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Cable: 11,000 New VoIP Customers Per Day
A million new VoIP customers added in 2Q
Already dominating 57% of the VoIP market, North American cable operators signed up more than 1 million IP phone customers for the first time during the spring, according to the latest figures compiled by Cable Digital News. The second-quarter totals mean that North American cable operators are now signing up an average of about 11,000 new customers a day, according to the report.
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taar
join:2000-11-21

taar

Member

Vonage........

.....the fat lady is clearing her throat.......

ztmike
Mark for moderation
Premium Member
join:2001-08-02
La Porte, IN

ztmike

Premium Member

Vonage?

I seriously thought Vonage would be #1 ...im guessing the cable ops. have a discount?

mph300
Two Thirds The Way There
join:2000-11-09

mph300

Member

Re: Vonage?

said by ztmike:

I seriously thought Vonage would be #1 ...im guessing the cable ops. have a discount?
yes, most cable companies offer a substantial discount for bundling all of their products.

mike
deleteme51
join:2002-04-22
Chicago, IL

deleteme51

Member

Re: Vonage?

What discount? Comcast digital voice is $33/mo when Vonage is only $25, plus with Vonage I can take the ATA adapter with me on trips and plug it in anywhere there's an Internet connection. With the embeded POTS jacks in the cable modem I can't.

Some phone via cable solutions are not really VoIP, they might be down the line but not all the way to to CPE, so who knows if this number is really measuring VoIP.

The reason people like phone through their cable is either cause they "can't be bothered" to pay two different bills, or they "can't be intelligent" enough to plug something in themselves (for those who don't know: most phone via cable includes installation of hard-wiring to your home phone jacks, whereas Vonage/Sunrocket requires you to first disconnect the conventional Telco on the box outside your house, and then plug the Vonage/Sunrocket adapter into any existing phone jack in your home)

hamburglar
join:2002-04-29
united state

1 edit

hamburglar

Member

Re: Vonage?

Or it's because Vonage sucks. 8+ months to transfer my number and plenty of other intermittent problems (not bandwidth related) made me switch to my cable provider's phone service. I get Digital Cable with HD-DVR, 4/500 Internet and Full Unlimited phone service with battery backup for under $110/month.

Edit: Also, with two young children in the house, I need E911 that's going to work. Unlike Vonage's "well, it may work in your area, but we're not 100% sure"
DonLibes

join:2003-01-19

DonLibes

Re: Vonage?

Reliability with the cable company may not be reliable either. At the most recent quarterly review of our local cable franchise, 80 customers had had problems so severe that they contacted the county, some with outages of up to 2 to 3 weeks.

»libes.com/don/blog/2006/ ··· nce.html
PhilAIV
join:2002-02-16
Carrollton, GA

PhilAIV to deleteme51

Member

to deleteme51
With comcast, if the subscriber has the internet and tv already, in most areas it would only be $15 more to get their phone service.

voipisntgreat
@comcast.net

voipisntgreat

Anon

Re: Vonage?

No, the best you can hope for in most areas with BOTH TV and Internet (at least with Comcast) is the "Triple Play" bundle that offers each service for $33/month. After the twelve month period, however, the price for their "Digital Voice" VoIP service goes up to $40/month.

joe76
@charter.com

joe76 to deleteme51

Anon

to deleteme51
yes but you don't have 911 service with Vonage
Techie714
join:2005-08-02
Anaheim, CA

1 edit

Techie714

Member

Why?

Why has Vonage not succeeded? Is it because consumers are ignorant & lazy & have no idea what VOIP is and are misinformed? Is it a quality of service issue? Is it marketing?
BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Wakefield, MA

BosstonesOwn

Member

Re: Why?

It's marketing. People see this new "digital voice" package and scream wow cheaper then (insert telco here) and go and plunk it down. Little do they realize they are buying voip.

I think they should have to tell the customer it is a voip service, they don't do this on any commercials I have heard about.

Poorly educated consumers is another portion of it. But when others offer voip its a huge issue when power dies or when the numbers are routed incorrectly. Yet they seem to be immune from this. Go figure! That is America at its finest.
acs12798
join:2006-03-13

1 edit

1 recommendation

acs12798

Member

Re: Why?

There are other reasons people get cable providor VOIP. My cable provider(cablevision), for example, is really only 15 dollar a month for many people, VOIP is 35 bucks, but if you have digital cable, internet, and VOIP from them, you get 20 dollar off. AKA, if you have digital cable and internet voip is 15 bucks.

Other advantages, cablevision comes out to you house and install it. The adapter is built into the modem.For many people the install is a big deal, especially they hook it into you regular phones for you, and disconnect you from the telephone line.

