Cable Telephony Grows @ HOME, BUT WHAT ABOUT @WORK?

The cable industry is showing that it can really play the "takeaway" game when it comes to telephony in the home based on what I'm reading over at IP Democracy this morning.

What does this mean? Here are some thoughts about the landscape that runs over cable and why the cable guys are winning.

1) AT&T still has the best quality platform in VoIP with CallVantage, but they're no longer really pushing it. Instead they want to see consumers either stay legacy PSTN or switch to UVerse where VoIP is part of the deal.

2) Earthlink, which has a very rock solid VoIP product with TruVoice has pretty much hung that up too. My guess is they will shed that to someone in the next six to nine months.

3) Vonage is the runaway leader of the independents, and now with a Covad deal in place they can actually sell a bundled high speed package. They will also finally be able to offer some QoS to the customers as Vonage with Covad's help will be able to manage the call path for most of the way.

4) Speakeasy is the BestBuy brand now for VoIP. Reports of internal bickering between retail, online and the Speakeasy crew continue to bubble, and I'm also hearing that BestBuy may be looking to dump it as they have yet to find a way to really integrate it into their overall retail mix, beyond the Geek Squad.

Of the four Vonage has the best base to build from, simply because AT&T has given up on the cable customer market after initially wanting to be the cable guy's best friend.

5) The remaining players like Broadvoice, Packet8 and VoicePulse all have their very loyal customers and in reality, far lower churn than Vonage. Then again, Vonage outspends them in advertising and gets builds the category.

So, basically, despite all the major efforts from big players like AT&T, Earthlink and even AOL, the cable guys have pretty much wiped them off the map with cable telephony subscribers. Verizon's VoiceWing isn't even an afterthought by anyone either so where are the telcos going with VoIP if the cable guys have the consumer market pretty much sewn up? The big telcos are going to the business market.

For the most part cable is not in the business game. It's also their biggest opportunity. Fatter pipe, better pricing. A need for more converged offerings. If cable can make the jump, and its a two to three year game, then they can win the business VoIP war too. But it's a big IF. That same IF exists for the telcos because upstarts like Junction Networks, cBeyond, M5, CallTower and a whole host of others are providing better services, at better prices. Plus you're not tied to the Telco for bandwidth, so options for business abound.

Net Net--Cable may be winning the @HOME battle, but as far as @WORK, it's a wide open ball game.

Update: PhoneBoy has a comment based on something he heard from a local Comcast rep. Basically it sounds like Comcast plans to continue to be a Voice 1.5 offering company, with a Centrex like service offering up to 16 lines. What's Voice 1.5 you ask? That's where the only difference with your NEW phone service is where the bill comes from and that it now traverses a different wire or in this case, cable.