* Comcast the market leader in consumer VoIP?
Comcast ended its first financial quarter of 2007 with 2.4 million VoIP customers, representing a market penetration rate of 7% of available homes and a year-over-year increase of almost 1.9 million VoIP customers. With 24.2 million cable customers, 12.1 million high-speed Internet subscribers, and 3 million voice users (including both VoIP and legacy TDM voice customers), Comcast is principally involved in the development, management and operation of cable systems and in the delivery of programming content within the United Sates.
With 2.4 million VoIP customers, Comcast’s success compares favorably to the 2.2 million VoIP customers announced by Vonage at the end of 2006. So depending on Vonage’s net customer additions for the first quarter in 2007, Comcast may have overtaken Vonage as the consumer VoIP market share leader.
So the good-news/bad-news roller coaster ride for Vonage continues. Two weeks ago, Vonage admitted in a regulatory filing that it has no workaround to resolve its patent infringement issues and that it may face bankruptcy if it loses its case against Verizon. Last week, Vonage got good news by winning a permanent stay in the patent infringement case. But with last week’s Comcast announcement, Vonage faces losing its claim as the market leader in VoIP, proving that Vonage may have bigger problems with competition than with its ongoing legal battle.
Comcast’s announcement is also bad news for the local phone companies that have been the competitive victims of Comcast’s success. Comcast attributes its growing momentum to the company’s “triple-play” bundle that offers unlimited domestic calls, high-speed Internet access, and cable television for $99 a month. Although the phone companies are actively competing with their own triple-play bundles, the battle is only getting more intense.