Also, quality could be better for a few reason. Usuaully the cable companies seperately provision the internet for there phone service, providing QoS on their voip. Also unlike vonage, it never really goes out onto the open internet, just to the cable companies office, which avoids many extra connection that would be made connecting to a service such a vonage.

Vchat20
Landing is the REAL challenge
Premium Member
join:2003-09-16
Columbus, OH

Vchat20

Premium Member

Re: Why?

Indeed. I am a very informed customer and do know the alternative VoIP services available. Still went with Time Warner's Digital Phone package because of a couple of main points:

1) TWC supports the service and can come out to your house if something goes wrong.
2) Generally POTS-like quality for most cable systems.
3) Voice is kept completely separate from internet connectivity despite it being on the same modem and going over the same cable line. I can max my upload and download and calls still come in loud and clear without any hiccups.

These really outweigh the cons for me which really only tend to be concerning the price.

And yes, I have heard everything about 'getting a proper QOS router' and all that other junk. I know the option is available. I still prefer DP overall. Beats the 'addon' VoIP services imo.
BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Wakefield, MA

BosstonesOwn

Member

Re: Why?

and yall aren't the averge consumer. Lets face it this site is techies and technophile wannabes , so to say your the "average" consumer is not the truth

Vchat20
Landing is the REAL challenge
Premium Member
join:2003-09-16
Columbus, OH

Vchat20

Premium Member

Re: Why?

I find that doesnt really fit the argument too well. The way its usually been seen is the 'average consumer' goes for the cableco phone offerings while the 'technophiles' here tend to go for the addon VoIP services like Vonage for example. That is unless im missing another part of your argument here.
bogey7806
join:2004-03-19
Here

bogey7806 to BosstonesOwn

Member

to BosstonesOwn
It really is amazing that they sell "digital telephone" service. Technically any RBOC could make the same claim. IT's digital at one point. Little difference from the demarc to the node.

Vchat20
Landing is the REAL challenge
Premium Member
join:2003-09-16
Columbus, OH

Vchat20

Premium Member

Re: Why?

Very true. But then again, after a while the difference between VoIP and pots as far as sound quality are concerned is really transparent. You have to stand back and look at everything else like price and features for example. Like another person posted on here: Cableco phone offerings usually give you unlimited local+LD for the flat monthly fee of usually no more than $49.99/mo. POTS providers generally charge you atleast that much for local service plus taxes. Then tack on LD which is usually minute-rated like cell providers.
bogey7806
join:2004-03-19
Here

bogey7806

Member

Re: Why?

My line is 28$ or so after taxes for dial tone alone. With 3meg DSL it's 65$. If I need to call long distance there's always a cell nearby.

woody7
Premium Member
join:2000-10-13
Torrance, CA

woody7 to Techie714

Premium Member

to Techie714
all of what you stated....

BHC10
@npgco.com

BHC10 to Techie714

Anon

to Techie714
its because cable ops, but cabe ops maket thee voice packets fo prioity, vonage is just another data packet.

Irun Man
Premium Member
join:2002-10-18
Millsboro, DE

Irun Man

Premium Member

simple, actually

Vonage (as well as SunRocket, CallVantage and others) self installed service is for internet gearheads like us. We did our research, know it's a better value than the cable company offerings, signed up long before their VOIP came into play and enjoy the great savings over cableco sourced VoIP and POTS.

The cable companies are striking gold marketing their VoIP services to everyone else. You call them, they come to your home and hook everything up. It's still cheaper than most POTS packages and that's why it's selling so well. Grandma and Grandpa are eating it up.
dadarkside
Premium Member
join:2006-05-20
The Moon

4 edits

1 recommendation

dadarkside

Premium Member

There are actually FCC guidelines for an MSO's VoIP deployme

Yes, that's right..

I worked for an MSO deploys VoIP and was involved in that deployment, treated it like an FCC regulated communications service. We fully expected the FCC to define VoIP as a necessary communications service.

As such, we built in as much redundancy as possible to the cable communications path the MSO provides.

This means the MSO had "hardened" the CMTS, the Neighborhood cable plant, the head end network...adding as much redundancy as possible.

On TOP of that, the CMTS has config options for a carrier VoIP service as well. Allocating as much as 75% of available resources to VoIP traffic. (this is done dynamically, surfing should never suffer for VoIP). This means the MSO (as defined by the FCC general communications services) GENERALLY give their own branded VoIP some aspect of favorable QoS. The FCC recommends this, don't crap on the MSO's for this. It also means, the MSO must now pay very close attention to subscriber density as well. can't overload upstreams and still provide reasonable VoIP.

