Comcast: The New King Of VoIP

Think of VoIP and you think primarily of Vonage and Skype. But quietly in the background, Comcast has been signing up VoIP customers, and may become king of VoIP. Comcast doesn't label its voice service as VoIP --- it's too smart at marketing to do that. Instead, it calls the service Comcast Digital Voice. But it's a VoIP service, nonetheless.

The Comcast voice service has been going like gangbusters, if you judge by the company's recent earnings statement, released today. It ended the second quarter with 1.7 million phone customers and an increase in phone revenue of 23% to $214 million.

Expect those numbers to accelerate. Comcast is far better positioned than the telcos to offer triple play services of voice, video, and Internet access, because the telcos haven't yet widely deployed the technology to deliver video.

So Comcast will continue to gain new phone customers, driven by triple-play marketing.

In the meantime, Vonage won't survive the Comcast push. Those who want the cheapest possible service will migrate to Skype, and everyone else will go to Comcast.So you may not think of Comcast as a phone company or a VoIP company, but increasingly, that's exactly what it is.