08 May 2007

It turns out that VoIP is living up to its hypeand is proving to be a deus ex machina for US cable operators. Newresearch from Instat shows the number of Voice-over-Internet Protocolbased cable telephony subscribers in the US now exceeds thecircuit-switched number by nearly 4 million. Furthermore, theincreasing availability of VoIP services in North America is directlyresponsible for a nearly two-fold increase in the uptake of voiceservices provided by the cablecos

And confirmation of the trend is evident in the recent quarterlyreports from the Top 5 US cable operators. For example, Comcastreportedly added 571,000 new so-called digital voice customers,(thats Comcasts coy euphemism for VoIP) during the quarter. Thatstwo and a half times more than the 232,000 customers added in the sameperiod in 2006.