A new report estimates that worldwide IPTV revenues will exceed $42.6 billion by 2014. Global Industry Analysts, a publisher of off-the-shelf market research, made the prediction.

According to TMCnet, if this estimate proves to be accurate, it would reflect an increase of 60.2 percent over the next decade, from 2004 to 2014. The capital expenditure on IPTV deployments is expected to increase by more than 14 times by the end of 2010.

Currently, the United States and Europe are generating more service revenues than the Asia-Pacific region. This is a result of higher average revenue per user in these regions. But by 2014, the number of worldwide users is expected to exceed 248 million.

IPTV is an application that allows triple-play services. The emerging trend is for telecom and media companies to band together to combine information, communication and entertainment.

Though IPTV technology is yet to take off commercially, TMCnet said it is expected to become “wildly successful” and that there are indications of fast growth in the infrastructure.

The European market is seeing a significant upward trend in growth, with the Asian and North American markets are not far behind. The U.S. is expected to be the hardest market to penetrate, because of high pay-TV penetration.

General awareness of IPTV is considered to be low, but there is a rise in demand, mainly among young adults. Cost is the major barrier for consumers to adopt IPTV in all the countries across the globe.

Major IPTV carriers/operators in the market include AT&T, Belgacom, Bell Canada Enterprise, British Telecom, China Telecom, Comcast, Deutsche Telekom AG, FastWeb TV, France Telecom SA, PCCW, Qwest Communications International, Telecom Italia SpA, and Verizon Communications.

Key IPTV vendors/system providers include Alcatel-Lucent SA, Cisco Systems, ECI Telecom, Entone, Envivio, Microsoft, Motorola, NEC, Orca Interactive, Sprint Nextel, Widevine Technologies and Viaccess S.A.