Telco by the Numbers

Ma and Pa Bell (better known to you as AT&T and Verizon) added about 3 Million cellular users in 2Q08. Where did those subs come from? Certainly some came from other carriers like Sprint-Nextel. Some are family handsets, maybe. And some must be data cards.

These numbers from DSLReports are staggering: "Subscriber growth for the one-year period ending in the first quarter of this year was less than 200,000 for independent VoIP companies; this amount equals less than one fifth of the new subscribers from the previous year. In contrast, cable VoIP subscriptions increased by over five and a half million in the same time period." It makes you wonder what the other 1000 VOIP Providers are doing every week. Vonage may be re-financed but can it compete against cable triple play? Not to consumers, I don't think. And Business VoIP is more profitable but needs more reliability. That's why regional players can do well if they sell it "on-net". In other words, VOIP for voice over IP not over the Internet. Quite a few companies sell that way: Broadview Networks, SmoothStone, PBX-Change, and Intelliverse (with its New Edge MPLS partnership). (Probably Speakeasy too). Most of these guys don't report VOIP subscriber numbers so their lines don't count towards the 200K added BUT do count towards the line loss at the ILECs.

Speaking of landline losses, SeekingAlpha has an article about how this may sink VZ. "After billions of dollars spent over several years building FiOS, a high-speed fiber-optic network, Verizon Communications (VZ) may not end up with much to show for it, writes Sanford Bernstein & Co. telecommunications analyst Craig Moffett in a note to clients Friday." Read the rest HERE