Cable companies banging heads and taking prisoners
Recent news on the VoIP marketplace is mostly very very good for cable companies. Not only does a recent report state that the leading cable companies providing VoIP now have better call quality overall than PSTN (and their rivals), but cable companies are also growing their market share extraordinarily rapidly.
This isn’t a complete surprise since the cable companies have a built-in advantage in many markets - a significant percentage of broadband Internet access is already provided by the cable company - which makes it easy for them to sell add-ons like VoIP to the same group.
But here’s the kicker - take a look at this little pricing table.
Cable Companies
- Comcast - $39.95
- Time Warner - $39.95
- Cablevision - $29.95
VoIP Providers
- Vonage - $24.99
- Packet 8 - $19.99
- SunRocket - $16.60
- Lingo - $21.95
Not only are the cable companies raking in the business - a lot faster than Vonage is - but they are also making on average of 75% more revenue per customer than the VoIP providers. And to top even that, they are often the broadband carrier for residential VoIP into the home - so they are making money even when the VoIP provider makes money.
This raises two questions - why would a residential customer go with the cable provider VoIP over the VoIP provider and how are residential VoIP providers ever going to make money?