Cable Modem and VoIP

VoIP is an interesting technology from the point of view of a communications provider. On the one hand, it can be viewed as a threat and on the other it can be a business opportunity - not just to provide VoIP service, but to silently change the underlying infrastructure to VoIP so as to keep the service the same and dramatically reduce costs at the same time. Customers will be unaware that their voice data is travelling over the data network and they don't particularly care either.

However, an interesting twist has been the way cable providers have been getting into the VoIP business. Of course, this is of special relevance only to homes where cable TV is available. In fact, one can say that the growth of VoIP in the home is significantly driven by the offerings of cable companies using cable modems. Regular telephone companies have shown little interest in offering voice services. And why should they? After all, VoIP cannibalizes their existing services which they've been trying to keep in tact for years now. They also refuse to provide what we call "naked DSL" - basically Internet services unlinked to a phone service. So even customers have little incentive to use VoIP when they already have a phone network hooked up and ready to use.

Cable however, is different. There isn't any "telephone" line coming in along with the TV signal and so if providers want to get in on the action and provide phone services, they can only do so using VoIP networks. In many cases, customers simply don't know that what they're receiving is VoIP based telecommunication. All this is set up with the help of the ubiquitous "cable modem" which TV companies can use to deliver a variety of services.

To make things easy, the cable modems also have convenient phone ports into which any regular telephone can hook into. To tell the truth, most cable companies grossly overcharge for their phone lines due to the ignorance of customers who don't know that such services should be far cheaper than usual. Instead, they end up paying heavily for VoIP services which they can get for cheaper elsewhere.

Because of certain standards which are enforced by cable companies, they're also able to perform advanced network management and implement QoS requirements to ensure that the VoIP service they provide is at least as good as the regular PSTN network. The industry scene is still evolving and with the entrance of smaller players as ITSPs, the prices of these services is set to come down in the future.

Bhagwad is an expert consultant on Hosted Voice IP Solutions. He also specializes in Switching to Hosted Voice Systems