Why Canada's cable telephony trials crashed and burned; though ambitious, Cogeco's and Videotron's initial work with packetized voice services was fraught with technical and operational tribulations.

CED, May, 2002 by Careless, James

Just a few short years ago, Voiceover-IP (VoIP) via a cable TV infrastructure seemed a sure bet in Canada. In fact, both Groupe Videotron and Cogeco Cable--at the time Canada's second- and fourth- largest MSOs respectively, in terms of number of subscribers--were diving headlong into VoIP.

To say the least, they were bullish about VoIP's chances. For instance, Cogeco President and CEO Louis Audet told his shareholders in 1998 that VoIP could be offered "at a capital cost lower than $600 (U.S. $400) per telephone customer. This is about half of the $1,200 (U.S. $800) associated with traditional technologies." His goal: to launch commercial VoIP service through Cogeco's cable modems. Cogeco's networks were based on DOCSIS 1.0 specifications, but plans were in...

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