VoIP Ranking by Subscriber: Q4 2006

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

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 16, 2007]

Rank	ISP	Subs. (thousands)	Date & Source
1	Vonage	2,200	[as of December 31, 2006] Fact Sheet
2	Comcast Digital Phone* (circuit switched customers not counted)	1,900	[February 26, 2007] Annual Report
3	Time Warner Digital Phone*	1,860	[January 31, 2007] Trending Schedules [.pdf]
4	Skype (paid VoIP only, customers worldwide, date of this number unknown)	1,800	[July 27, 2005] Press Release
5	CableVision* (cable VoIP under the Optimum Voice brand name)	1,209	[February 27, 2007] Press Release [.pdf]
6	Charter* (cable VoIP)	446	[February 28, 2007] SEC 10-K
7	SunRocket	150	[update pending] SunRocket Public Relations
8	Insight Communications* (cable VoIP)	123	[March 27, 2007] SEC 10-K
9	Mediacom* (cable VoIP)	105	[March 8, 2007] SEC 10-K
10	XO Communications** (business VoIP only)	100	[January 24, 2007] Press Release
11	GCI (Alaksa only)	28	[March 15, 2007] Press Release [.pdf]
12	CBeyond	27	[March 1, 2007] Press Release
13	NetZero VoIP (residential VoIP, counting paid subscribers only)	9	[March 1, 2007] SEC 10-K
14	Covad (business VoIP only, 2,492 VoIP business customers number of stations not disclosed)	2	[February 28, 2007] SEC 10-K
	Note: data was unavailable for many VoIP service providers.
	Note: services with an asterisk * are digital phone, not true VoIP
	Note: ** Added on April 18, 2007 (see Feedback, below)

These statistics are a snapshot in time, generally showing the race as of December 31, 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.

Vonage's patent woes are ongoing, and will affect subscriber numbers when the Q1 data is available.

Skype terminated its offer of free nationwide calling in North America, so we expect its subscriber numbers to decline.

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

Paetec (NASDAQ: PAET) reported "564,588 voice channels" but we cannot translate this into a subscriber number. It seems likely that the company has between 28,000 and 105,000 subscribers, placing tenth or eleventh on our list.

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.

Feedback April 17, 2007
Joan Citelli, PR for Packet 8 says that the company regularly reports the number of businesses subscribing to its service. Oddly enough, in its most recent SEC filing, it reported churn (3.7 percent in the most recent quarter) and customer acquisition costs ($139 per customer), which are metrics most companies avoid disclosing, but did not report the total number of companies subscribing to its service.

On April 3, 2007, the company reported subscriber numbers, 7,000 companies, which we will use for Q1 2006.

The company also earns revenue from the sale of VoIP terminals and adapters.

Feedback April 18, 2007
Chad Couser, Corporate Communications for XO, writes, "as of the end of the Q4 2006, XO had 7,500 business customers using its business VoIP service, XOptions Flex. The number of end users (employees of our business customers) using XOptions Flex was 100,000."

He forwards a press release saying as much dated January 24, 2007.