Boston — According to a new report from the research firm Inofentics, VoIP service revenue in North America will balloon into a $23.4 billion dollar business by 2009, up from $1.24 billion in 2004.
Internet telephony will add subscribers at a fast clip as well, the study noted.
“VoIP subscriber growth is skyrocketing right along with revenue growth. We’re forecasting triple-digit growth from 2005 to 2006, with 6 million new subscribers a year every year from 2006 to 2008, when there will be over 24 million,” said Kevin Mitchell, principal analyst of Infonetics Research and author of the report, in a statement announcing its release.
Vonage leads the field but its dominant share is eroding in the wake of gains by cable companies like Cablevision and Time Warner, Mitchell noted. Those two multiple system operators alone own 40 percent of the VoIP market, and they only sell within a limited geographic footprint, not nationally like Vonage or AT&T.
According to Infonetics Research, the top three providers as of the second quarter 2005 were Vonage with 32 percent, Time Warner with 25 percent and Cablevision with 19 percent. No other service provider had a greater than three percent market share. Cablevision was the only provider to lose ground, dropping 2 percentage points since the last report.
