VoIP momentum is shifting within Europe with Eastern Europe coming in strong now. The new set of initiatives is driven by the Wimax service providers. There are over 40 Wimax service providers in Eastern Europe if you count the Baltic states as well. Nearly half of them have either launched a VoIP offering or are involved in such trials. (There is a partial list at the end of this post).

The present VoIP traction in Eastern Europe is different than what we saw two years back. Two years back it was all about the network upgradation of the incumbent telcos there. This time it is a bit different. The alternative carriers are going for the broadband telephony type option. Wimax operators seem to be the driving force right now.

Continue reading "Wimax operators in Eastern Europe aggressively deploying VoIP" »

554k IPTV subscribers as of end 1Q08. Added 43k subscribers during 1Q08

IPTV penetration rate is 11.46% of the broadband subscribers

Telefonica also has over 1.2 million pay TV subscribers in Latin America. Majority are non-IPTV subscribers. In Czech Repulic I think all the 87k pay TV subs are on IPTV

If Nimbuzz is planning to play with social networking and all the buzz words, it might be a bit late in the day. The market is looking for a monetization story, not a mobile VoIP app that hooks into every IM-client / social network / handset on earth. What is the value in that? There are plenty in the mobile VoIP market already signing up customers without much revenue to show. The only time they generate revenue is when a call is terminated outside the community cloud i.e. into landlines and mobile phones that are not Nimbuzzed.

An IM or a voice chat between Nimbuzz-to-Nimbuzz is not going to generate money. It will remain a challenge to monetize that aspect – I mean for ever! So something is wrong here: You create a community but make money only when you communicate outside that community!!! What incentive is there is expand that community then?!!!

For off-Nimbuzz calls, the company will make money on international calls mainly. Like EQO and iSkoot, Nimbuzz will also re-direct the calls to its local VoIP PoP from where it transports the call over public Internet backbone. So for the amount of time you are on an international call, you are effectively making and paying for a local call in addition. That is like the early PC-to-Phone days when you had dial-up connections. Outside the US, where local calls were metered, you paid for a local call (to your telco) plus the international call rate charged by Net2phone and others. That was not the main factor responsible for slow uptake of PC-to-Phone, but it was a turn off nonetheless.

Continue reading "Nimbuzz: What is the revenue model?" »

• 1.09 million VoIP subscribers at the end of 1Q08
• Added 125,700 new subs during 1Q08, the most active VoIP quarter so far.
• VoIP revenues nearly doubled to $121 million compared to pro forma revenue of $63 million in the year-ago quarter.
• VoIP represents 11.4% penetration into the overall customer base.

• VoIP subscribers in Norway 133K. Added 2k new subs during 1Q08
• VoIP subscribers in Sweden 209K. Added 7k new subs during 1Q08
• VoIP subscribers in Denmark 107K. Added 8k new subs during 1Q08

• Telecom Italia ended 1Q08 with 136k IPTV subscribers, an increase of 56 thousand in the quarter.
• 1.5 million VoIP subscribers as of end 1Q08, which represents 23% penetration into retail broadband access lines.

• Added over 639k VoIP subscribers during the 1Q08.

• Comcast ended 1Q08 with a total of 5.1 million VoIP subscribers.

• 5.1 million VoIP customer base represents 12% penetration of the total Comcast addressable market

• Revenue from VoIP service more than doubled to $573 million in the 1Q08 compared to the same period of the prior year. Circuit-switched phone revenue declined $69 million to $14 million in the 1Q08.

• As of 1Q08, Comcast had 66,000 circuit-switched customers, and expects to wind down that business by mid-year 2008.

• Telio had 148.9k subscribers at end 1Q08. Total increase of 4,210 during 1Q08.

• Majority of customers (104,854) in Norway.

• Revenues: NOK 94.3 million, same as in 4Q07.

• Average monthly revenue per subscriber NOK 261

• Serving 1,900 VoIP lines to the SMB market.

• Mobile VoIP, new company focus

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