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VoIP Succeeds Where Circuits Failed |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Wednesday, 25 April 2007 |
US Cable C companies
would love a bigger share of the telecommunications pie and have long
considered a telephony service as a core part of their offering. The
only trouble was that growth lacked a little lustre.
Until VoIP
came along, that is. With the introduction of Voice-over-Internet
Protocol (VoIP) technology cable companies have become the darlings of
the telco world. This is true particularly in the United States, but
also in a few countries in Asia, according to market research firm
In-Stat.
Since the introduction of VoIP services the US cable
companies have doubled their telephony subscriber base and it looks
like it could turn into a healthy revenue source for them.
"In a growing number of markets around the world, cable TV
operators consider telephony service to be an integral part of their
telecommunications service bundle," says Mike Paxton, In-Stat analyst.
Generally less expensive to provision than more traditional
circuit-switched telephony, the increasing availability of VoIP
services in North America was directly responsible for an almost
two-fold increase in the number of North American subscribers during
2006, the high-tech market research firm says.
"This has led to increasing service availability in North America, Europe, and in a few countries in Asia, notes Paxton."
In
fact, worldwide cable telephony subscribers increased to over 22
million in 2006, up sharply from 15.8 million in 2005 and service
revenues are also growing at a rapid pace and are projected to reach
US$10.4 billion in 2007, up from US$7.9 billion in 2006.
North America will account for two-thirds of the worldwide service revenues in 2007.
It is all thanks to VoIP and in the US at least the number of
VoIP-based cable telephony subscribers (6.6 million) exceeds the number
of circuit-switched cable telephony subscribers (2.8 million).
Cable
telephony's growth spurt in the US market has been a relatively recent
phenomenon. According to a US consumer survey, forty-two percent of
all US cable telephony subscribers signed up for the service during the
past 12 months, says In-Stat.
www.in-stat.com
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