VOICE MODEM SHIPMENTS SOAR AS CABLE BEEFS UP VOIP OFFERINGS

摘要

Cable companies are concentrating on rolling out VoIP services as they increasingly become a potent threat to local phone companies. One sign of these deployments in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere is equipment supplier shipments of voice modems, which are soaring to record levels. In fact, cable voice modem shipments are surging so quickly that some vendor executives predict they could surpass shipments of ordinary data-only modems sometime in the new year. The trend is clear in the latest quarterly data compiled by industry analysts. In the 3rd quarter, worldwide vendor shipments of embedded multimedia terminal adapters (e-MTAs), or voice modems, jumped by about 550,000 units to nearly 2.1 million units, according to Kinetic Strategies. That amounts to a 36.5% increase from 1.5 million units in the 2nd quarter, and almost a 100% increase from nearly 1.1 million voice modems in the first quarter. With such major N. American cable operators as Comcast, Charter and Cox accelerating their VoIP deployments, vendor executives expect to see the voice modem figures rise even further in 2006.