U.S. Phone Penetration is Up

...after a dip after 2000. This survey by the FCC includes both wireless and wireline service, and corrects for buying of multiple wired or wireless accounts by any single household.

More Web-Activated VoIP

Looked at from one perspective, voice is not inherently a commodity. It simply has been sold that way. Jajah, for example, has been a pioneer in web-activated calling that doesn't require a client, broadband access, a terminal adapter or much else beyond Web access and a phone service of some sort that can make a phone call.

So now voip.com now is beta testing its own web-activated calling service. To use the Make a Call service, members create a free account and then add credits, using any U.S.-issued credit card. Then, members simply go to the web-based interface and enter the number they're calling from and the number they'd like to call.

It might be a niche, but that's the point. Web-activated calling is a type of voice application quite distinct from POTS replacement. It appeals to the episodic or casual call to an international location, or to some of the same needs a prepaid calling card answers, namely an ability to budget for and control global calling expense.

Voice, Data Trump Content, Advertising

In the rush to retool themselves as providers of content services, and to add ad revenue to subscriptions, carriers might want to remember that most of the money to be earned in the business comes from communication services (voice and data) rather than entertainment, as important as these new sources of revenue are. If you click the image, you'll get an expanded view of the numbers, but suffice it to note that all global ad-related revenues for mobile providers will amount to less than $3 billion by about 2011. Basic text messaging blows those numbers away.

Alltel Wireless Ports Desktop Metaphor to Mobiles

Alltel Wireless has launched Celltop, a handset navigation system that offers customers an easier way to access, manage and organize information already available on their Alltel Wireless phones. Celltop is said to be similar to the desktop on a personal computer.

Now available on select Alltel Wireless handsets, and on all new phones by late-2007, Celltop is free-of-charge and features 10 "cells" that come pre-installed or are downloadable. Each cell is a category-specific half screen comprised of graphics and text that provides shortcuts for wireless users to navigate through information and applications including: call log, weather, news, baseball, basketball, football, rodeo, stocks, text messaging inbox and ringtones.

Customization options include the ability to modify the appearance, presentation and organization of information within each cell. Similar to "widgets" on a personal computer, Celltop is open to the developer community, providing unlimited user expandability of new and unique cells.

Walking on Both Legs

One clear trend service providers in the consumer space might want to keep in mind is that advertising and end user subscriptions are important when building video-related business models. In fact, subscription revenue now exceeds advertising revenue.

Mobile Workforce Up About 10% Last 4 Years

And about 61 percent of enterprises surveyed by The Yankee Group are in the process of setting up or piloting wireless LANs as well.

Cable Begins SME Voice Assault

If 2007 is the "Year of" anything, it will be the year the cable industry began its assault on SME voice revenues. But it might not be until 2008 that cable giant Comcast makes its own move. Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems Corp. and Videotron Telecom have added voice offerings to their commercial services packages. Cox Communications has been doing so for some time.

Cablevision Systems is pitching a new multi-line VOIP product targeted to firms with fewer than 25 employees. A four-line package costs $29.95 a month for each line in the first year of service. Notably, the commercial service initially costs no more per line than the company's popular VOIP product, Optimum Voice, for consumers.

“We’re trying to break that traditional [price] line between business and consumer” service, says Joseph Varello, Cablevision VP. Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bresnan Communications all say they will start selling voice optimized for SMEs. In the New York area alone, Cablevision estimates that businesses spend nearly $5.9 billion a year on phone services, with SMBs accounting for $3.5 billion of that total.

Comcast estimates that businesses spend about $20 billion a year on phone services in its territories. The company aims to start offering commercial VOIP next year.

Cable experts argue that it also makes sense to expand into business telephony because it's a way to hurt the phone companies in one of their prime markets and undercut their ability to subsidize low residential phone rates.

"The telco subsidy swamp can be drained to the extent that SMB spending is diverted to cable, and even more so once telcos respond to competitive pressure by reducing their rates to SMBs and investing more in SMB customer support," writes Peter Shapiro, a principal at PDS Consulting. "Thus cable will benefit twice from the growth of its commercial business: first, by increasing top-line revenue; second, by limiting resources otherwise used by telcos to compete for cable's core residential customers."

Speaking at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers' (SCTE's) Business Services Symposium in Chicago last week, cable strategists said they're targeting smaller companies because these firms are usually located either within the reach of existing cable plant or not very far away. In contrast, big companies are usually located farther away from cable's residentially-oriented plant.

David Pistacchio, executive VP and general manager of Cablevision Optimum Lightpath EVP, has urged cable executives to "price disruptively."