How Many Lines or VoIP Accounts?

Suppliers shipped an estimated 9.8 million VoIP subscriber feature server licenses for deployment in service provider networks, according to analysts at iLocus. Those licenses generated $177.4 million in revenue, and grew
34 percent, quarter over quarter.

The growth is due to high voice over broadband activity in Europe and among cable operators in North America. In Asia-Pacific VoBB growth is still confined to Japan mostly.

Of the 9.8 million VoIP subscriber licenses sold during 4Q07, licenses for hosted business phone system (hosted PBX or hosted Centrex or key system) lines account for about 1.2 million.

The remaining 8.6 million were mainly deployed for residential VoIP or switch replacement, iLocus says.

That suggests, at least for the short term, a belief that 12 percent of overall VoIP sales by service providers are of the hosted phone system sort.

Keep in mind that such data is not so granular as we might hope. In fact, even the reported penetration of landlines is less granular than one might think. If one looks at reported landline phone penetration, for example, there is a period between 2005 and 2007 where the installed base appears to oscillate wildly.

It appears that changes in the survey instrument are partly the reason. Government researchers now ask whether "any" phone service is available, specifying that mobiles count, where they used to ask whether a phone line was available. The government now makes a distinction between phones "in the living unit" and "available in the building" as well.

So it is likely we simply have reporting error in recent data. Over time that should correct. But the point is that even the official Federal Communications Commission data now have to be interpreted.

It's just another reminder that all our survey data should be considered indicative of trends rather than firm descriptions of physical reality.