Earlier this decade, when cable companies started their foray into the phone business, not many gave them much of a chance to succeed. Sure they could sell a lot of broadband connections but no one thought they would be players in telecom services such as voice. Fast forward to today and the situation is entirely different. During the first half of 2009, cable companies across the globe generated about $30 billion in telecom service revenues, according to Telegeography, a market research company. Voice in fact has become the secret weapon for cable companies around the world.

Those revenues come from 49 million voice subscribers and 82 million broadband subscribers worldwide. The revenues of cable companies have grown 28 percent every year since 2003, versus overall wireline business growth of 4 percent. CableCos now account for 29 percent of broadband subscribers and 9 percent of voice subscribers in countries where they are allowed to compete with the phone companies. That works out to about 15 percent of residential telecom revenues in countries where cabl