France tops IPTV list, according to reasearch from Dittberner.
PCCW is the world’s largest IPTV provider with 638,000 subscribers, followed by France Telecom with 421,000 subs, Free counts 350,000 and Telefonica 304,000 (all figures as per September 30, 2006).
The list of countries following France is, in order, Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Morocco, Russia, the United Kingdom and Sweden, which has just 45,000 subscribers. In the Benelux Belgium counts almost 103,000 subs to Belgacom TV, Tele2TV in Holland has also about 103,000.
Most of the world’s IPTV subscribers (68%) are in Western Europe, and 28% are in Asia. But North America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa combined make up only 8% of the world’s 2.7 million IPTV subscribers. Competition and the spread of pan-European carriers will likely drive continued growth in Western Europe, Dittberner said.