Sixty-one percent of cable customers who are receiving VoIP are satisfied with their service, versus 57 percent of those using handset-based VoIP providers like Vonage; just 48 percent of PC-based VoIP customers services like Skype expressed satisfaction. There are a couple of reasons for this difference, according to Boyd Peterson, senior vice president of consumer research at Yankee Group. "The customers with video, data, and voice service are much more valuable to that cable operator, so the cable operator is more interested in providing highly supported services," he says.

At the same time, a VoIP service like Vonage or Skype is "just an application, so the expectation for quality is lower for those service providers." And customers of those services know that the ability to get support will be lower. "It's like a cell phone. It's not quite as good as a land line, but the cost is so much better, it's worth it." "This is good news for U.S. cable providers offering new VoIP services, since the majority of customers prefer to receive multiple services form a single provider," says Marc Itzkowitz, director of product marketing and management at SupportSoft.

The combination of VoIP and broadband access is swaying customers away from specialized VoIP providers towards cable companies. Eighty percent of cable VoIP customers surveyed said that they also receive their broadband service from their cable provider. And cable providers are stepping up to support multiple services, Peterson says. "Cable companies aren't afraid to roll a truck, because they know that customers represent the accumulation of voice, video, and data or some combination."

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