnet. Previously she worked as a freelance copy editor for Digital Surgeons LLC. She holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University and a bachelor's degree in communication from the University of New Haven. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell