According to a recent report from Infonetics Research, revenue from VoIP worldwide reached $20.7 billion in the last six months alone.

That's billion, with a b...

"Residential VoIP services remain healthy, comprising the majority of worldwide VoIP services revenue, and subscribers are up 14% from the end of 2008," says Infonetics analyst Diane Meyers. "On the business VoIP side, while managed IP PBX revenue growth has slowed in line with IP PBX shipments, we are expecting IP Centrex and hosted UC service revenue to grow 26% year-over-year in 2009."

"I fondly remember the early part of this decade when folks dismissed VoIP as little more than an idle curiosity," writes GigaOM's Om Malik. "There was a lot of continued belief in PSTN voice services and the money they brought in for the phone companies. But even as some of the early proponents fell victim to hard times, VoIP-based telephony kept growing, thanks to U.S. cable companies and a new generation of low-cost PBXs that used Internet technologies."

More here from ZDNet ... more here from Broadband Reports ... and the press release is here.