European IPTV subscriptions will double from 2.9 million last year to 5.6 million in 2007, according to research from Screen Digest. Largely as a result of mergers and acquisitions, many telcos now offer television services over fixed-line broadband to TV set-top boxes. Although Screen Digest acknowledges such offerings tend to be “inferior to cable and satellite,” it predicts IPTV revenue to grow from EUR470 million ($628 million) to over EUR1 billion ($1.3 billion), with the UK contributing the fastest growth – a 250 percent increase (from 80,000 subscribers to 300,000) off the back of BT’s new Vision IPTV service and similar upcoming launches from Orange and Tiscali. These predictions have not yet borne out, however – research by Morgan Stanley last week found that even mighty BT’s offering had only attracted 5,000 customers in its first four months, 40 percent of whom are staff of the telco.