For anyone questioning about Vonage's IPO prospects, Om Malik has poured through the S-1. It reveals, he said, "more red-flags that the great Boston dig". In particular, Om focuses on Vonage's churn - the number of customers who leave each month  - and the cost to replace them. The more I read about the Vonage IPO, the more I wonder how they can convince anyone to climb onboard. If you're an institutional investor, do you invest in a money-losing company in an ultra-competitive market at a time when some economists are saying the bullish market is over and a recession may be required to bring the U.S. economy back into equilibrium? That said, anything can be sold at the right price so it will be fascinating to see Vonage founder Jeff Citron in action during the road show. I'm no analyst but if there was skepticism about the Google IPO (and we should remember all those smart institutional investors who stayed on the sidelines), then the Vonage IPO is going to be an extremely tough sell.

Rogers Communications plans to add 200K to 250K cable telephony customers this year after ending 2005 with 144K. This appears to be a conservative target given Rogers didn't market its telephony service too aggressively last year. Assuming Rogers meets its targets, Videotron and Shaw each attract another 175K to 200K customers and Cogeco gets 50K, that's 500K to 600K new cable telephony customesr in 2006 - bringing the total to 1M. This is not too far off Moody's Investors Services' target of 1.2 million cable telephony subscribers. So how do carriers respond strategically? They launch IP-TV services, push a lot harder on bundles and market the heck out of the fact traditional phone service works well and it's well-priced. Will this be enough to keep the cablecos from storming the gates? At this point, the cablecos seem to have more momentum as they carve out telephony market share at a faster rate than the carriers can attract TV customers.

The new beta version of Qumana's blog publishing tool is almost "live" after a flurry of activity and improvements in recent weeks. I've been using Qumana for several months and been impressed by the efforts made to make it more user-friendly. Amid the onslaught of new Web 2.0 services/applications, it's one of the few tools I've tried, use and embraced. This not to suggest that I don't like Blogware, which will launch a much-needed upgrade later this month, Performancing or Bleezer but it's rare to find something you like that works well. Now, Qumana has to focus on upgrading its Adgenta advertising network.