The total Dutch consumer telephony market grew by 39,000 connections during the third quarter of 2007 to 5.69 million, driven by a growing number of Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) users and increased growth for cable VoIP, according to Telecompaper's quarterly update on the Dutch fixed telephony market. The number of WLR customers grew by 103,000 to 283,000 on 30 September 2007. The number of Dutch consumer VoIP subscriptions grew 7.9 percent to 2.37 million. The number of DSL-based VoIP subscriptions grew at a slower rate than cable VoIP subscriptions: 6.4 percent compared with 9.5 percent. This means cable VoIP regained its position as the leading VoIP technology in the Netherlands with 1.178 million customers on 30 September 2007, compared to 1.165 million DSL VoIP customers on the same date.
Growth in the remaining quarter of 2007 is expected to be around 8 percent, or 170,000 net additions, driven by the cable network operators. This lead to a reduced forecast for the end of 2007 to around 2.5 million VoIP customers, despite KPN's decision to raise its cap on new VoIP customers. Telecompaper expects the digital telephony market to grow by around 20 percent, driven by new DSL VoIP entrants like Alice and Telfort and the cable network operators.
KPN saw its market share on the Dutch digital telephony market grow to 33.1 percent on 30 September 2007 due to the inclusion of Tiscali's VoIP customer base. The combination @home, Casema and Multikabel (Zesko) has become the second-largest VoIP provider in the Netherlands with 656,000 customers on 30 September. The third-largest VoIP provider, UPC, also saw its market share grow to 19.6 percent, ending the quarter with 467,000 customers. The quarterly growth of 43,100 net additions or 10.2 percent was the largest quarterly growth ever for UPC's telephony customer base. At the same time it was faster than the quarterly growth of its two largest competitors: KPN and Zesko.
