The United States is not among the ten countries with the most IPTV subscribers in the world, new data from Dittberner revealed.

France tops the list, with 896,000 IPTV subscribers--a lead Dittberner attributed to intense competition among DSL providers there. Next are, in order, Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Morocco, Russia, the United Kingdom and Sweden, which has just 45,000 subscribers.

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, and the recent removal of regulatory restrictions in Japan will probably drive IPTV growth there. But the U.S., where AT&T’s trial was the most significant IPTV initiative in 2006, will probably lag the rest of the world for some time, researchers said.

“The IPTV market in the USA will probably be dominated by a scattering of small, local service providers who have community roots and no cable TV competition,” James Heath, Dittberner’s broadband market analyst, said in a written statement.

Hong Kong service provider PCCW boasts the world’s largest IPTV subscriber base, with 638,000 subscribers in the third quarter. France Telecom, in second place, had 421,000. But with a 37% jump in the quarter, France Telecom’s base is growing the fastest. By comparison, the total number of IPTV subscribers in the world grew only 19% in the quarter.

The only countries in the top ten with double-digit IPTV penetration are Hong Kong, with nearly 60% (aided by a densely packed populous, which allows short loop lengths), and Morocco, with 21%.