Cable :: VoIP Biz-News.com

Number of results 21 for Cable

28/03/2012 - S&P warns cable that VoIP revenue could follow telco landline biz

Cable operators, which for years have been piling up revenue from VoIP phone service while their telco competitors have watched their bottom line from landlines erode, may finally be in line to share the pain.

Standard & Poor's, in a recent report, said economic pressure, rising prices and market saturation finally may be prompting consumers to hang up their landlines with cable, too.

The culprit may not be the VoIP service, but the high-cost of pay-TV and the rising bill that has even the more stalwart consumers flinching. According to S&P 80 percent of U.S. households have a pay-TV service and shell out about $135 a month for it. Consumers may be looking to unbundle services to keep their entertainment intact.

S&P said it expects growth in the cable VoIP sector to hit a wall and see considerable fall off in months to come, possibly reflecting the decade-long erosion of revenue that telcos have seen in their landline business. The losses, S&P said, will be driven by newer technology options--everything from low-cost VoIP and Skype to services like, you guessed it, wireless.

While cable operators have continued to add VoIP lines in recent quarters, the growth is slowing. The likelihood that cable's residential boom time has come to an end as consumers look more to smartphones and other VoIP options. The CDC in a 2010 study said nearly 30 percent of U.S. homes now have only wireless phones.

The hope for cable operators? Much like legacy telcos, the business market may continue to hold promise.

For more:
- see this Wall Street Journal article
- see this TMC.net article

09/01/2012 - CES 2012: In-depth coverage

This year's Consumer Electronics Show is in full swing this week, and Fierce's wireline group is covering the action around our segment of the telecom industry, particularly in OTT (over the top) video, online video and cable device markets. Check back frequently for news and articles on CES from FierceCable, FierceIPTV, and FierceOnlineVideo, as well as FierceTelecom and FierceEnterpriseCommunications. Special Report

21/11/2011 - Summing up SCTE 2011 Cable-Tec Expo 2011

FierceCable was on site at the SCTE 2011 Cable-Tec Expo 2011 in Atlanta, covering keynotes and panels. Take a look at the pre-show and on-site article. Special Report

03/11/2011 - Cablevision launches Optimum Voice Click-to-Call service

Cablevision (NYSE: CVC), which serves much of the metropolitan New York area, including New Jersey and Connecticut, has rolled out a click-to-call service that allows users to make phone calls to landline or mobile phones in the U.S. by clicking on phone numbers on web pages.

To use Optimum Voice Click-to-Call, a customer clicks on any highlighted phone number when browsing the Web to initiate a phone call. The desired call back number or device will ring and, upon answering, the customer is automatically connected with the dialed number. For the call recipient, the call appears to be coming from the customer's Optimum Voice home number.

The service can also be used internationally to call anywhere in the United States for free, or to any international destination using an Optimum Voice International calling plan, from any Internet connection using a Google Talk ID.

"Optimum Voice has always been more than a static ‘landline' phone service," Joseph Varello, Cablevision's vice president of digital voice product management, said. "Click-to-Call represents the ongoing evolution of our voice services outside the home, providing a seamless and simple way for our customers to connect with the people and places they want to reach with the click of the mouse."

Users will need to download and install the Optimum Voice Plug-in for Internet Explorer or Firefox to use the service.

For more:
- see this release

29/07/2010 - Comcast sees soft market, but good VoIP growth

Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) has announced some pretty mixed news lately--as reported in our sister publication FierceCable, it made $884 million in net profit for Q2 which is actually down over 8 percent from last year. The company says it sees the consumer market as a little soft.

But the interesting thing to us here at FierceVoIP is their VoIP numbers. Those actually are a nice little shining spot on the report.

Comcast has added 230,000 VoIP customers for the quater, which is actually down from adding 233,000 last year. Sure, it's not exponential growth, but its still growth. The company saw Q2 end with 47.7 million total voice, Internet and television customers and 8.1 million total voice customers. Those numbers make Comcast the U.S.'s third largest residential phone company.

For more:
- see this article
- see this from FierceCable

26/07/2010 - IBBS to Acquire SinglePipe

IBBS, a provider of managed communications services for cable companies, has announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire SinglePipe, a provider of voice over IP solutions for cable. Combined under the IBBS brand, the company is said to offer “fully integrated voice and data solutions for cable companies that seek to expand their residential and commercial service offerings.”

