Shattering their old quarterly record for VOIP subscriber gains, North American cable operators signed up more than 1 million IP phone customers for the first time during the spring, according to the latest figures compiled by Cable Digital News.

Using mainly the publicly reported figures of cable companies, CDN estimates that U.S. and Canadian MSOs collectively netted 1.03 million new VOIP customers in the second quarter of 2006, beating their first-quarter VOIP gains by about 100,000 subscribers. As a result, CDN reckons that the North American cable industry ended June with approximately 4.8 million IP phone customers, up from slightly less than 3.7 million customers at the close of the first quarter and slightly more than 2.7 million at the end of last year.

The spring surge occurred even though the second quarter is traditionally the weakest three-month period of the year for the cable guys because of temporary service disconnects by college students and snowbirds leaving their homes for the summer. It came at the same time that U.S. and Canadian MSOs added about 1.18 million high-speed Internet access subscribers, suggesting that most new cable broadband data customers are also opting for broadband voice service.

Get all the details at Cable Digital News.

— Alan Breznick, Site Editor, Cable Digital News