Alec Saunders writes that last Friday, Telephia released a report on what they call the ‘pure-play subscription VoIP’ business in the United States. The study excludes companies like Skype and the cable companies, but includes AT&T; CallVantage and Verizon VoiceWing.

In any case, the survey finds that in Q2 2006, 4.1% of online households in the US subscribe to a VoIP telephone service, up from 3.1% in Q1. This represents an increase from 2.2M to 2.9M.

Vonage is the category killer at 53.9% share, with almost 10 times the share of the second place providers, AT&T; and Verizon each with 5.5%.

The study also looked at reasons to churn. According to Kanishka Agarwal, Vice President of New Products, Telephia:

The VoIP market is highly competitive with many different players trying to get a bigger slice of the market share. Service providers who offer the best customer experience through superior product quality and excellent customer service will beat out their competition

Vonage Canada held an analyst meeting last Tuesday to update the community with their product plans. Jon Arnold has a good description of the information from the meeting. By the way, the V-Phone installs easily and works like a charm.

All the money in the world doesn’t change the fact that they have limited options for mass marketing to attract customers. So, by definition, they have to be that much more creative to either find or create routes to market.

A report from a respected anti-spyware researcher says Vonage ads appear in a dozen spyware apps, and that the ads also show up at pornographic sites.

… targeting people at pornographic sites isn’t going to bring in the best, most stable customers, either.

The availability and power of pervasive personal communications took on special meaning for our family this past week as our daughter completed her year of studies abroad.

She spent much of her time during the past week in bomb shelters. We were able to stay in touch by cel phone – providing a reassuring voice for both sides of the call.

I often hear people complain about the changing decorum and etiquette as cel usage becomes pervasive. Still, it is in times of emergencies such as these that help most of us appreciate these technologies and the accommodations that must be made to our traditional sense of courtesy.

By the way, she arrived home safely last night. Thanks for asking.

Update:
I notice that Jeff Pulver has a guest blog today that makes observations on war in the age of connectivity .

The New York Times has an article Online, Tears and Empathy for Israelis that also ties into this theme. The article quotes Ami Ben-Bassat, a journalist who writes about popular technology.

Mr. Ben-Bassat cautioned against what he described as the romanticism of some bloggers who think their interactions might change the world, or at least the conflict.

Bell Canada has applied for a 10% increase in rates for Centrex III service. Bell has asked for the CRTC to approve the tariff increase by today, to be effective September 1.

Bell’s justification for the increase included:

The rates for these components have remained unchanged since 2002 while network investments have continued. In addition, inflation over this same time period was 10.12% as per the Bank of Canada’s statistics.

Bell’s arguments ignore the productivity improvements that would normally be assigned as offsets against the inflation factors – productivity that represent improved capital and operational efficiency.

Bell may be trying to create better financial incentives for customers to migrate to their IP-based Centrex service, MIPT. There must be confidence that customers won’t look at TELUS IP-One and other carrier and customer premises-based solutions. Even customers under contract will see their rates increase: generally, the contracts refer to the tariff.

Centrex-based resellers of local lines are going to be badly hurt by this action. Their contracts likely don’t point to a tariff and therefore the increases will eat into their margins.

There are three ways for Bell to succeed on this filing: unit revenues for Centrex go up 10%; competitors get hurt; and, customers are incented to migrate to Bell’s portfolio of VoIP solutions, some of which may win forbearance under the CRTC’s pending VoIP reconsideration.

Bell only loses if this manoeuvre angers customers sufficiently to have them take look elsewhere.