The Rabbit in the Hat Looks Like VoIP

Cable World,  July 7, 2003  

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Byline: ANTHONY CRUPI

The wait for voice over IP service to materialize in the U.S. market has been a little like that old Bullwinkle gag, wherein the cartoon moose makes an inept pass at trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat. "Aww, that trick never works," gripes his buddy Rocky the Flying Squirrel, just before a lion's head emerges from the top hat.

After years of promising "This time for sure," the MSOs finally have their rabbit. Last week, Time Warner Cable signaled that it would launch another VoIP trial - its first kicked off in Portland, Maine, last May - by filing a request with the North Carolina Utilities Commission to offer soft-switch phone service in the area.

"We expect to launch a trial sometime this year in two of four of our Carolina divisions," said TWC spokesman Keith Cocozza. Those include Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro and Wilmington.

As in its Portland division, the North Carolina trial will be run on Cisco Systems' backbone-, which is comprised of its soft-switch/call management server, cable modem termination system (CMTS) and voice gateway. Motorola will provide the message transfer agent (MTA). "We just need to line up someone to do the interconnect with the CLEC," Cocozza said.

Cox Communications pulled out a hare of its own just days before, announcing that it will upgrade its Class-5 telephony service in its Hampton Roads, Va., system by next year. The MSO said it would use VoIP to expand its voice service capabilities and to alleviate churn.

Of the cable companies offering phone service, Cox, with 750,000 customers, is second only to Comcast, which has 1 million phone customers. Yet Cablevision has suddenly emerged as the most aggressive.

At last month's National Show, Cablevision president Tom Rutledge announced the MSO will make VoIP available to its entire footprint before summer draws to a close.

Now that cable seems to have found a grip on the rabbit's ears, the next trick will be to make the RBOCs disappear. It can be done.

"MSOs stand to reap a huge windfall from voice services," said ABI analyst Edward Rerisi. "Voice presents itself as a relatively untapped area for MSOs, and the Baby Bells have lost the reliability and pricing advantage."

THE NEXT QUESTION:

*Will cable lose ground as telcos continue to petition the courts to halt the advance of VoIP?

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