Market research firm Telephia has organized the capability to start accurately tracking, on a monthly basis, residential access line share at the metropolitan market level.
Telephia, which began by measuring an initial 10 markets in Q4 2006, said it will roll out its patented Network Signal Polling technology through 75 markets by Q4 2007.
The company is already providing metrics on the mobile phone market within that same footprint.
“As competition for residential subscribers intensifies, leading telcos, cable MSOs, VoIP operators and Wall Street analysts are looking to Telephia research to help guide strategies,” said Laura Taylor, Telephia’s director of product management.
In the company’s most recent findings, telco line loss was highest in Phoenix where the incumbent telco only served 60 percent of residential voice lines, and lowest in Boston where telco market share was still 80 percent.
However, data on share of gross lines activated in December 2006 shows that telco line loss is accelerating in Boston, with the cable MSO taking 31 percent of new lines, as compared to its market share of 18 percent at the beginning of December. (Comcast is the biggest operator in Boston.)
Competitive gains from the pure-play VoIP operators like Vonage are relatively consistent across the three markets, while cable MSO performance drives most of the variance in telco line loss, according to Telephia.