| 26th November 2003 - Cable telephony services
continue to proliferate as cable TV operators expand
their video, data, and voice service portfolios,
reports In-Stat/MDR. According to the high-tech
market research firm, worldwide cable telephony
subscribers are on track to top the 10 million mark
by the end of 2003, and are forecasted to rise to
over 19 million in 2007. In addition to the growing
number of users around the world, recent announcements
marking the first US-based cable telephony service
deployments using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
technology, have made this year an important one
for voice services in the cable industry. |
 |
Today's market for cable telephony services continues
to be strongly influenced by consumer discontent with
incumbent telephone service providers, in addition to
the fact that most circuit-switched cable telephony
is less expensive than the service offered by the local
phone company. However, In-Stat/MDR cites that the most
powerful market driver for cable telephony today is
the bundling of telephony service with existing digital
video and high-speed data services, something that has
proven to be very attractive to today's cable TV subscribers.
The cable TV service bundle has played an important
role in the growth of cable telephony. At the same time,
significant challenges remain as cable operators attempt
to further scale their voice services across their networks.
These challenges include allocating sufficient capital
to expand the service in an atmosphere of reduced investment,
and marketing cable telephony service beyond residential
users to the business community.
In-Stat/MDR has also found that:
- Europe continues to account for the lion's share
of cable telephony subscribers. As of late 2003, there
were approximately 5.9 million cable telephony subscribers
in Europe, in comparison to 2.7 million in the US.
- Worldwide revenues from cable telephony service
are projected to hit $3.7 billion in 2003, and rise
to over $6 billion in 2007.
- "Voice over Broadband" VoIP-based telephony
services will play a small, but important, role in
North American cable telephony services. These services,
offered by companies like Vonage and Net2Phone, allow
smaller cable operators to provide telephony services
without large infrastructure investments.
This Market Alert is drawn from the In-Stat/MDR report,
"Cable
Telephony Service: The Third Leg of Cable's "Triple
Play" Bundle", which examines and updates
cable telephony services provided by cable TV operators.
It covers market and industry drivers for cable telephony,
examines network architectures, and discusses existing
technology standards. The report focuses closely on
the transition from circuit-switched cable telephony
services to VoIP services, and forecasts worldwide cable
telephony subscribers and revenues through the year
2007. In addition, it also forecasts installed cable
telephony lines and the growth of "Voice-over-Broadband"
cable telephony subscribers over the next five years.
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