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According to In-stat, nearly 31 Million Business IP Phones will ship in 2012. That's if the Mayan 2012 Doomsday Prophecy doesn't come to pass. You know, the one where the Mayan calendar ends on December 21st, 2012 - the same date as the Winter Solstice and when the Earth will be in galactic alignment with the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, as well as our sun, resulting in a planetary shift. The date 12-21-12 reads as, A-B-B-A-A-B. Since the Hebrew language is read from right to left, this date would read BA ABBA. The Hebrew translation for BA ABBA is "Father comes" or "Father is coming". If you believe in that sort of thing. Here's a History Channel clip about 2012 that might bring out the conspiracy/doomsday nut inside you.

And then there is a Sony Pictures movie titled 2012 coming out this summer, as seen by this trailer:


Anyway, In-stat explains, "Within the business market, corded IP phones remain the standard, and will continue to dominate the enterprise IP phone market through 2012," says Norm Bogen, In-Stat analyst. "However, WLAN and IP DECT phones continue to grow, especially within some specific vertical and geographical markets."

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

• Cisco, Avaya, and Nortel are leading the market for enterprise IP phones.
• Wi-Fi integration in cellular phones is growing rapidly; however, the majority of Wi-Fi/cellular phones are not designed for VoIP.
• Uniden holds top market share for consumer IP corded phones

The In-stat report points out that the IP phone market is "a tale of two markets" with IP phones thriving in business but as for the home consumer, not so much.  By 2012, 31 million voice-centric business IP phones will ship but the consumer side will be outpaced by businesses more than 10 to 1. Why the slow consumer adoption of IP phones?

According to In-stat, "the nascent consumer market for voice-centric IP phones is being subjugated by the introduction of IP media phones, such as the Verizon Hub and AT&T HomeManager that support both IP communications, as well as delivery of Internet information and multimedia content."

I think they're a little premature in that statement. The Verizon Hub is a cool device, but it literally just came out, so it is not affecting consumers from buying IP phones at home. I think the reason is that consumers are happy with their home cordless phones with built-in answering machines. Some even have the multi-handset cordless phone systems, which allow you to strategically place handsets around the house with the ability to screen callers and remotely check the answering machine without going to the base unit. There just isn't a good reason to purchase a $150-$300 corded/desktop IP phone for the home.

You could argue that a Wi-Fi phone might be a good option for the consumer. Wi-Fi phones are less expensive than desktop IP phones, they're mobile, and they can get you cheaper or even free calling (i.e. Skype-to-Skype calls). But Wi-Fi phones have notoriously bad battery life. A better option in my opinion is a DECT 6.0 phone device with VoIP capabilities, such as the Philips VOIP841 Skype phone. Although there are other WiFi and DECT phones worth a look. I should point out that Wi-Fi phones have the advantage over DECT of sometimes offering a built-in browser so you can access the web.

Let's look at how In-stat defines "media phone" and "why the media phone":

The media phone is a new category of broadband device that combines the power of the PC with the performance of a telephone. The result is an always-on multimedia broadband device that is perfect for accessing online news and weather, viewing videos, and a host of other applications. In-Stat believes that the media phone will complement the PC, TV, and mobile handset, becoming an indispensable 4th screen in the home. Service providers and IP PBX vendors, alike, are introducing media phones because they add value to traditional voice telephones and related services.

                                           Verizon Hub, a sample media phone

I certainly agree that consumers will start to adopt "media phones" in their homes, but only if the media phones are subsidized by the carrier. They'll be too expensive otherwise. It worked for the cell phone market, so it can work for the home as well. There have been plenty of times I wanted to check the weather or current movie times, but had to boot up my PC in order to look up information. Having a media phone in the living room with instant Internet access is a nice feature to have. I do agree with the In-stat report that businesses will continue to be the main driver behind IP phone sales, but I wouldn't be surprised to see traditional phone manufacturers such as Uniden developing cordless IP phones for the home market that offer Internet access.

You can download a free copy of In-Stat's media phone research report: The Media Phone Has Arrived!

