VoIP Ranking by Subscriber: Q3 2006

VoIP is increasingly dominated by the cable companies, challenged only by eBay, Vonage, and SunRocket.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [December 27, 2006]

Rank	ISP	Subs. (thousands)	Date & Source
1	Vonage	2,000	[as of September 30, 2006] Fact Sheet
2	Skype (paid VoIP only, customers worldwide, date of this number unknown)	1,800	[July 27, 2005] Press Release
3	Time Warner Digital Phone*	1,649	[November 1, 2006] Trending Schedules [.pdf]
4	Comcast Digital Phone* (740,000 circuit switched customers not counted)	1,348	[October 26, 2006] Press Release
5	CableVision (cable VoIP under the Optimum Voice brand name)	1,101	[November 8, 2006] Press Release [.pdf]
6	Charter* (cable VoIP)	340	[October 31, 2006] SEC 10-Q
7	SunRocket	128	[September 27, 2006] SunRocket Public Relations
8	Insight Communications* (cable VoIP)	113	[November 9, 2006] SEC 10-Q
9	Mediacom* (cable VoIP)	83	[November 7, 2006] SEC 10-Q
10	GCI (Alaksa only)	28	[November 14, 2006] SEC 10-Q
11	CBeyond	25	[November 1, 2006] Press Release
12	Covad (business VoIP only, 2,492 VoIP business customers number of stations not disclosed)	2	[November 3, 2006] SEC 10-Q
	Note: data was unavailable for many VoIP service providers.
	Note: services with an asterisk * are digital phone, not true VoIP

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

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.

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.

Covad is no longer reporting end users, only subscriber lines. If it had reported end users, it would rank tenth on our chart.

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

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

Cox has gone private and no longer issues public data.

Packet8 (8x8) now considers itself an equipment company rather than a VoIP provider and did not report subscriber numbers.

Research
For the first time, we are pleased to present an executive summary of NPRG's research report on the VoIP industry, along with a list of providers and equipment vendors, both linked to in related articles, below.

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.