As I sit on the sidelines wondering whether to do a weekly podcast, eMarketer is loudly pounding the table that the U.S. podcast audience could reach 25 million by 2008 and perhaps 50 million by 2010. The consulting firm also thinks advertising on podcasts will hit $80-million this year and $300-million by 2010. Is this hype or a fact of life? To be honest, I'm still regard podcasts as a geekie service appealing to geekie people but maybe I'm reading things wrong. It could be that podcasts represents the next new trend in audio broadcasts - hot on the heels of satellite-radio. It could be that eMarketer is right and podcasts will become a mainstream service in a few years. Then again, there's growing leeriness about how many people are reading the millions of blogs being created every year. To my way of thinking, it's difficult not to get the feeling that consulting firms have become too excited about the renewed interest in technology. With so much interest, there is a huge opportunity for these consulting firms to sell research to people who think they need to know what's happening. It should be pointed out the research firms (Forrester, Yankee Group, IDC, Gartner) played this game during the dot-com boom. While many of their projections failed to play out as expected at the time, many of their forecasts now materializing - albeit a few years later than what they envisioned.

Update: Steve Rubel thinks 50 million podcasts users is more than enough to attract the interest of advertisers.

Cindy Klassen is an Olympic hero after coming home from Turino with five medals but can she save Manitoba Telecom from its growing troubles after signing a multi-year endorsement deal with the Winnipeg-based apparently worth more than $1-million? The involvement of Klassen, a Winnipeg-native, can't hurt if it can help Manitoba Tel regain some of the luster it has lost in the past two years since the ill-fated $1.7-billion acquisition of Allstream. Then again, there may little that can stop the further erosion of Allstream's corporate telecom services business, which finds itself in a war against Rogers, Bell and Telus but without the finances resources to aggressively compete. In many markets, Allstream now finds itself the third option - not a great position in a business where margins are under pressure. Manitoba Tel doesn't appear to be thinking of selling Allstream after it unveiled a new organization structure that divides its business into two divisions: consumer and enterprise.
Tags: Cindy Klassen, Manitoba Telecom, Allstream

Telegeography will issue its Q4 voice-over-broadband numbers today that will show the U.S. market grew by 25% to 4.5 million subscribers. While Vonage is still the largest provider with 1.2 million customers, Time-Warner is quickly closing the gap as it added 246,000 subscriber to end the quarter at 1.1 million. Cablevision is third at 731,000 while Comcast is fourth with a disappointing 202,000. Telegeography expects there will be 7.9 million customers by year-end while revenue will jump to $2.1-billion from $1-billion. On the face of it, the growth appears to be good news for Vonage but it is increasing obvious the cablecos are quickly closing the gap as they launch more aggressive marketing campaigns. It seems clear Time-Warner will pass Vonage in the first-quarter as the largest VoIP broadband provider. This is not the best news for Vonage and its underwriters as they work to complete Vonage's $250-million IPO. For potential investors, the reality of heightened competition from well-financed rivals does not bode well for Vonage, which has been bleeding as its spends like a drunken sailor on marketing to acquire new customers. Does this mean Vonage could pull the IPO? It's highly unlikely but there is a possibility the offering price could be dropped to get the deal done, which means even more dilution for existing investors who have more than $400-million of private equity in play. For another take on the Telegeogaphy numbers, check out Om Malik's post, which includes some of the charts from the Telegeography report. Another must-read is Om's post on Vonage's troubling churn after he poured over the company's S-1 filing with the SEC. Om also has a post today on the oh-so-quiet departure recently of Vonage's chief marketing officer, Dean Harris, who I guess was the man behind all that online spending.