07/06/2010 - Report: Cable companies provide lots of VoIP service

Research and Markets has released a new report discussing the growth of the VoIP industry with some interesting statistics.

One thing the release teasing the report highlights is that U.S. cable companies have stepped up their game in the VoIP sector. According to Research and Markets, U.S. cable companies provide VoIP telephone service to over 20 million subscribers.

In addition the report points out software-based VoIP like Skype is on the rise, and the entrance of Microsoft, Apple, Google and Yahoo! into the mobile VoIP fear shows that there is some promise for that sector as well. Once networks get the necessary 3G and 4G upgrades, Research and Markets sees mobile VoIP going mainstream.

For more:
- read the release

27/05/2010 - Trending up or trending down at Cable Show 2010

Our fearless FierceCable leader Jim Barthold gives us an inside look at the Cable Show to reveal the ups and downs of telecom, cable and IP communications on the show floor. Check out his analysis of the event and keep in mind that even if we aren't mentioned, VoIP and Video calling are probably going to be involved in the Whole-home network dream. Read more >>

22/04/2010 - CableLabs developing SIP trunking standards for business voice

Cable companies offer a number of residential VoIP services, but to land large business accounts they need more advanced technology. While some cable companies are offering their residential-style VoIP services to small businesses, most are looking forward to the day when SIP Trunking will allow them to really handle the load most big businesses require. Enter CableLabs. They are working on a SIP Trunking extension to the PacketCable 2.0 to allow MSOs to interoperate with PBXs and land bigger business customers.

CableLabs' SIP Enterprise Connect, being developed in conjunction with SIP Forum and the Internet Engineering Task Force, will eventually be published as a PacketCable 2.0 extension. The extension will be aimed at creating an industry-wide spec for interconnecting IP-PBXs and MSOs dictating how softswitches, PBX gear, telephony application servers, session border controllers, and gateway devices will all work together under the standard.

Fore more:
- read the Light Reading article

11/02/2010 - Sprint's Q4 results show IP cost savings

Sprint Nextel revealed its Q4 earnings and 2009 overall earnings yesterday and while wireless as usual got lots of attention there were a few mentions that would interest our side of the fence. IP services were one of the bright spots in Sprint's otherwise dark news on the wireline front.

While wireline revenues of $1.3 billion for the quarter represented a 13 percent decline year-over-year and were 6 percent lower sequentially, Internet revenues grew almost 7 percent in 2009. Sprint chalked this up to strong enterprise demand for Global MPLS services and a small increase in the number of cable subscribers using Sprint's VoIP services. It is interesting to note that while migrations to IP services slowed in 2009, Internet revenue within wireline revenue increased from 34 percent in 2008 to 41 percent in 2009.

Sprint also noted that year-over-year, total operating expenses for their wireline operation improved 9 percent because of cost savings associated with IP becoming a larger percent of the wireline base.

For more:
- read the release
- check out FierceTelecom's take

08/09/2009 - IT EXPO West - XCast Labs expands internationally, touts SIP trunking

XCast Labs CEO Cliff Rees said in an interview that the company, which provides digital voice and video services to small network operators, is profitable and looking to expand internationally. Rees said he saw a large opportunity in provisioning services in Latin America and South America especially.

He also said the company was having success with small cable companies, which can't afford large cap ex projects but want to provide value-added services to their customer base. He noted that he is very bullish on SIP trunking and said the company would be hiring more engineers to help provision XCast services for additional PBXs.

02/06/2009 - Sipgate launches free VoIP service in US

Sipgate, which has operated a successful VoIP business in Europe since 2004, launched a new free VoIP calling play in the U.S. that aims to disrupt the landline telephony business. The service, called sipgate one, assigns users a free telephone number that allows them to receive calls from VoIP phones or softphones for free. It also lets users make free calls to other sipgate users, and only charges $1.9 cents per minute for calls made or received from wireline or mobile phones, which it says is less than Skype's rate.

The offering includes features such as click-to-dial, flexible call routing, and an online voicemail interface.

"There is simply no barrier to people disconnecting their old phone lines anymore," sipgate CEO Thilo Salmon said. "Phone and cable companies have long been pushing voice plans in the region of $25 to $40 per month--which end up being as much as $60 or more with extra charges--and that's just ridiculous. Even with calls to other landlines and mobile phones, most users will spend less than $5 a month using sipgate one."

Sipgate also announced plans to roll out a multi-user edition of the service, which will target small businesses also seeking to drop expensive landline offerings.

