For all the fervor surrounding cable telephony, today s market remains small. With more than 70 million cable subscribers in the United States, only four of the top MSOs are commercially deploying cable telephony, serving some 280,000 customers in the first quarter of 2000, according to Keith Kennebeck, a cable analyst with The Strategis Group, a Washington, D.C.-based research firm, and an author of a recent report on U.S. cable telephony. Kennebeck estimates that by 2005, the United States will have more than 12.5 million cable telephony users. Circuit-switched will serve more than half of all subscribers. Lifeline IP cable telephony will account for nearly one-quarter of all cable telephony subscribers by the end of 2005, according to Kennebeck s report.
Lifeline service means customers can use their phone at any time, even during a power outage.
The widespread commercial launch of IP telephony is expected in 2002. With 170,00 subscribers, Cox Communications is the biggest player in circuit-switch telephony in the United States. One major benefit of circuit-switched technology is that circuits are used domestically and abroad. If you want to be in competition with the telephone companies, you have to do circuit-switched. Some day IP telephony will offer the same technology, but not initially.