Several users have written in to note that Vonage is jacking up several fees for their VoIP customers. An e-mail sent to users informs them that the company's monthly "Emergency 911 and Information Services Fee" has been increased from $1.49 to $1.99. With the hike they're apparently including unlimited 411 calls, for all four of you who still use 411 instead of Google when at home looking for information.

The company also raised their "Regulatory, Compliance and Intellectual Property Fee" from $1.49 to $1.99. Like all "regulatory recovery" fees, this fee is pure nonsense: a vague, non-government mandated fee that allows carriers to raise prices with below the line fees that don't show up in the advertised price. By giving it a vaguely governmental-sounding name, carriers can subsequently infer that Uncle Sam is to blame for higher prices -- not the carrier.

Vonage has unveiled their first quarter earnings which indicate the independent VoIP operator technically posted a profit for the first time ever. Vonage posted a net income of $5 million, up from a loss of $4 million one year ago. However, Vonage notes their earnings were boosted by a one time "$13 million mark-to-market adjustment relating to the derivative liability in the Company's convertible debt," without which the operator would have posted a net loss of $8 million. The Company lost 6,000 net subscriber lines, ending Q1 with 2.6 million lines in service. The killer for Vonage has always been customer defections or "churn," which jumped to 3.1% despite churn reduction being a company priority.

Sure, we've given Comcast some grief over the years, but one thing that can't be denied is the speed at which the company absolutely dominated of the VoIP (sorry, Digital Voice) market. Today Comcast reached out to us to note that they're now the third largest residential phone company in the United States, only behind AT&T and Verizon.

We were recently the first to report that the FCC was concerned that Comcast's new de-prioritization system would degrade competing VoIP traffic, the agency writing a letter asking Comcast to explain how this wasn't anti-competitive, and why they hadn't previously mentioned the system's impact on VoIP. The new, protocol agnostic system was deployed late last year, after our users discovered Comcast was forging TCP packets in order to slow P2P traffic for all users -- a practice that resulted in an FCC investigation, and a rather toothless "sanction."

Comcast's new system temporarily de-prioritizes the traffic for customers who meet two criteria: they're on a congested node, and they have been using 70% or more of their assigned upstream or downstream throughput for more than fifteen minutes.

Yesterday we reported that the FCC was suddenly concerned about how Comcast's new network management system treats independent VoIP operators. As previously discussed, the new system temporarily de-prioritizes the traffic for customers who meet two criteria: they're on a congested node, and they have been using 70% or more of their assigned upstream or downstream throughput for more than fifteen minutes.

While a lot was made of the FCC's investigation and Comcast's shift to a "protocol agnostic" network management system, the FCC order didn't actually punish Comcast, came with no fine, offered no new guidelines, didn't request they do anything they didn't plan to do voluntarily, and might not even be enforceable in court. Still, Comcast has voluntarily changed from a system that throttled upstream P2P traffic for all users, to a new 250GB monthly cap and a new "protocol agnostic" de-prioritization system -- which we first profiled back in September.

The new system de-prioritizes a user's connection if a particular CMTS port is congested, and if that user has been identified as a primary reason why.

Comcast has been signing up a ridiculous number of VoIP customers each quarter (half a million in Q3), and has very quickly become the nation's fourth largest phone carrier. Not only are they the biggest VoIP provider, they offer the highest quality calls, according to a new study (pdf) by Keynote Competitive Research.