Here is the annual list of honors from our recent chip report:

BEST MARGINS: Qualcomm enjoys the maximum margins among communications chip companies. It spends around 67.5 cents to earn $1 of revenues.

BEST COST CONTROL: Cavium Networks was able to decrease its total operating expenses by 22.34 cents per dollar last calendar year, which was 18.3% less compared to the previous year.

BIGGEST R&D SPEND: Ikanos spends around 47.5% of its revenues on Research and Development. That is an increase of 7.62% compared to previous year.

Continue reading "The best comm chipheads around" »

Jangl investors should try to sell the company assets to a telecom vendor. Some of telecom vendors are developing features that enable ad supported communications apps. Still early days but a Jangl platform would place them ahead of most competitors.

We are going to see two relevant trends going forward. One is the re-positioning of telecom service providers as some sort of media companies enabling various forms of entertainment, content, and social networking through PCs, TVs and mobiles. The other is the re-thinking among Voice 2.0 companies to productize their platforms.

Continue reading "Who should pick up Jangl assets?" »

• 1.7 million VoIP subscribers as of end 1Q08

• Added 93k or 5.8% during 1Q08

• VoIP represents 36% penetration in homes passed

• VoIP represented $160 million revenue during 1Q08 which is approximately 8% of company’s consolidated revenues for the three months ended March 31, 2008

154k IPTV subscribers as of end 1Q08

Added 38,000 IPTV subscribers in 1Q08

Deutsche Telekom had dropped the price of its starter package by 17 percent in March 2008

Telco to invest in improved customer support for IPTV

VSDL roll out in 50 cities continues

Tata Communications will be deploying the high density gateways from Sonus. This is for the international footrpint, not for the domestic Indian network. The domestic network deployment would be a much bigger opportunity if it materializes for Sonus. Sonus has been involved in trails with Tata as well as Reliance in India.

The international footprint where Sonus gets its foot inside was inherited through the VSNL acquisition. Here comes the history:

- ITXC, one of the largest VoIP ILD wholesalers, deployed multiple platforms including Excel Switching (now part of Dialogic), Huawei, Vocaltec, Cisco, Clarent (now part of Verso gone bankrupt)
- ITXC standardizes around Cisco platform, the famous AS5300
- ITXC gets acquired by Teleglobe. VoIP traffic growth remains flat for a while.
- Teleglobe gets acquired by VSNL. By this time VSNL had already been acquired by Tata I think
- VSNL also used Cisco VoIP gear in its international footprint
- Teleglobe/VSNL Intl did not migrate to high density MGX platform of Cisco
- TODAY: They announced move to Sonus platform

United Telecom, a Bangalore based telecom company contracted by the Indian authorities to build out an advanced broadband network in the tourist hub state of Goa, will be offering triple play services in the state including IPTV. UTStarcom won the equipment contract that includes VoIP, IPTV, and GEPON gear - the whole lot.

United Telecom is itself a vendor supplying optical networking components to service providers like BSNL. And although Reliance and BSNL have already laid out broadband networks in Goa, United Telecom’s footprint is all fiber. In fact it has already laid out majority of the FTTH network in the state.

Continue reading "United Telecom to bring IPTV-over-Fiber to Goa" »

Total revenue $27.9 million, a 20% decline from 4Q07

VoIP product revenue $20.7 million, compared to 4Q07 revenue of $20.9 million

1 customer accounted for 10% of 1Q08 revenues: MTN. Top 10 customers accounted for 52% of Q1 revenues. 6 customers each accounted for $1million or more in Q1 revenue.

4 new switching customers in 1Q08.

Revenue split: 16% North America, 84% International. Compared to 4Q07 split of 23% North America, International 77%.

Service revenue: $5.6 million. Gross margin: 53.6%.

• Added 30,000 net subscriber lines in the 1Q08 and finished the quarter with more than 2.6 million lines in service

• Average monthly customer churn increased to 3.3% in the first quarter 2008 from 3.0% in the fourth quarter 2007.

• Marketing cost of customer acquisition: $216 per customer. Total marketing costs during the quarter: $61 million.

Continue reading "Vonage 1Q08 Update" »

• VoIP subscribers: 3.2 million, representing 12.6% penetration of service-ready homes passed

• Added 280,000 VoIP subscribers during the quarter

• Continued roll out VoIP services to SMEs. As of March 31, 2008, TWC had 10,000 commercial VoIP subscribers.

AT&T: 379k IPTV subscribers, up 148k from previous quarter. Addressable market 9 million homes

Verizon: 1.2 million IPTV subscribers, up 263k from previous quarter. Addressable market 82% of 7.9 million homes passed

It remains a mystery why Sonus is not keen on acquiring a feature server company such as Broadsoft or Sylantro. They should have made an acquisition of a Class 5 feature server three years ago when consumer VoIP got going. Netcentrex was another option available at the time.

Sonus has a residential feature set in their access server product but it has not done so well. Sonus has enabled consumer VoIP offerings of AT&T (Callvantage), Qwest, AOL, Carphone Warehouse and others. Only Carphone has scaled up somewhat.

The absence of an alternative vendor in consumer VoIP has meant that most business is ironically going to the legacy vendors. Sylantro and Broadsoft are small players in consumer VoIP. I reckon Sonus with one of these products would have done very well. Sonus placed its bets on over-the-top VoIP rather than other VoIP-to-the-edge options. It turned out to be right but did not translate into any fortune for Sonus.

Continue reading "One acquisition that Sonus badly needs" »

A few open questions on the recent Jajah/Yahoo deal, perhaps our readers can answer:

Whatever happened to the Dialpad acquisition by Yahoo? Was that investment a waste then? Yahoo had acquired the company because apparently they needed an insight into the call routing science.

Jajah does not do PC-to-Phone application. Is Jajah going to develop that capability for Yahoo Messenger, or is it going to be a similar application to Jajah i.e. web initiated telephony that does not necessarily use the public Internet? Jajah voice quality is great right now because the company does not use public Internet.

Continue reading "Questions on Jajah-Yahoo deal" »

• 4.65 million VoBB subscribers in France as of end 1Q08. Added 547k subscribers during 1Q08

• 722k VoBB customers outside France. Poland: 164k VoIP subscribers, other European countries 558k

•VoIP represented 61% of the number of ADSL subscribers and IPTV represented 17%

Continue reading "France Telecom 1Q08 VoIP and IPTV Update" »