Despite its growing pains, telco TV appears to have good growth prospects, according to In-Stat. The research firm expects the number of subscribers will climb to 32 million by the end of 2009 from 1.6 million in 2004. More than half of these customers will be located in Asia. In-Stat's optimism is obviously based on the notion Microsoft will have figured out the bugs current plaguing its telco-TV software! On a more serious note, television is quickly becoming a strategic necessity for carriers as cablecos aggressively move into the voice business, while new entrants such as Google, Skype, Microsoft and AOL push harder in the VOIP space.With competition coming from all sides, carriers need to offer a TV service to stay competitive and, more important, retain customers. It is quickly becoming a major battleground, which explains why Microsoft is taking so much grief for its problems.

With much less hyperbole than previous benchmark announcements, Vonage said today it now has more than one million lines in service - the press release was all of two sentences. Maybe Vonage has realized there's less interest in pure subscriber numbers without knowing the cost to acquire these customers, how long they stay with the service and how much ARPU they generate. My take is Vonage watchers have become much more sanguine. As a result, its days as the industry rebel and innovator have perhaps disappeared - as has some of the interest in a potential IPO. The new kid of the speculation block is clearly Skype, what with visions of a multi-billion dollar acquisition dancing in the heads of VCs such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
Update: There is a difference between "lines" and "subscribers" within the Vonage world. One subscriber can have multiple lines. In Canada, for example, a subscriber pays $39.95 a month for a plan featuring unlimited North American LD and $8 a month for an additional line. Therefore, $47.95 for two lines. That's a big difference from a financial perspective.

Tyler Hamiltion has an interesting column in the Toronto Star about how blogs are being increasingly inundated with spam. It has riled up Mark Cuban (Ice Rocket, Dallas Mavericks, etc.) that he's threatening to ban Blogger.com blogs from Ice Rocket based on his belief the it is being used by spammers to create slogs - fake blogs that aim to attract visitors to marketing Web sites. I can commisserate with Tyler's spam woes as I try to deal with the flurry of obnoxious porn and poker ads appearing as "comments" on my site. Just as the powers that be went after e-mail spam, it now appears the time has come for the blogging community to seriousloy tackle spam 2.0.
.