FCC insists that communications services have the proverbial Five 9's of reliability, 99.999% uptime.

When we did this, we honsetly strove to make sure our branded VoIP came as close to this as possible.

It's ALMSOST a win win for the operator and the customer.

The Operator spent a BIG chunk of change to deploy VoIP, but got a new revenue generating service.

The customer got a hardened redundant highly reliable cable system..but wound up paying a bit more for it.

The difference between Branded VoIP and Vonage?

Vonage is just another internet service that connects thru a standard cable modem, and is subject to any flaws that may exist in that cable plant.

(Edited for clarity regarding FCC regs.)
Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL

Zoder

Member

Re: There are actually FCC regs that govern an MSO's VoIP deploy

Can you post links to these regs? This is the first I've heard of Cable Voip being classified as a communications service vs. an information service.
dadarkside
Premium Member
join:2006-05-20
The Moon

dadarkside

Premium Member

Re: There are actually FCC regs that govern an MSO's VoIP deploy

Forgive me, you are correct. The MSO I worked at and helped to deploy VoIP "treated" it like a regulated communications service because they "expected" it to someday BE a regulated communications servise.

That changes some of my comments drastically...I will be editing
Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL

Zoder

Member

Re: There are actually FCC regs that govern an MSO's VoIP deploy

Thanks for the clarification.
hottboiinnc4
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH

hottboiinnc4 to Zoder

Member

to Zoder
I thought the FCC ruled that VoIP and Digital Phone is an Information service just like Cable Internet.

phoneboy2
@shawcable.net

phoneboy2

Anon

Vonage is NOT losing

Vonage is NOT losing. They are growing like gangbusters.

Both services can coexist. You CANNOT take your cable digital phone with you. Services like Vonage on the other hand are nomadic. Cable companies are not offering the web interface for billing and configuration or some features like Simuring either.

In other words both services are different so they will appeal to different customers and both can coexist.
Derfel
join:2004-06-06
Winnipeg, MB

Derfel

Member

Only a million?

Great that VoIP has a million customers last year.

How many Telco phone customers are there, though?

(Cue drop in bucket sound)
smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home

smcallah

Member

Re: Only a million?

said by Derfel:

How many Telco phone customers are there, though?
Since you asked, 1 million LESS than there were the year before that and shrinking...

malvado6
I pee on Bushes.
join:2003-09-13
00001

1 edit

malvado6

Member

It's the difference between "ip" and INTERNET.

The cable mso's ip service works. their techs install it, hardwire into the customer's home, offer true 911, etc.
And most importantly, for the most part, it works and it's cheaper than POTS.

with Voice over INTERNET - ala vonage, sunrocket - you get what you pay for. YOU wire it into your jacks (if you can), YOU give up the bandwith for the phone call. YOU may or may not have a clear connection. YOU may have your emergency calls routed properly to your local 911 center. YOU will not have phone service in the event of power loss.

i've had first hand experience with both products.

The cable product is by far superior.

I CHOOSE to pay less money for a mostly reliable yet subpar product.

trad'l voip is a viable alternative to completely abandoning landline service in lieu of cell phone only communications.

cable voip is an option for those that want the security of a pots like connection.

People are willing to pay for that peace of mind.
voiprunner
join:2004-10-29
Corona, CA

voiprunner

Member

Re: It's the difference between "ip" and INTERNET.

said by malvado6:

...The cable product is by far superior.
...cable voip is an option for those that want the security of a pots like connection.

People are willing to pay for that peace of mind.
Hmm.
I have cable based BB.
I have VoIP from traditional VoIP.
I just signed up with Optimum Voice.

When my IP went down, all of them went down.

I don't see the "security of a pots like connection".

Fatal Vector
join:2005-11-26

Fatal Vector to malvado6

Member

to malvado6
"And most importantly, for the most part, it works and it's cheaper than POTS"

Ummm...No, it isn't cheaper. A BASIC unlimited local calling POTS (with no extra frill "features" that do nothing but run up the price and enrich them, since they are all built into the switch to begin with) line from AT&T is $15. A metered (limited local calls before they charge per call) is about $10.

Even with taxes added on, this is STILL cheaper than the comcast $33 bundle, especially when it goes up in price after the initial discount period to like $40/Month.

It's also cheaper than Vonage in the sense that you get a utterly reliable phone line that allways works unless the area infrastructure is devastated.

And, after all, new tech felgercarb or not, isn't that what a phone line is supposed to be, bottom line?

BOGBS
Premium Member
join:2004-05-11

3 edits

BOGBS

Premium Member

Re: It's the difference between "ip" and INTERNET.

