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Oct 12 2007   8:58PM GMT

New Spec for Voice over Cable



Posted by: Tom Nolle
voice, Cable, Wireless broadband

CableLabs is releasing a new version of the PacketCable specification used for voice services over cable. The 2.0 release will include support for business features and also support for IMS-based FMC, presumably to support either a cable company push into wireless or an MVNO relationship with a provider like Sprint. The move is likely to be linked to the recent reports of FMC activity at AT&T and Verizon, and it may thus be an indicator of a broad industry trend toward convergence of wireless and wireline voice. As we have noted many times, however, it is far from clear that such a convergence would necessarily create IMS momentum.

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Oct 11 2007   8:58PM GMT

Cable/Telco Competition Rests on ARPU



Posted by: Tom Nolle
Telecom, Triple play services, Cable, voice

Business Week and S&P are now publishing reasonable analysis of the cable/telco competition. The recent work concedes that cable will likely take some market share from the telcos in voice services, but that telcos will take share in both data and video services. As we’ve said many times, it’s better to be stealing customers with high ARPU than those with lower ARPU, and wireline voice services are clearly not going to be profitable for long, as Skype and Vonage show. Another problem for the cable operators is that the competition with satellite and telco video will likely force them to increase capex and reduce pricing. The current cable voice popularity is driven in part by bundle pricing that the cable companies had hoped to raise at the end of the contract, but it seems likely that such a move will not only increase churn but also create media awareness of the relatively high cable voice cost. Finally, fixed-mobile convergence is now arriving with bundled wireline/wireless services from AT&T and Verizon, and it’s likely that both companies will soon introduce active convergence at the feature level. This will force the cable companies into either partnership (which is what Sprint hopes) or capitalization of their own mobile services. Either way, their ROI will suffer.

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