For more:
- see the press release here

06/04/2009 - Four events, four points to think about

Last week was hectic, made all the more crazy by three major events -- CTIA, The Cable Show, VoiceCon - happening in parallel. When the smoke clears, one piece from each show sticks inside of my head, as does the potential of MetaSwitch Form this week.

At CTIA, Skype for iPhone made its debut, followed by regulatory fireworks across two continents. I can't help but wonder if Skype expected to get the reaction it did from Deutsche Telekom in Europe. Be interesting to see what the EU does. In the U.S., the focus on broadband builds and just getting a new FCC Chairman seated is likely to prevent swift action on Free Press's petition for the agency to review the AT&T implementation of Skype for iPhone.

Over at The Cable Show, Sprint rolled out enhanced VoIP services that are likely to put the squeeze further on legacy landline offerings. The announcement also highlights the key relationship(s) Sprint has with the cable companies, one that a lot of people have ignored. Sprint needs the cable companies and vice versa when it comes to cellular networks.

Microsoft's appearance at VoiceCon puzzled me. VP Gurdeep Pall gives a good keynote speech, but why did the company pull its booth on the exhibit floor? Maybe the company wasn't ready to give good answers at this time on implementing E911 and survivability when a business ditches its legacy PBX and goes with an all-OCS 2007 solution. If the mid-2010 release of OCS "Wave 16" to provide those answers is delayed a la Vista, well, that could cause some issues, no?

This week promises some interesting news from the MetaSwitch Forum in Las Vegas. I'll be tweeting from the user group event starting on Tuesday around 11:30 a.m. EST or so and providing updates as I talk with MetaSwitch executives and the company's partners. In a world of "Be Big, Be Bought, or Be Dead," MetaSwitch is going for the first option and it is going to be interesting to see how it continues to grow.

- Doug

02/04/2009 - Sprint enhances VoIP services for cable companies

Sprint announced Wednesday an integrated and enhanced VoIP services portfolio for cable companies. The new set of services is likely to put additional pressure on telco legacy landline offerings.

Sprint's new services include Caller ID to the TV and PC, and new voicemail features, including a SMS text alert sent to a mobile phone and voicemail to email. Caller ID to TV and PC can be customized by adding pictures, nicknames, fonts and colors. The SMS text alert for home voicemail includes the telephone number of the calling party.

Sprint provides wholesale cable VoIP services to 14 leading cable companies and supports more than 4.5 million cable VoIP/digital phone subscribers - covering more than 31 million cable households-passed.

As cable players move into wireless services, Sprint and its Clearwire spinoff and VoIP all have key roles to play. For cable players organically building their own wireless capabilities, such as Cox, Sprint stands ready to provide CDMA roaming (and this reporter strongly suspects LTE roaming down the road). Clearwire is already testing mobile WiMax phones. VoIP will be the "glue" to handle handoffs between cable and WiMax calls.

For more:
- Sprint talks about new cable VoIP services. Release.

19/03/2009 - Cox Business to roll out SIP trunking later this year

Aiming squarely at the 20-99 person SMB, Cox Business will be rolling out SIP trunking later this year. It's one of many products the company intends to roll out once it has its Voice Manager hosted IP PBX service fully established.

Speaking to Fierce last week, Cox Business Vice President Phil Meeks sees plenty of opportunities as businesses move off of legacy data communications services and onto Ethernet. Establishing an IP pipe means being able to provide a variety of services from simple voice to more advanced services, with hosted IP PBX and follow-on software-as-a-service (Saas) offerings bringing in more dollars on top of customer transport.

"The [small and medium-sized] businesses we're targeting typically don't have IT staff, even people in the tech business," said Meeks. "Technology is changing so quickly they want to understand what technology does for their business, not what the technology is... we're marketing to the financial guy, not to the IT guy or Manager."

Currently, the VoiceManager hosted service is in six of Cox's 18 markets, with the rest scheduled to be turned on by the end of 2009. SIP trunking should launch in Q4 of this year.

A future addition to the product set will be wireless, first with CDMA technology and later moving to LTE. "We're viewing wireless not only as a product in a bundle, but a way to extend mobility to everything," Meeks said, with voice, video and data all playing a role in an integrated fashion.

