VoIP, Security, IPTV Bring Promised Value to Broadband Providers. We’ve been hearing for years about how broadband network operators need to move away from offering “dumb pipes” and instead focus on value-added services to drive up their margins and counterbalance the bucks they are losing to wireline replacement (in the case of the telcos) and DBS and telco TV challengers (in the case of the cable companies).

Well, they did. And it’s working.

A new report from Point Topic  reveals that consumer broadband value-added services revenue grew by 30 percent last year. The subscriber numbers of such services, meanwhile, increased 13 percent in 2009. The leading services were IP telephony, security, online gaming, IPTV and online music.

The “Consumer Broadband Value Added Services” report  indicates the run rate for such revenues ascended from $39.6 billion to $48.9 billion during 2009. That’s a better improvement than that for consumer broadband lines, which grew 14 percent, from 366 million to 417 million from Q408 to Q409, according to a summary of the report.

“Value-added services, like VoIP, security and IPTV grew more quickly than the number of broadband lines in 2009,” says John Bosnell, senior analyst at Point Topic. “The operators and ISPs are starting to increase the proportion of their revenues that they generate selling add-on services for broadband, and they are doing it successfully at least in revenue terms.”

Of course, the cablecos took the lead with VoIP, given they didn’t have the legacy PSTN in place like the telcos did.

The telcos, of course, have expanded into VoIP as well, but their more high-profile push has been on the IPTV front. Verizon has been front and center on this, with its fiber-to-the-home-based FiOS  IPTV effort.

By Paula Bernier.