I wish I had pricing like that. Vonage ends up being slightly more expensive ($28) than a bare bones Verizon line around here. A UPS for the cable modem and ATA works fine for me when the power goes out. And we have two cellphones just in case.

$ 26.36 w/fees Local calling area, no LD, or Regional LD
44.75 Line Connection fee.

I'm not sure if they offer a lower plan than that, I'd have to call. I'd love to have Verizon POTS, but the pricing isn't right for me, and I'm on a 22,000ft loop with sporadic power leakage somewhere along the way.

The wife loves caller ID, so the bill would be around $33-34/month for us even with no other frills or long distance of any kind.

Anoyname
@rr.com

Anoyname

Anon

Re: It's the difference between "ip" and INTERNET.

If Time Warner offered its phone service at different "tier" levels, I would consider it. I don't use the home phone all that much as I have a cell phone and use email a lot. Currently, I have Vonage's 500 minutes / month plan and only pay about $18.25 per month.

Time Warner has their phone service in Albany area but to add that to my current service (cable and Road Runner) it would add another $31 per month (plus any additional taxes) to the overall cost.

When I was working out in the Syracuse area, I saw advertisements for their All-The-Best package (cable, Road Runner, and digital phone service) for under $100 / month (plus taxes). I guess there is a little more fiber being deployed out there by Verizon than I thought.

I am looking forward to FIOS where I live. Competition is a good thing (unless of course you are the competitor).
stan4621
join:2006-09-16
Toledo, OH

stan4621

Member

True VoIP

Want to see affordable Global VOIP ? Take a look here.

»www.hotconference.com/me ··· stan4621
plattypus1
join:2005-04-08
Riverside, CA

plattypus1

Member

Cable VoIP is more hardened and more marketed

I work for a cable MSO that has deployed VoIP. (Charter in Riverside, CA). We treat it the same as a telco line, aka five nine's. We can't even disconnect a customer anymore if the house has ever had Charter Phone. (We add a video trap which still allows the DOCSIS to pass through.) Any repairs done on the line require so much red tape I dread having to replace a tap faceplate. Oh, and we have somebody on call 24/7 in the event of a telephone outage. Plus, while this is no longer company policy, my MTA has a battery backup in the event of a power outage. So the reliability and quality of cable VoIP is higher than a Skype or a Vonage. All this works with the fact that the cablecos are marketing this stuff HEAVILY and, at least in our area, people are so fed up with the phone company it practically sells itself. Not to mention that yes, while a basic telco line is cheaper than a cableco line, the cableco line comes with unlimited calling whereas the basic telco line comes with local if you're lucky- long distance service (just to sit there!) is extra, and then they charge by the minute. And, like previous posters said, Charter will roll a truck out to your house. Vonage won't.

••••

Jeff
Connoisseur of leisurely things
Premium Member
join:2002-12-24
GMT -5

Jeff

Premium Member

Vonage - Love ya...

I'll never have my phone tied to my ISP. I had Optimum Online by Cablevision, and my first and only VoIP service is Vonage.

I changed to Fios, and I continue to happily use Vonage, and recommend it to all people with stable net connections.

A friend recently cancelled Vonage because they hated the drop outs, the suttering and so forth. Unfortunately, their problems were due to their wiring and their outside tap at their house from their ISP (Cablevision) that they never got fixed, but since they are light Internet users (web browsing & email), they never noticed any performance decrease. They only noticed Vonage sounding like crap.

That is Vonage's biggest enemy -- making sure a person has a clear, nice, connection via their ISP.

•••
dagg
join:2001-03-25
Galt, CA

dagg

Member

someone 'splain this to me

what really gets me is that everyone is just automatically expecting vonage to be out in front for no apparent reason.

there ARE other providers out there ya know. And a lot of them are better than what the cable providers OR vonage provide.

hayabusa3303
Over 200 mph
Premium Member
join:2005-06-29
Florence, SC

hayabusa3303

Premium Member

Re: someone 'splain this to me

Agreed i use to be with vonage 3 lines, i got smart and went with VIATALK. They rule and unlocked PAP2
googem
join:2005-12-20
Weehawken, NJ

googem to dagg

Member

to dagg
Very true. But like the old saying goes "different strokes for different folks".

I started out with the triple play with cablevision. After 6 months of huge optimum voice bills, I jumped over to Vonage. Stuck with them for about another 6 months. I have no complaints with the service of both but the long distance (international) charges are too much for my bank account. Then I found Broadvoice and couldn't be happier.
tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Brooklyn, NY

tmc8080

Member

taxing authoritiy's greedy little hands

aside from some 911, e911 and REASONABLE guarantee of QOS.. voip IS just about ready for prime time in areas with 5+ megabit/symmetric broadband connections.