Relatedly, the research, "IP Phones Worldwide-On the Desk and Beyond" covers the worldwide market for voice-centric IP phones. It includes:

• IP phone vendor market shares for 2007 and 1H2008, segmented by phone type and consumer versus business
• A 5-year forecast by IP phone type (Corded, WLAN, Cordless DECT, Dual-mode Cellular/WLAN, Consumer, Business)
• Analysis of trends in business and consumer markets
• Profiles of more than two dozen vendors

I had to do a double-take when I read the Verizon FiOS pricing plans page that shows Verizon FiOS Internet with Verizon home phone service is less expensive than FiOS Internet without Verizon home phone service. It's $5 cheaper per month to have the voice service than without? I don't think I've ever seen any double or triple play offering that actually is cheaper when you have an additional "leg" offering in the package.

Here, see for yourself from this screenshot from their pricing plans web page:

Why would someone choose the Single Play (broadband Internet only) option over the Double play (broadband Internet + Voice) if it's $5/month cheaper and you get a voice line?

Keynote Systems released their latest VoIP quality report with some interesting findings. For one, Comcast, a cable company dominated the voice quality rankings beating the closest competitor by nearly 300 points. As for reliability, to no surprise AT&T won this category, no doubt to their decades of experience in building reliable voice and data networks.

Keynote Systems measures VoIP quality (MOS scores), call completion, etc. by automatically placing calls from corporate apartments using residential VoIP services and network services just like a typical residential customer would.  Service Reliability scores are based on the key performance metrics of Service Availability, Average Answer Time and Number of Dropped Calls. Additionally,  Audio Quality is an aggregate of Audio Clarity and Audio Delay (latency, jitter) performance factors. The study compares the relative performance of PSTN (regular analog) service, Broadband VoIP providers (e.g. Vonage, Verizon VoiceWing, EarthLink trueVoice, AT&T CallVantage etc), and cable voice services (e.g. Time Warner Digital Phone, Comcast Digital Voice). Test calls were placed from residential locations in New York and San Francisco.

Keynote ranked VoIP Service Providers in two categories: Reliability and Audio Quality. The Service Availability, Call Completion, Average Answer Time, and Dropped Audio performance factors all contribute to the Reliability ranking.

In the summary report they only list the top 3 VoIP provider names and then have Provider D - I as anonymous. You have to purchase the full report to see the names. I'm guessing Packet8 and Vonage are somewhere in this anonymous list.

Provider                   Reliability Points    Rank 
AT&T Landline                    996                1
Time Warner Digital Phone        925                2
Verizon VoiceWing                872                3
Provider D                       859                4
Provider E                       793                5
Provider F                       687                6
Provider G                       643                7
Provider H                       408                8
Provider I                       374                9

Audio Quality
Provider                   Reliability Points     Rank 
Comcast Digital Voice            901                1
Verizon VoiceWing                609                2
AT&T Landline                    506                3
Provider D                       500                4
Provider E                       487                5
Provider F                       480                6
Provider G                       462                7
Provider H                       252                8
Provider I                       0                  9

General Observations
• The best providers always deliver dial tine and connect the call to the number dialed in a timely fashion.
• Only one of the providers in the study failed to provide dial tone 99.9% of the time or better.
• All providers had very small percentages of calls with dropped audio, but only two providers had zero calls with dropped audio.
• One VoIP provider required two seconds more than any other voice provider to connect calls after dialing.
• Most providers had slightly more audio delay and slightly lower MOS in Wave 6 as compared to Wave 5.
• Eight of the nine providers in the study had a better call completion rate in Wave 6 than was evidenced in the Wave 5 results.

What's amazing is that Comcast has been adding a ton of new VoIP customers each quarter. In fact, Comcast has become the nation's fourth largest phone company. The cable company has signed up four million VoIP customers in just the last two years. Relatedly, Forrester Research analysts have projected that Cable VoIP providers will claim up to 80% of the 28.4 million residential VoIP users by 2013. This forecast includes an expected growth from the approximately 19 million installed lines in 2008.

Check out the summary report.

