In Europe, They Like Their VoIP

Europe is poised to emerge as one of the regions where VoIP has a major impact.

According to market research firm Telegeography, consumer VoIP subscribers in Europe will reach 40 percent market penetration by 2011. That’s compared with the U.S., where total VoIP market penetration is forecast to top just 20 percent by the same year.

One of the main reasons for this is divergence: U.S. telecom incumbents AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) have more or less stayed out of the VoIP game, leaving the big push to come from cable operators such as Comcast (CMCSA) and Time Warner Cable (TWC). In the meantime, the independent voice service providers Vonage (VG) and SunRocket have fallen on hard times. Taken together, there were just 11.8 million VoIP subscribers in the U.S. at the end of the second quarter.

Conversely, the European incumbents — Britain’s BT Group (BT), France Telecom (FTE) and Deutsche Telekom (DT) of Germany — have responded to pressure from upstarts like Free, who have easier access to local loops, by becoming more active in their respective markets. And of course there’s Skype, which is extremely popular in Europe