Comments on: Cable VoIP, Hotter Than Ever

By: vijay

vijay — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:07:58 +0000

made a call to japan using jajah and was hooked! the real story was that I called vonage to terminate their service and was told to call another number. That number said there would be a 25 minute wait!

whenever companies make it hard to leave like Vonage and Netflix you know tough times are ahead..

By: birdiebob

birdiebob — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 00:00:02 +0000

How about voip service to North America for 23.95 a month! I have it.

By: Tester

Tester — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:40:50 +0000

Article on why some of the biggest technological changes take almost all people, including analysts, by surprise.

http://futurist.typepad.com/myweblog/2006/01/whydothebigg.html

By: John

John — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:45:27 +0000

A quick remark on why the cablecos might not be pushing telephony so hard…Here in Lafaytte, La we have Cox which has been offering but not pushing its telephone package. A lot of people locally feel pretty strongly that as telephony came online in their local area their internet service took a bad hit and people complained. Note that the cablecos are already using the sort of packet prioritization that the telecos want to "offer" in the current net neutrality debate--and, at least in our local loop, it has the effect of noticeably sapping the bandwidth available for the rest of the internet.

I think it's pretty clear that at least Cox is having trouble providing both good phone and good internet. The best evidence is the very low-key rollout; they are pretty clearly managing demand. It's worth noting as well that when Cox took itself private it put huge chunks of itself up for sale--and said that it was because it needed the money to pay for upgrades to the remaining parts, specifically citing VOIP services.

By: skibare

skibare — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 17:40:39 +0000

When will COMCAST figure out the Roadrunner/Cablevision PRICING method of gaining large numbers of Customers onto VOIP VOICE?????
HERE in Denver, Comcast is “”OFFERRING”" $39.95 VOIP IF you bundle with them and $45 if you go naked!!! WHAT in Gods Name is wrong with these comcast idiots that cannot SEE where this market is going?????????
COMCAST alone could CORNER QWEST out of business IF they would adopt the COX method of BUNDLING for $25 per month!!!!!! What a SHAME these Comcast idiots cannot figure out Marketing 101!
Skibare

By: RA

RA — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:49:46 +0000

Look at the growth of TW's telephony business… outstanding. Too bad their stock hasn't risen from this growth. Is this segment of the business just too small to affect the bottom line?

We can only dream of a TW w/o AOL.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:56:04 +0000

Aswath, you nailed it. i think in the end the independents have to out innovate, and unfortunately the only innovation has been in marketing. so what can you say. Mark, you are spot on about the Vonage problems. I don't know how that IPO happens, but if it does, it will be a sucker bet.

By: Mick Weinstein

Mick Weinstein — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 13:01:43 +0000

Om and readers,

Thought you’d like to know we posted the full conference call transcript for Cablevision here:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/7197

Time Warner’s is here:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/6470

By: Mark Evans

Mark Evans — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 12:29:59 +0000

More (Bad) Info For Vonage IPO

Telegeography will issue its Q4 voice-over-broadband numbers today that will show the U.S. market grew by 25% to 4.5 million subscribers. While Vonage is still the largest provider with 1.2 million customers, Time-Warner is quickly closing the gap as i…

By: Aswath

Aswath — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 07:28:29 +0000

To the independents: It is the features stupid. (http://www.mocaedu.com/mt/archives/000224.html)

By: mark evans

mark evans — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 03:22:49 +0000

om, this report can't be good news for the vonage IPO. with more information coming out about how the cablecos are establishing a bigger VoIP footprint, i find it harder to believe investors are willing to participate in the IPO. then again, i guess anything can be sold at the right price but you wonder how much vonage is willing to give away to get a deal done. its VCs must be squirming!

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:34:10 +0000

Am I the only one surprised that these subscriber numbers are so LOW. I think if the cable companies had been more agressive, they'd have 10% of their customers on phone service already. Which would be what, double the current numbers? Now Cablevision is already over 10%, but they have the special case of only having a single market to worry about. That said, if Cablevision can do 20% in their chunk of NYC, why doesn't Comcast have a million phone users in Philly yet or TW in their chunk of NYC?

By: Chris Schagen

Chris Schagen — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:12:43 +0000

I wonder if the wireline sub numbers at the bells are deteriorating accordingly. Anybody got dirt on that?