Cisco Systems unveiled a supercharged router called the ASR 9000, which is capable of moving 6.4 terabytes per second of traffic. The router is aimed at service providers with next-generation networks which plan to run bandwidth heavy services such as video, IPTV, mobile broadband, and more. With the explosion of Youtube videos, and other bandwidth-hungry apps, service providers are looking to stay ahead of the bandwidth demand curve. The ASR 9000 hopes to address that need with the ability to support the future "Zettabyte era". According to CRN, "The Cisco Aggregation Services Router 9000 Series (ASR 9000) is designed to be the carrier Ethernet foundation for the "Zettabyte era," said Doug Webster, Cisco's senior director of service provider marketing. According to Webster, Cisco expects IP traffic to reach half of a Zettabyte by 2012."

Cisco's Pankaj Patel, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Service Provider Technology Group called and left me a message stating that their new hardware took four years and a whopping $200 million to develop.

The ASR 9000 router is capable of transmitting data at a rate of 6.4 trillion bits per second, and it has 10 times the bandwidth capacity of Cisco's ASR 1000 router.

Pankaj Patel also told the San Jones Mercury Times, "We truly believe consumer IP traffic will more than quadruple by 2012," He said the new router is capable of delivering 200 movies per second or 250,000 MP3s per second.

Price: It's expected to go for around $80,000.

Just when you were ready to give up cable altogether and watch TV on your computer, telecommunication companies start aggressively rolling out fast new ways to get TV, Internet and voice services -- do I hear "Triple Play"?

And they really, really want your business. AT&T has announced it would begin selling its AT&T U-verse TV and U-verse High Speed Internet services in Circuit City and Wal-Mart stores across the country.

U-verse uses a hybrid network of fast fiber-optic and conventional copper wires to bring TV, Internet and voice services to your home. Bundles start at $69 a month. It's trying to sweeten the deal by offering $200 cash back to customers who order certain U-verse packages online.

Why the big deals and incentives? AT&T is duking it out with Verizon's FiOS and cable companies like Time Warner Cable to get into new homes as customers frustrated with the relatively slow speeds of DSL look for faster service.

And they're doing it at a tough time. Broadband service providers are having trouble recruiting new subscribers, due to a soft housing market, a weakened economy, broadband market maturity and predictable seasonality, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. 

More at the LA Times.

If you thought the "triple play" offered by cable and phone service providers was pretty cool, it's time to think again.

Various providers now are looking at ways to bundle not just TV, phone and the Internet, but also a home's security and control systems into a great, big package that is being called the "quintuple play."

For the service providers whose quadruple plays currently include digital television, internet, phone, and wireless, the fifth service in the five-for-one bundle could be home control, remote monitoring and/or safety and security devices and services (sometimes referred to as SMA or security, monitoring and automation).

This new package will bring easy-to-use home control devices and applications into the home, enabling remote monitoring, simple lighting and HVAC control and remotely-accessed home security.

The devices would be available through the service provider in the form of a "starter kit" of some sort, with an up-front cost that may or may not include installation. A monthly fee would cover remote access to the system and -- in the case of the security application -- professional monitoring.

More at ElectronicHouse.com.

Image of the famous Times Square Naked Cowboy.

An interesting new IDC Insight report reveals that although residential VoIP services have been available in Australia for the past four years, the uptake in naked DSL has been slow compared with Europe and the U.S.

The Insight report titled Residential VoIP: Let's Get Naked, attributes the slower uptake to several factors including lack of, and high cost of broadband, poor quality of service (QoS), number portability and high complexity. However, over the past 6-12 months, IDC notes there has been an upswing in consumers moving to residential VoIP services due to many of these inhibitors being overcome.

The biggest factor is the regulatory rules regarding Naked DSL, which enables service providers to offer VoIP over DSL copper lines without the unwanted bundled PSTN telephone line. "A key driver to this is the bundled sell of broadband and VoIP together and more recently, the offering of Naked DSL services, which is a business model that has been enabled via regulation more than technical capabilities," said David Cannon, Program Manager, Telecommunications at IDC.

