DIDs FEATURED ARTICLE

In the early 2000’s Verizon and AT&T (News - Alert) were building infrastructure to start delivering television services to U.S. homes. Fast forward to 2015, and both companies have taken a considerable chunk from the customer base of cable providers. This time around, it is the cable operators taking customers from telecommunications service providers. According to a new survey by TNS (News - Alert), large businesses are opting to use cable companies for their communications needs as more organizations continue to migrate to IP telephony.

In the last 24 months large businesses with more than 101 employees have been using the services of cable companies for wired voice and data services in greater numbers.

The quarterly market survey by TNS questioned 6,500 businesses, and wired voice and data product spending geared towards cable operators increased by more than 38 percent. According to the firm, two features in which large cable providers have a clear advantage were responsible for this growth, mainly increased reliance on Internet services and the need for greater bandwidth.

“The rollout of advanced voice services by cable providers over the past few years has afforded them the opportunity to make significant progress at the high end of the market,” said TNS Vice President Frank Perazzini.

Cable operators have also improved the way in which they are delivering bundled services of voice and data to their customers. While incumbent local exchange companies (ILECs) saw declines in this segment, local exchange companies (CLECs) were able to grow their market by 9 percent over a two-year period. But cable operators saw an increase of more than 40 percent over the same period

The overall growth in communication services by cable providers is the result of billions of dollars of fiber infrastructure investment by the industry. The disparity in growth can be seen in the increased penetration of business locations by cable companies. While they experienced a 50 percent growth, ILEC penetration plunged almost 14 percent and the CLEC share remained pretty much unchanged.

The competition for telecoms is also coming from network operators that are delivering IP telephony services for individual consumers and organizations. As a leading facilities-based provider of enhanced voice and data communication services, Vitcom owns and operates a national, private, proprietary voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network infrastructure powered by state-of-the-art switching equipment. This is allowing the company to provide voice services that can be packaged into customize high margin products for communications service providers.

The availability of networks is giving companies in any industry the ability to establish communication services. Whether it is the cable companies using their own fiber network, another player like Vitcom with its own infrastructure or new OTTs without any infrastructure at all, telecoms have competition everywhere they look around.