Who will be the Breakout Telecom Company in 2006?

Every year we see a lot of new telecom companies coming in to the market to take a piece of the competitive prepaid telecom landscape. While I am 100% for competition the question always arises which one of these new telecom companies will have the right business plan for success?

IP Telephony was the buzz in 2005, the year that saw Vonage as the breakout performer but 2006 looks to be much of the same, except this time it looks to be the year of the Internet Telephony enabler. Vonage managed to single handedly peak everyone's interest in the VoIP arena and now many cable and older telephony operators are rushing to catch up and cash in on the wave.

On the top of my list I see Net2Phone reclaiming their once large dominance in he VoIP world but this time with a mix of huge cable deals and on the backs of their new push back into the softphone market. The only thing that brings a question mark is the potential take over by IDT. If the take over happens it's hard to say what direction the company will go in but if IDT leaves them be I am confident that they will finaly come back to being a household name and seriously making Vonage stop, look and listen.

Other companies to watch for in 2006:

at&t = The new SBC has at lot at stake with their recent acquisition and name change and so far have come out of the gate running!

Radiant = A long time player whose time has come in the prepaid world!

Boost Mobile = With their youth oriented marketing and cool offerings they are sure to be in the lead in the year in which prepaid cellular takes off!