Sure, we've given Comcast some grief over the years, but one thing that can't be denied is the speed at which the company absolutely dominated of the VoIP (sorry, Digital Voice) market. Today Comcast reached out to us to note that they're now the third largest residential phone company in the United States, only behind AT&T and Verizon. As of the fourth quarter of last year, the cable giant had leap-frogged over Qwest with 6.47 million VoIP customers, compared to 5.961 million (and dropping) lines for Qwest.

"Customers are choosing Comcast phone services because of the cost savings," Comcast Spokesman Charlie Douglas insists, claiming that Comcast service is 20 - 30% less than traditional phone service. The speed at which Comcast got VoIP deployed means they're grabbing the lion's share of the landline defectors coming from the baby bells. The fact that Comcast service is substantially more costly than independent VoIP carriers didn't seem to phase consumers, who are increasingly drawn to triple play promotional deals.

Comcast of course would argue that the higher price reflects the fact that Comcast's Digital Voice is a completely different service from their broadband service, and untouched by Comcast's new traffic management scheme. That ruffled the FCC's feathers recently, but isn't likely to see FCC action, given we've seen no evidence the throttling system deteriorates indie VoIP quality (they worked with Vonage to ensure as much). Most reasonable network neutrality advocates also aren't interested in preventing a carrier from prioritizing their own phone services.

The result is that Comcast's Digital Voice service quality gets higher marks than independent operators when it comes to audio quality. Meanwhile, outfits like Vonage continue to struggle with customer defections. One telecom analyst firm consultant tells us that independent operators hold less than 10% of the market now -- a number that continues to drop. The recent Sunrocket kerfuffle did little to help the impression that independent VoIP is going the way of the dodo -- at least among mainstream consumers wary of unfamiliar brands.

The next phase of the game involves AT&T and Verizon finally taking VoIP seriously. Traditionally terrified of expediting eroding landline revenues, both carriers have been tinkering in the residential VoIP market only half-heartedly. That should finally change this year, with both AT&T and Verizon planning major assaults on the sector. Verizon's re-branded Voicewing service officially dies March 31, to be replaced by their new Digital Voice service. After killing CallVantage, AT&T is also cooking up a more serious VoIP product.

Several customers of independent VoIP carrier Packet 8 were concerned the carrier had "pulled a Sunrocket" when the company's website went down yesterday, along with their entire VoIP network. According to posts in our forums, the problem was DNS related. "Registry.com messed up all our entries wiping out the DNS configuration pointing to Packet8/8x8 when they tried to renew the expiration for three of our domains," says one representative, who says they fixed their error. "However, the changes have not been propagated everywhere yet," he says. "Comcast, Sprint, and Level 3 have updated their DNS for sure; however, AT&T, Cox, and Verizon are still not pointing to us."

We’ve seen with the whole Vonage situation that having the right patents can make your company a whole lot of money in the VoIP industry. Maybe that is why Packet8 has worked to receive over seventy different patents related to VoIP technology. Their most recent patent was awarded earlier this month for “a videoconferencing system with a modular terminal that includes a conventional digital still camera coupled to an input port of the system”. Perhaps due in part to the acquisition of these patents, Packet8 remains a leader in the VoIP industry and recently won the VON Magazine Innovator Award for 2008.

8x8, provider of Packet8 residential VoIP service, did something today we'd not seen yet: they issued a press release stating that they would be the preferred provider for customers of a competing VoIP service that's going out of business. Oddly however, 8x8 didn't mention who the provider is, which has users in our Teleblend/SunRocket forum wondering if they're the lucky victims. From the release:Since about 50,000 of SunRocket's 200,000 customers migrated to TeleBlend that count seems a little low -- but with the quality of service TeleBlend's been offering, then again -- they may have already lost many of those customers. Packet8's CEO recently hinted that at least three or four VoIP operators were planning to exit the space. If anyone knows who the mystery folding VoIP provider is, drop us a line, we're sure their users would like to maybe -- oh, be told about it.