The total number of IPTV subscribers grew by 117% in 2007 to reach 12.34 million, up from 5.71 million at the end of 2006, according to new research Informa Telecoms and Media. The biggest world region by far remains Western Europe, which passed 6.9 million IPTV subscribers in 2007 to account for 57% of the global total.
The bulk of subscriptions were in France, where incumbent France Telecom and alternative operators Free, Neuf and Telecom Italia’s Alice, had attracted more than 5 million IPTV customers by bundling the service free with broadband. France is in a league of its own when it comes to IPTV subscriptions. The country has nearly 10 times as many IPTV subscriptions as second-placed Spain and close to 75% of the Western Europe total.
The US too, has begun to make headway, adding more than one million customers in 2007, largely on the back of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) roll-outs led by Verizon (FiOS) and AT&T Broadband. Less than half of the broadband subscribers in the US, connected using FTTH view their TV over their broadband connection.
Relative to competing multi-channel platforms, IPTV is still in the first phase of roll out and growth, with just 55 operators representing over 99% of global IPTV subscribers and IPTV itself representing less than 3% of all global multichannel subscribers.
