Although still relatively small compared to the big picture of traditional telecom voice lines, cable VoIP continues to grow at break neck speed. Telegeography reports that the largest incumbent telcos lost 2.3 million land lines last quarter, with a fair amount of them lost to VoIP. Comcast added over 500K VoIP lines last quarter, and now has over 1.8 million VoIP subscribers. Vonage still leads all VoIP carriers, with over 2.1 million lines, but that lead won’t last for long. Overall, Telegeography reports 1.3 million VoIP subscribers were added last quarter.
The real story here is cable is adding VoIP subscribers at a much faster rate than telcos are adding video subscribers. Sure, cable had somewhat of a head start, and we will need to wait a year or so to see how AT&T and Verizon perform with video, but early indications are that cable is enjoying many a telco’s lunch – at least in larger markets. The scenario is probably opposite in tier 3 and 4 markets, where IOCs tend to outperform rural cable systems.
Read this Forbes article for more discussion …
