VoIP Ranking by Subscriber: Q4 2005

VoIP growth continues, and no clear winner is in sight, but some first movers are doing very well.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [May 8, 2006]

Rank	ISP	Subs. (thousands)	Date & Source
1	Skype (paid VoIP only, customers worldwide)	1,800	[July 27, 2005] Press Release
2	Vonage	1,500	[as of March 1, 2006] Fact Sheet
3	Cox Digital Phone*	1,300	[February 2, 2006] 2005 Annual Report
3	Comcast Digital Phone*	1,300	[February 2, 2006] 2005 Annual Report
5	Time Warner Digital Phone*	1,100	[February 1, 2006] Trending Schedules [.pdf]
6	CallWave (free and paid VoIP, counting subscribers, not lines)	787	[February 14, 2006] SEC 10-Q
7	CableVision (cable VoIP under the Optimum Voice brand name)	731	[February 17, 2006] SEC 10-K
8	Charter (cable VoIP)	122	[February 28, 2006] SEC 10-K
9	Packet8 (a.k.a. 8x8)	113	[February 9, 2006] SEC 10-Q
10	Net2Phone	72	[March 7, 2006] Press Release
11	SunRocket	50	[May 9, 2006] SunRocket Public Relations
12	Covad (business VoIP only, 1,147 VoIP business customers with a combined total of approximately 40,600 VoIP stations)	41	[March 1, 2006] SEC 10-K
13	GCI (Alaksa only)	22	[March 23, 2006] SEC 10-K
	Note: data was unavailable for many VoIP service providers.
	Note: services with an asterisk * are digital phone, not true VoIP

The dark side of this new new industry is the number of key players for whom no public statistics are available. As long as some major players are not reporting subscriber totals, growth, and churn, we will not have a clear picture of VoIP.

Note that we may not be aware of all VoIP providers, and therefore this is not a complete list.

VoiceGlo was removed from the list because the company has not updated subscriber numbers since December 4, 2004, and is reporting declining VoIP revenue.

These statistics are a snapshot in time, generally showing the race as of December 31, 2005, although some statistics are from different points in time.

The price problem remains
Pricing is a key factor (see the rankings in Broadband Reports). Cable companies and other companies that continue to insist on charging close to $50 should, in the long run, lose out to cheaper services unless they can block all other VoIP services on their network (see, for example, VoIP Battleground in RBOC Monopoly War, below).