Where are the 1.7 million new VoIP customers coming from?
VoIP is starting to cross a chasm into something resembling a mass-market product. With a million users, it's become a mass-market product quickly. Vonage is going to be a big beneficiary; so will cable operators.
Lots of new competition for you guys lately. Do you think Vonage will end up getting swept under in 2005 by the major cable companies?
No, we're not going to get "swept under". There are 112 million residential phone lines in the United States that we can all look forward to going after.
But cable companies are getting closer to Vonage in terms of subscriber totals; are you feeling some footsteps behind you?
They won't roll over us. Cablevision has been doing this as long as Vonage has, and they are, I admit, doing well. In the third quarter, they added what I estimate to be 74,000 subscribers. Vonage added 80,000. They'll probably have around 275,000 for year. Vonage will be a lot higher.
What about Time Warner Cable, which planned to end the year with 200,000 telephone subscribers?
Time Warner has been rather quiet on data, actually. They entered this year with 35,000 subscribers. They say they've grown quickly; I estimate they've added 100,000 lines; we think we'll [have added] more than 100,000.
AT&T has yet to report the number of their VoIP subscribers. What do you think that number is?
If what I've read and seen about what they've done [in 2004] is true, AT&T is still struggling and continues to struggle. The industry rumour is they are still sub-50,000.
What is your opinion of Verizon's residential VoIP service and the other efforts from the traditional local phone companies?
It's interesting to talk about VoiceWing (Verizon's residential VoIP product), but it's a small play. Maybe it'll be bigger one day. AT&T... it's hard to predict what's going to be happening.