Last time I tried to get naked DSL in 2005, my local carrier in Connecticut didn't allow it. I'd be interested to see if things have changed. I might have been willing to put up with some issues with Vonage (mostly due to Charter my cable ISP) if I could have switched away from Charter to naked DSL. Today, I'm back to AT&T DSL with AT&T's unlimited voice plan. Yeah, yeah, I know, a VoIP blogger not using VoIP at home? When I was single - Vonage. Married - AT&T PSTN. Answer your question? No? Well go read my 'Men are from VoIP and Women are from PSTN' article.

Other highlights from the Insight include:

• Throughout 2007, the Australia residential VoIP market enjoyed strong growth. At the end of CY07, there were an estimated 285,000 residential VoIP subscribers with an estimated value of A$40.67 million.
• IDC believes that the network based VoIP service will become the dominant residential VoIP service offering in Australia over the course of the next 24 months.
• Incumbent SPs in various countries across Europe and the United States have been offering Naked DSL services for the last two years in order to stymie their competitors' rollout of their own DSLAM infrastructure.
• Many consumers are now more reliant on their mobile phone than they are on their landline phone. A point of frustration for this type of consumer has been that in order to have a broadband connection, you still need to have an active PSTN line. This meant paying two access services fees when wanting only one service.
• Scalability and flexibility are synonymous with VoIP. The functionality that VoIP delivers, even at its early stages of maturity, supersedes that of the PSTN. This means that VoIP is ultimately a better product that also enables fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) and unified communications (UC).

I just happened to be checking out our firewall logs and noticed traffic coming from 88.160.222.185. Curious, I did a whois and figured out it was coming from http://www.proxad.net/ which redirects to http://www.free.fr/adsl/.

The first thing I noticed other than the fact that website is in French,-- which I can't read -- is that they offer Internet + Telephone + Television for 29.99 €/month. I was able to figure that out since apparently Internet, Telephone, and Television don't translate at all in French. They're the same words except for some accent letters, as seen here from a website screen grab I did:

What I can gather is that they offer 250 channels, ADSL (ADSL2+?), Freebox HD receiver, unlimited phone calls to 70 destinations, and even a WiFi-MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) router. MIMO (pronounced mee-moh or my-moh), is the use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to improve communication performance. Their Internet speed says 28 Mega- whatever that means. 28Mbit/s? Although, ADSL2+, which is faster than ADSL, maxes out at 24Mbits/s. Hmmm. Are the French inventing some proprietary ADSL spec that is faster?

Also, if I read their website correctly, they give you 10GB of storage space - mostly likely talking about the Freebox receiver. Seems a bit low to me if doing any sort of Tivo-like functionality (pause Live TV, recordings, etc.) The 29.99 €/month translates into $46.99 U.S. dollars which seems like a pretty sweet deal for a triple-play package!

Any French readers want to translate exactly what this products' feature-set is? Post a comment...

Update: 5 min after post Found some more info on Wikipedia

The box, designed by Free, uses a 32 bits RC32355 processor and is managed by an operating system using a derivative of the Linux kernel. It has many interfaces:

• An Ethernet port 10/100 Mbit/s full/half duplex;
• A USB2 port;
• An HDMI port;
• An RJ11 jack for the ADSL connection;
• An RJ11 jack for phone equipment (two jacks on versions 1 & 2 but only one active);
• A SCART (Péritel) socket
• An digital audio output RCA, or optical SPDIF starting from version 3;
• An extension port of the Serial ATA standard on versions 3 and 4 and Parallel ATA standard on versions 1 and 2;
• A host USB port on version 4;

One cool feature is that it supports a Videolan client in order to get the movies (in any format read by VLC) stored on the computer and watchable on TV through a playlist selector using Freeplayer. See my VideoLan post for more on this free streaming client.

Freebox is indeed an ADSL2+ modem that the French ISP called Free provides to its ADSL subscribers at a cost of around 190 Euros.

It can not only be uses as a high-end wireless modem (802.11g MIMO), but it also enbles Free to offer value-add services such as HD television (1080p), video recording with timeshifting capabilities, digital radio and analog telephony via one or more RJ11 ports.

