----- Original Message -----
From: "William Pitcock" <nenolod@systeminplace.net>
That is the same market Vonage is now targeting in the US, basically. National calling in the US is basically bundled with most calling plans now. I'm not convinced that many people use Vonage in the US - my experience with it was that it was not as reliable as the VOIP products offered through the various broadband providers I have had.
Let us be clear: if you're getting "digital telephone" service from a cable television provider, it is *not* "VoIP", in the usage in which most speakers mean that term -- "Voice Over Internet" is what they should be saying, and cable-phone isn't that; the voice traffic rides over a separate DOCSiS channel, protected from both the Internet and CATV traffic on the link. So of course Vonage and other VoN products will be less rugged. As I recall, this questionably fair competitive advantage has been looked into by ... someone. (Cablecos won't permit competing VoIP services to utilize this protected channel, somewhere between "generally" and "ever".) Cheers, -- jra