Cable starts giving hints on VoIP strategy

This week’s Western Cable Show in Anaheim was light on voice-over-IP product announcements, but if the talk coming from the show and recent cable operator rollouts are any indication, the competition for residential voice services is about to get heated with both stiff price competition and new services coming into play.

Cablevision in the last couple of weeks announced that it would keep its $34.95 flat-rate pricing for its Optimum voice service while moving that product further into the New York City market. The service, which is available in more than 4 million homes, includes five custom calling features: Caller ID, Call waiting, Call return, three-way calling and Call forwarding.

However, it’s the rollout of voice over IP that is going to turn up the competitive price pressure. Vonage this week announced an agreement with CableAmerica to deploy its private label VoIP service in Arizona, Missouri, California, and Michigan. The agreement is the fourth with a cable operator and is expected to be followed up by others next week.

At the same time, cable operators likely will begin rolling out advanced services that have long been promised by VoIP providers. Time Warner Cable, which is expected to rollout VoIP early next year, signed an agreement earlier this year with LogicaCMG to use its uOnevoice and video messaging. Using the platform, the cable telephony customers can send and receive video calls and messages regardless of the type of phone they are using.

And while the concept of video telephony has been around for decade, users may finally be ready to accept it, said Larry Frank, vice president of uOne for Logica.

“The subscribers who want to make a video call want to do it because there’s an urgency,” he said. “There’s something happening that has a time element.”