03/02/2009 - Analyst: Magicjack causing landline loss

Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffatt has taken a closer look at MagicJack's reported customer win rate, and he thinks the company might be taking more landlines from telcos than most industry observers realize. MagicJack owner Dan Borislaw told an audience at CES that the company has moved more than 2 million units in the past 11 months ago and is now selling the device at a clip of 250,000 units a month. MagicJack launched in fall 2007, offering voice services for a flat $19.99 per year.

Moffat asserts that, if Borislaw's figures are accurate, then MagicJack sales could amount to up to 28 percent of landlines lost by telcos last year. Up until now, most substitution was assumed to be from landline to wireless devices, but the MagicJack figures show that VoIP calling devices are a factor as well.

Moffat also posited that many consumers may not have connected their MagicJack device after purchase, or kept their landline to use in addition to a MagicJack plan. "It's hard to imagine that more than a quarter of all access line losses are going to one company and a late-night direct marketer at that," Moffat told Telephony.

He also made it clear that telcos are more concerned about the losses themselves, rather than whether a wireless or VoIP device is to blame. But he said MagicJack's success can be attributed to excellent marketing, as it has avoided the pitfalls that befell many me-too VoIP players by making VoIP "a thing." By selling a tangible device that enabled VoIP calls, Moffatt thinks Borislaw and MagicJack were able to succeed, while other consumer VoIP players like Vonage got creamed by "digital voice" offerings from cable companies.

For more:
- see the Telephony article here

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28/01/2009 - Cox traffic management good for VoIP?

Network libertarians are up in arms again over network management processes. Cable provider Cox Communications has announced it will trial technology to ensure automatically that all "time-sensitive Internet traffic" moves without delay, including voice calls and streaming video. Less time-sensitive traffic, such as file uploads, P2P, and Usenet newsgroups (People still read Usenet?) "may be momentarily delayed," says Cox's Congestion Management FAQ. But even that's too much for some people.

Trials of the new technology will take place in February on Cox's network segments in Kansas and Arkansas. When the network is "congested" - a term undefined by the FAQ - the new technology steps in to slow down what Cox considers non-critical traffic.

Cox goes on to note that the company has taken into account guidance provided by the Federal Communications Commission, and that it has listened to "best practices" discussions in industry and public forums. The company's stated goal - not to be confused with the nefarious knee-jerk flaming that seems to be coming out of all corners - is to ensure that all time-sensitive Internet traffic moves without delay.

Could this technology be good for vanilla VoIP calls and Skype? By default, anything not explicitly defined as non-time sensitive - i.e. bulk transfers of data such as FTP, P2P, software updates, and Usenet - is treated as sensitive, so any sort of voice or video traffic should be unhindered. On the other hand, VoIP and video packets won't get priority over web pages and streaming, so there's no guarantee that they will perform better either.

If the initial trials are successful, Cox plans to roll out the technology to other places on its network.

For more:
- Review Cox's network management statement for yourself.
- Skeptics Eye Cox's New Network Management

16/01/2009 - Cisco Preparing 320Mbps Cable Modem With VoIP

Cisco is developing a 320Mbps cable modem - the DPC3212.
It will be one of the first to use the DOCSIS 3.0 standard to pass 300Mbps.
Equipped with a new Broadcom chip, it joins eight - rather than four - cable channels together to reach the maximum speed.

22/12/2008 - 2008 Year in Review: Cable companies win, phone companies lose

Cable companies have plundered phone companies' landline sales with lower prices and triple-play bundles, a trick landline providers hope to ultimately turn back around using TV - but we digress.

Landline sales continue to decrease quarter after quarter, and the only thing more embarrassing than the continued losses is the failure of traditional landline powers to 'fess up to the reality of the situation and spell out how they're going to do more than simply flog the dead horse of "stemming losses" and "retaining existing customers."

Comcast led off 2008, with the cable company staking its claim to the title of fourth-largest phone service provider in the U.S. with 4.1 million phone customers (guess they weren't factoring cellular companies into the mix). At the end of the third quarter, Comcast had reached 6.1 million homes with a take rate of around 13 percent - so there's still room to grow. Given monthly average revenue of around $39 a subscriber and lip-smacking income of $1.9 billion year-to-date, there's a lot to like.

Looking at other the other top cablecos, Time Warner logged 3.6 million residential phone subscribers (3Q08), Cablevision logged 1.8 million (3Q08), and Charter got 1.2 million (3Q08). Cox may have more than 2.5 million subscribers, but they haven't published updated numbers in a while (since around May 2008, it appears), and it has a mix of VoIP and non-VoIP technologies across its service areas.

Meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon continue to bleed landline losses, both to cable VoIP and their own wireless divisions. Verizon lost 1.19 million landline subscribers just in 3Q08. Tighter consumer budgets also will likely accelerate landline losses to cable triple play offerings.

Comcast claims to be a telco major - FierceVoIP
Converged packages will lead to Vonage's doom
Cable Raids Independent VoIP Companies, Telcos
Are Telcos getting to a VoIP tipping point?
SPOTLIGHT: Time Warner Cable 3Q VoIP count to 3.6M - FierceVoIP
Verizon profit surges 31 percent
SPOTLIGHT: Comcast outscores telcos in broadband subs

22/12/2008 - 2008 Year in Review: Top 5 VoIP stories

If there was any one big surprise looking back at the events of 2008, it was Skype's continually forceful presence in the spotlight. Amazing how an American-owned company with a corporate HQ in Luxembourg manages that. I suspect a lot of people expected Skype to be sold off to Google by now, especially with that multi-billion dollar write-off. Sometimes I wonder if they got the memo that they were bought by eBay.

Cable companies continue to clean up on VoIP through triple-play offerings, but I suspect there are some contributing factors involved beyond the one-bill/best bundle price attraction that we don't mention here - like customer service.

The "Me-Too" VoIP mob continues to shrink, a prediction that purple pundit Jeff Pulver made a long time ago when he said that cheap minutes were not a sustainable business strategy. Same thing when it came to the mobile VoIP plays. Might explain why Jeff split VoIP and now is following his social media muse.

Consolidation of VoIP companies continues apace, driven by tight credit in most instances. About the only factor preventing more details is the same tight credit - buyers know they can get good deals, but unless they have cash on hand or a publicly traded stock, it won't happen. Meanwhile, sellers know they won't get a premium price for their companies, so unless they have to sell (i.e. run out of cash), they know they should stay firm. So long as they are cash-flow neutral, and/or have some cushion in the bank, it pays to wait out the storm.

Finally, hosted UC solutions are all the rage, a natural evolution from enterprise-centric stand-alone offerings. Carriers are happy to sell as much hosted as they can, and they don't care what the brand name is.

- Doug

18/12/2008 - Widening the Voice

By Carl Ford

Here is an interesting question. If you wanted to get High Definition Voice out in the marketplace, where would you start?
My readers are probably too young to remember Candice Bergen and the Sprint Pin drop commercials, or the AT&T retaliation of Whitney Houston pumping up the base if not the volume.

Wireless calls have not been a better experience with voice. In fact, I would say it's made any sound troubles acceptable.
I remember the first time I heard the Global IP Sound ILBC codec (not a wideband codec but better voice quality) and thought to myself, "This is great! Who is going to deploy it?" The answer turned out to be Skype, at least until they rolled their own wideband solution.

In recent years the number of wideband codecs available has increased, and companies like Microsoft and Polycom have been advocates. But how does one start deploying?

Skype's self-contained strategy was a great starting point, and we get to hear the issues of being off-net and condensing the voice to fit the PSTN. I'm not sure I would advocate every network creating their own Skype-like service. While Peer-to-Peer friends would celebrate, more factional Internet apps seem to make Metcalfe's law moot.

Others would rather be advocates of Web 2.0 solutions that ignore the PSTN. While this is attractive, it loses something when facing the realities of reaching people anytime, anyplace and anywhere. Logically, wouldn't that suggest wireless is the place to deploy wideband codecs?

AudioCodes advocates building IP Islands and working with all wideband players in their High Definition strategy. It sees that Microsoft's RTA is going to be in the Enterprise, with G.722 in DECT phones sold by cable operators and AMR-WB the logical deployment by wireless operators. It also supports the Skype codecs.

All well and good, but the synergy comes in gathering the islands together, and here, the subject of federation comes in and the question is, who is going to do it? I can make a case for a bunch of federating strategies, but traditionally the vision of federation breaks down and the companies become extended walled gardens.

In order for a federation to really work, it needs to be something less than a service and more of an addressing scheme. A registry for like to find like and perhaps point to a transcoding solution along the way. I would love to say that I know of such an entity, but for today, solutions are on the drawing board, but not implemented, to my knowledge.

Another more likely example works like peer-to-peer among the islands, but I have not seen this strategy in the field. However, the quality is good enough that people may choose it for themselves and the network upgrades over time, just because of consumer demand.

Brick by brick by the castle is built.