IP Democracy: Cable Telephony Nears Eight Million Subscribers


voip.jpgAs anybody who follows the communications business knows, cable and phone companies are in a race to capture the triple-play customer, the home that buys its voice, video and high-speed data services all from one company in a bundle. Based on my analysis of Q3 06 data, it’s clear that cable holds the triple-play lead.

At the end of Q3 06, the top eight cable operators served almost eight million (7.82 million) voice customers, up 63% from the 4.8 million telephony customers served at the end of Q3 05 and up 5% over the 6.95 million voice customers served at the end of Q2 06. By the end of the quarter, the group as a whole passed over 89 million homes with VoIP services, up 81% year-over-year and 6% sequentially.

In contrast, the top incumbent telcos served only for 2.2 million video customers at the end of Q3 06 through its DBS partnerships. Verizon, in addition, served 118,000 multichannel video subscribers through its fiber-to-the-premises FiOS TV service by the end of Q3 06, more than double the 55,000 FiOS TV customers the telco served at the end of Q2 06.

Despite the promise of FiOS, and AT&T’s struggling efforts to offer video over its network through its fiber-to-the-node upgrades, cable’s voice service customer count was over three times greater than the phone companies’ video customer count at the end of Q3 06, a disparity that underscores cable’s advantages in the bundled service era. (For more analysis, check out today’s IP Media Monitor — free registration.)

Telephony Subscriber Counts - Post Adelphia Distributions
  3Q05 4Q05 1Q06 2Q06 3Q06
Brighthouse Networks*     0.203     0.204     0.245     0.327     0.369
Comcast**     1.201     1.280     1.422     1.706     2.088
Cox*     1.607     1.697     1.807     1.892     1.950
Cablevision***     0.609     0.739     0.873     0.994     1.107
Charter****     0.105     0.136     0.191     0.258     0.340
Insight     0.081     0.090     0.100     0.107     0.113
Mediacom     0.002     0.022     0.046     0.066     0.083
Time Warner*****     0.996     1.138     1.386     1.598     1.771
Total     4.805     5.306     6.070     6.949     7.820
Quarterly Adds.     0.829     0.501     0.764     0.879     0.871
Total Telephony Homes Passed   49.252   64.287   74.577   83.912   89.072
Subs. % of Telephony HP 8.4% 8.3% 8.1% 8.3% 8.8%
         
*EMDI estimates.  Note Cox offers a mixed of circuit-switched and VoIP service.
**At end of Q3 06, Comcast passed 30.8 million homes with VoIP service and counted 1.38 million VoIP or digital voice customers.  The remaining homes passed and subscribers reflected legacy circuit-switched.
***Includes sequentially decreasing, and increasingly trivial, amounts of legacy circuit-switched customers.
****EMDI estimates for Q1 06.
*****EMDI, PaliCapital estimates for Q3 05 to Q2 06 subscriber counts.  EMDI estimates for telephony homes passed.
Source:  Company reports and Emerging Media Dynamics analysis.  © 2006.


Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on November 13, 2006 2:52 PM to IP Democracy