Just got this email stating that as of July 7th, AT&T will no longer offer CallVantage through their affiliate channel. To me, this is "codeword" for "we're no longer promoting CallVantage and expect AT&T to end CallVantage entirely in the near future." I've read about many affiliate programs that when they're ended, it's the end of the road for that product. Further, the emails explains, "We ask that you remove all of your promotion of the CallVantage product on/before July 7th and we recommend that you swap out your creative to another of our product offerings such as High Speed DSL or our latest flagship product, UVerse."

Now tell me that doesn't hint towards the end of the road for CallVantage. So current CallVantage affiliates are supposed to promote High Speed DSL which has little to do with VoIP phone service? As for UVerse, that has it's own share of problems. Not to mention UVerse isn't offered everywhere yet. CallVantage, like Vonage, at least works everywhere there is a broadband connection. This is a sad day for the single-play VoIP broadband providers. If AT&T is jumping ship, what does this bode for Vonage, Packet8, and the other single-play providers?

Now this 'could' simply mean AT&T doesn't want to pay the referral fees from affiiates. But even that doesn't make sense since affiliates are the CHEAPEST way for broadband VoIP service providers to acquire new customers. Something's up. I wouldn't be surprised if AT&T drops CallVantage in 6 months or 12 months from now. My guess is 1 year from now (July 7th, 2009) due to their cancellation terms:

$29.99 disconnect fee applies if service or order for service is canceled or disconnected less than 1 year from the date you placed your order for service and Telephone Adapter (if obtained directly from AT&T without charge) is not returned to and received by AT&T within 16 business days of cancellation or disconnection.

They'll wait till like June 2009, announce they're dropping CallVantage, and anyone that jumps ship before the full year is out will have to shell out the $29.99 cancellation fee. Check out the email for yourself...

We want to make you aware that as of July 7th, we will no longer be offering our CallVantage product in our suite of products offered through the affiliate channel.

You will receive commissions on all residual sales that come through during the 60 day referral period that is offered through the program.

We ask that you remove all of your promotion of the CallVantage product on/before July 7th and we recommend that you swap out your creative to another of our product offerings such as High Speed DSL or our latest flagship product, UVerse.

We truly value your partnership and will continue to work with each and every one of you to ensure that we are giving our publishers what they need in order to be successful. Feel free to reach out to the team with any questions, concerns or comments you may have regarding the AT&T Consumer program and enjoy the summer!

Here are some links to get you started:

Get DSL for a Dial-up price
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According to Verizon, beginning next week, Verizon will make available to more than 10 million homes and businesses the nation's fastest consumer broadband connections, with download speeds up to 50 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds up to 20 Mbps over their fiber to the home (FTTH) network.

Verizon had already offered the 50/20 Mbps and 20/20 Mbps services in its FiOS markets in Connecticut (my state), Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. The company is now expanding those offerings to new Verizon FiOS customers in parts of California, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington, replacing existing offerings of 30/15 Mbps and 15/15 Mbps services, respectively.

The mid-tier connection speed in those markets for new customers is being increased from 15/2 Mbps to 20/5 Mbps, and the basic service tier is being increased from 5/2 Mbps to 10/2 Mbps. Existing FiOS Internet customers who are interested in the new speed options can call Verizon for information about the new plans.

Check out these performance benchmarks:

At 50 Mbps, downloading a 5 GB (gigabyte) file, such as a 112-minute, high-definition movie purchased online, takes approximately 13.3 minutes, while a 50 MB (megabyte), or 60-minute, Web video takes 8 seconds, and a 5 MB MP3 music file takes less than eight-tenths of a second.

Using a 20 Mbps upstream broadband connection, a consumer could upload a 250 megabyte (MB) file of 200 photos in about 90 seconds, instead of the roughly 47 minutes it takes over a 768 kilobit-per-second (Kbps) upstream connection.  A 500 MB file, such as 400 digital photos or a medical imaging data file, can be uploaded in less than four minutes, compared with about 90 minutes over a 768 Kbps connection.  A 3 gigabyte (GB) file, such as a one-hour family video shot with a high-definition video camera, can be uploaded in around 20 minutes, compared with more than nine hours with 768 Kbps upstream.

Great, now if only Verizon FiOS was available in my neighborhood. Hello? Verizon? My pokey AT&T DSL is crying out to be replaced with your ultra-fast FiOS service. Help!