With the larger cable operators all rolling out VOIP to their markets, a new study predicts that North American MSOs will sign up nearly 28 million residential phone customers by the end of 2009, increasingly at the expense of the telcos.

In the study, Convergence Consulting Group predicts that U.S. cable operators will have 24.5 million residential phone customers, or 24 percent of the total American phone market, in a little more than three years' time. That represents a big jump from 5.6 million phone subscribers, or 5 percent of the total market, at the end of 2005 and an estimated 9.1 million phone users, or 8 percent of the total market, at the end of this year.

Similarly, Convergence Consulting believes that Canadian cable operators will more than double their share of the residential phone market over the next three years. The study predicts that Canadian MSOs will have nearly 3.3 million residential phone users, or 27 percent of the total Canadian phone market, by the close of 2009. That's up from 835,000 phone customers, or 6 percent of the total Canadian phone market, at the end of last year and an estimated 1.6 million subscribers, or 12 percent of the overall market, at the close of this year.

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— Alan Breznick, Site Editor, Cable Digital News