Tuesday, November 08, 2005

More Q3 tidbits

For anyone out there obsessively counting VoIP minutes and subscribers, here are a few more datapoints from the steady stream of Q3 reports:

  • KPN yesterday said that it estimates there to be around 400k users in the Netherlands of what it termed to be "VoIP-like" services. That would be something over 10% of the total broadband market, but I don't see how this number could be accurate. Back as long ago as April, I had a top 20 Skype user countries spreadsheet (from the company itself) showing nearly double that number using Skype alone. I sense that a more accurate estimate would be something closer to 1m users, which would be over 25% of broadband connections.
  • In the German market, United Internet yesterday said that it is currently invoicing 175m VoIP minutes per month. Back in mid-August, the figure was 100m, up from 90m in June.
  • T-Online, besides having a knock-out quarter in its home DSL market (342k net adds in Q3), claims that over half of new customers in France are taking VoIP at point of sale. T-Online reports France and Spain subscriber numbers together (+64k in the quarter), so a hard number eludes us, but assuming that France was 70% of net additions, that implies something like 23k VoIP subs in France in the quarter. Next to Free's c.1.3m VoIP subs, and France Telecom's 484k, this is fairly inconsequential, but it's a decent take-rate for a newcomer in a market which is arguably Europe's most mature.

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