Worldwide VoIP service revenue jumped 66% to $15.8 billion in 2006 after more than doubling in 2005, and is expected to more than triple by 2010, says Infonetics Research in its new "VoIP Services and Subscribers" report. Hosted VoIP services continue to outpace managed IP PBX services by far, with residential services fueling the market, but the business segment is also growing, and will continue to, the report says.

"Asia Pacific has been leading the VoIP services scene for a couple of years, with Japan's SoftBank pioneering the service and taking a strong lead, but the EMEA and North America regions have gained some ground at the expense of Asia in the last two years. The Latin American-Caribbean region is also posting impressive growth and gaining share," said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics Research and author of the report.

Other highlights from the report:

• Worldwide revenue from residential hosted VoIP services jumped 68% between 2005 and 2006; managed IP PBX service revenue grew 45%
• The number of worldwide residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers nearly doubled between 2005 and 2006, to 46.5 million, 46% of which are in Asia Pacific
• 71% of worldwide VoIP service revenue came from residential/SOHO customers in 2006, 29% from business customers; revenue from both residential and business customers will increase steadily at least through 2010
• SoftBank is the world's largest VoIP service provider with 18% subscriber market share, followed (in order) by NTT, Vonage, France Télécom, and Time Warner Cable Infonetics' report tracks residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers, managed IP PBX services, and hosted VoIP services split by residential/SOHO vs. business (with trunking/VoIP VPN vs. IP Centrex/hosted IP breakouts) in North America (with US and Canada breakouts), EMEA, Asia Pacific, Latin America-Caribbean, and worldwide.

The report includes regional subscriber market share, tracking Cableco, Comcast, Digilinea, France Télécom, Free, ONO, NTT, PCCW, SoftBank, Time Warner, Vonage, Vono, and others.

Download report highlights at www.info.infonetics.com.