When I recently put Italy's Fastweb in our list of Top 10 Service Providers on the Cutting Edge, noting its success with IPTV, some of the reader feedback suggested companies like France's Iliad and France Telecom should have made the list as well. It's hard to argue against them, and when you consider how healthy the IPTV market in Europe is, there are a number of companies from the region that could have been included.
It's no surprise then, to hear that of the 8.2 million or so IPTV customers around the world, about 5 million are in Europe, according to recent research from Point Topic and the DSl Forum. Quarterly earnings reports from several European telcos last week also demonstrated how fast IPTV is growing in Europe. For instance, France Telecom, now has 975,000 IPTV customers.
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Light Reading provides the IPTV tally