Who's Winning Consumer VOIP Battle?

When you look at the numbers, the companies winning the consumer VOIP battle appear to be the cable operators. Ike Elliott has a post about Over-the-top VoIP Providers dying in the residential space. Vonage is spending $65M per quarter to maintain its subscriber numbers at 2.6M. It's churn is barely being replaced by new customers. Cheap folks are flocking to Skype and its look-alikes, MagicJack (don't get me started!) and T-Mobile cell & VoIP plans.

8x8 decided wisely a year ago to focus on Business customers, which have an average of 7 lines and $252 in ARPU. That beats the sub-$40 ARPU of Vonage.

MagicJack is $20 per YEAR. I don't see how that will work out. Plus talking to folks on it sounds like there is tissue paper being crinkled on the line. It doesn't stop people from using it.

SunRocket imploded. ATT CallVantage is on hold. deltathree is tanking. Over-the-top Consumer VoIP is almost over. I think UC and Hosted PBX is a better play - and it is what people will pay for. One number. Find-me. Unified voicemail box. VM-2-email. Combined address book. And I guess calling International often, but that's what calling cards are for.

All-you-can-eat cellular plans are also going to be a landline replacement, as RBOCs are learning. T-Mobile is hoping so with @Home.

Not everyone cares about the call quality - as you can see from the number of folks that spend all day on cell phones and the millions that use over-the-top VoIP. Also, Skype and other PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone apps. If I am trying to make a connection with a prospect or solve a problem for a client, I want to HEAR it. Give me a POTS line or my CallVantage line any time.