While the telcos stare into the struggling wireline businesses, the cable companies are moving aggressively into the telephony market offering cheap telephony services through their widespread cable networks.

This aptly summarizes the competi-tion among the warring cable and telecom companies over customers who use voice services. The US telecom industry has been facing a continual onslaught from cable and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) pure plays crossing over into its traditional territory, the fixed line services. Scouting for more growth avenues, the cable industry, which offers video, data and telephony services as a part of the triple play, is eyeing the lucrative revenue pie of the telcos' landline customers.

Though the landline telephone business has ceased to be the cash cow for the telcos, it still remains a reliable source of cash flow. Emerging as an attractive growth opportunity, cable telephony with its higher revenues and lower investment costs has put the cable operators in an advantageous position to control the flow of digital content into US households. Cable companies have started offering voice services over their huge networks to fuel further growth, putting the bread and butter wireline business of the telcos at stake. According to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), USA the cable industry's network reaches 105 million US households providing them with a huge market to be tapped.

With more and more customers switching to wireless services and cheaper voice services offered by the cable companies the telcos are thinking of newer business models to keep their businesses going on.

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