VoIP Ranking by Subscriber: Q2 2006

VoIP is increasingly dominated by the cable companies, challenged only by eBay and a few independents.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 9, 2006]

Rank	ISP	Subs. (thousands)	Date & Source
1	Skype (paid VoIP only, customers worldwide, date of this number unknown)	1,800	[July 27, 2005] Press Release
1	Vonage	1,800	[as of June 30, 2006] Fact Sheet
1	Cox Digital Phone* (as of June 14, 2006)	1,800	[June 14, 2006] Press Release
4	Time Warner Digital Phone*	1,600	[August 2, 2006] 10-Q [.pdf]
5	CableVision (cable VoIP under the Optimum Voice brand name)	988	[September 21, 2006] Press Release
6	CallWave (free and paid VoIP, counting subscribers, not lines)	780	[May 12, 2006] SEC 10-Q
7	Comcast Digital Phone* (978,000 circuit switched customers not counted)	729	[July 28, 2006] SEC 10-Q
8	Charter* (cable VoIP)	258	[August 8, 2006] SEC 10-Q
9	Packet8 (a.k.a. 8x8) (counting lines, not subscribers)	151	[July 27 2006] Press Release
10	SunRocket	128	[September 27, 2006] SunRocket Public Relations
11	Insight Communications* (cable VoIP)	107	[August 9, 2006] SEC 10-Q
12	Mediacom* (cable VoIP)	66	[August 9, 2006] SEC 10-Q
13	Covad (business VoIP only, 1,343 VoIP business customers with a combined total of approximately 44,000 stations )	44	[August 3, 2006] SEC 10-Q
14	GCI (Alaksa only)	27	[August 9, 2006] SEC 10-Q
15	CBeyond (Alaksa only)	23	[August 14, 2006] SEC 10-Q
	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 may fail.

Net2Phone has been acquired by IDT and did not report subscriber numbers, as far as we know.

Skype is offering free nationwide calling in North America, so the distinction between paid and free Skype subscribers is less than it might otherwise be.

These statistics are a snapshot in time, generally showing the race as of June 30, 2006, although some statistics are from different points in time.

One piece of good news: SunRocket is growing fast and experiencing fewer problems.

Feedback June 20, 2006
Reader Johnathan Hooeps of thinkequity points out Cbeyond (NASDAQ: CBEY), a provider of small business VoIP services, with an average ARPU during the first three months of 2006 of $751. 85.5 percent of customers used one T-1 line, 13.7 percent used two, and 0.8 percent used three. It reported 21,909 business subscribers, but did not report the number of end users. If it had reported end users, it would probably rank in the top ten on our chart.

Feedback June 21, 2006
Brian Lustig, SunRocket PR, writes: Packet8's 133,000 figure represents lines rather than subscribers, and a large chunk of their recent growth are "lines" associated with their SMB Virtual Office product—where subs typically get 5 to 7 lines.

Also, Callwave's subs have almost nothing to do with VoIP, at least in the conventional definition. Most of their subs and revenue is associated with a voicemail service that is billed directly to the traditional phone bills. (It's basically an "Internet Answering Machine" that works with busy-call forwarding. It was popular in the dial-up era—if you were using your phone line for a dial-up connection, incoming calls would be routed to Callwave and invoke a pop-up call screener on your computer.) They also provide a virtual fax service that competes with eFax.