Dutch users embrace internet telephony

Use of Voice over IP (VoIP) services in Holland has topped two million regular users in the first quarter of this year, but growth is expected to slow in the second quarter due to limits imposed by market leader KPN, a survey has shown.

The number of VoIP subscribers increased by more than 17 per cent to 2.1 million in the first three months of this year, market research group Telecompaper said. This is in stark contrast to the UK, where VoIP solutions are still in their infancy, with only basic under publicised services available from incumbent providers such as BT, and third party services such as Skype carrying only a small amount of telephony traffic.

KPN is currently the largest VoIP provider in Holland, with a market share of more than 30 per cent.

"Compared with quarterly growth percentages of 17 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2006 and 29 per cent in the third quarter of 2006, the digital telephony market growth is slowing down considerably," said Telecompaper analyst Kamiel Albrecht.

The slowdown is due to KPN's decision to limit the number of new VoIP customers to 5,000 a week, the research group said.

It forecast second quarter VoIP user growth of about 10 per cent or around 200,000 net additions, with the total number of users estimated at about 2.8 million at end-2007 against an initial figure of 3 million.

KPN, which suffered teething problems when it rolled out its VoIP service, has said it plans to gradually increase its order intake for the service to 8,000-9,000 per week from 5,000-6,000 now.

"As KPN receives more orders and can handle them, then growth can be 20 percent in the third quarter," said Albrecht.

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