Q4 Consumer VoIP league table

We have reported on the surging growth of cable in the consumer VoIP market at the expense of the pure-play operators such as Vonage and to a lesser extent Skype. Ike Elliott has pulled together the Q4 revenue numbers that reflect a similar story, with Comcast leading the pack for subscribers, revenue and average revenue. The two top cable voice providers, Comcast and Time Warner have almost 60 percent of the U.S. marketplace measured by revenue. In terms of actual subscribers, these two companies have more than half the consumer VoIP market. Vonage has a touch less than 20 percent subscriber share.

Measuring Skype's real user base is always problematic and, in this case, Elliott took an estimate based on typical average revenues of the other operators to create a like-for-like proxy comparison. On that basis, Elliott marks Skype as the fifth-biggest player (although it is not clear if this is based on Skype's global or U.S. numbers).

Most interesting were the ARPU numbers. Average monthly revenue per user for Comcast was $39.83, Time Warner $38.62, Charter $37.18, Cablevision $30.78 with Vonage railing with average revenues of $27.90. That is a big gap between the market leader and the market laggard.

For more:
- Telecosm Q4 VoIP league table Blog

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Big Cable vs. Big Telco Article
FCC levies fees on cable Article