According to research done by Sandvine Inc., there are more than 1,100 VOIP service providers around the world - ranging from large telcos and cablecos to local "mom and pop" operations and free services from firms such as Skype. Sandvine came up with this eye-catching statistic after analyzing data traffic moving across its global network of ISP customer sites, which account for more than 20 million broadband subscribers worldwide. Sandvine, which provides a variety of services to ISPs such as traffic management technology, said the growth of VOIP traffic means there will be serious quality of service challenges to broadband service providers. "The failure or success of VoIP offerings depends on the level of QoE that a service provider can achieve and sustain, so network managers must determine very quickly how QoE can best be quantified and ensured," Sadvine opined in a press release. Om Malik makes an excellent point that if you assume there will be three million VOIP subscribers in the U.S. by the end of 2005, and that the cablecos and Vonage will have two million customers, it leaves hundreds of VOIP SPs battling it out for the rest. Yikes! For people not familar with Sandvine, its founders started a company in Waterloo, Ont. called Pixstream Inc., which was acquired for nearly US$400-million in 2000. Four months later, Cisco closed Pixstream as part of a corporate restructuring that saw the elimination of 8,000 employees. It was a strange move given Pixstream was originally only looking for a small investment from Cisco but the deal expanded when Cisco made it clear it wanted the whole kit and kaboodle.