Sandvine Incorporated, world leader in intelligent broadband network management solutions released new VoIP figures based on data aggregated from its North American and European broadband service provider deployments.

Broadband service provider-branded VoIP rollouts were extremely successful in 2005 and have taken the lead in terms of share of VoIP minutes.

For this study conducted in November and December 2005, aggregate data was collected and analyzed from Sandvine's North American and European broadband customer networks where Sandvine is deployed. The data highlighted the VoIP traffic trends of more than 700,000 broadband households from a group of service providers with over 6 million subscribers.



The study indicated that North American service provider-branded VoIP represents 53% of all VoIP minutes on broadband networks. Vonage, with 21.7% share of North American minutes and Skype, with a 14.4% share were the leading third-party providers. All other third-party VoIP providers captured the remaining 10.9% share of minutes.

"Broadband provider-branded VoIP is, and will continue to be a key factor in driving revenue growth and triple-play success for service providers," said Boyd Peterson, Senior Vice President, Media Research, Yankee Group.

In Europe, service provider-branded VoIP represents 51.2% of all VoIP minutes, while Skype follows closely behind with 45% of all VoIP minutes. Vonage takes less than 1% share while other third-party VoIP providers represent 3.5% of all minutes.

In North America, broadband providers that have rolled out network-wide VoIP deployments are now capturing an average of 81.8% of the VoIP minutes on their own networks. In contrast, the market share in minutes for third-party VoIP providers like Vonage and Skype is 12.9% in such competitive environments.

"Consumers are clearly embracing the VoIP products offered by broadband service providers in Europe and North America," said Tom Donnelly, executive VP, marketing and sales for Sandvine. "Sandvine customers have been able to leverage their increased understanding of Internet application traffic trends to effectively differentiate valued services like VoIP and enhance the overall quality of experience for their subscribers."