COLUMN:
Comcast Corp.’s Enhanced Cordless Telephone seems more like a cell phone than a typical home phone.
The new offering from the Philadelphia-based cable company - which in 3 1/2 years has become the fourth-largest provider of residential phone service in the U.S. - not only enables users to download ringtones and send text messages, but it includes a visual voice mail feature that allows messages to be played out of order.
Enhanced Cordless Telephone customers can also check and reply to e-mails, query the local Yellow Pages directory and access a universal address book that synchronizes with their computer.
“The last real innovation for phone service was caller ID and that was 25 years ago,” Cathy Avgiris, senior vice president and general manager of voice services at Comcast, told The Washington Times in a recent interview. “Now we’re in a position … to begin to innovate and integrate our three services together.”
Comcast, the nation’s largest video provider with 24.6 million cable customers, has 5.6 million voice subscribers. The firm serves 14.4 million high-speed Internet customers.
Just as phone companies AT&T and Verizon Communications are trying to make inroads in the video market, Comcast is peeling away phone customers with its Digital Voice service. But Ms. Avgiris said the firm is better positioned than the so-called Baby Bells because it owns and manages its own network for all three media platforms.
“We have much more flexibility to really converge the services together,” she said, adding that the company has a time-to-market advantage because its phone service is available to 90 percent of its footprint.
Indeed, about 80 percent of the company’s voice subscribers are also Comcast cable and Internet customers, taking advantage of its Triple Play offering.
Comcast is soon rolling out another integrated feature, dubbed universal caller ID, that entails a pop-up notification on either the computer or TV when there’s an incoming call.
Comcast’s new SmartZone Web portal, used by all new subscribers to the company’s voice and data services, makes voice mails accessible online. In the future, Ms. Avgiris said, the portal will enable customers to program their home set-top boxes remotely. The company is planning to switch over existing customers to SmartZone within the next six months, she said.
Asked about the trend of wireless subscribers who opt to get rid of their home phone lines altogether, she said: “Thirty to 40 percent of cell phone calls are within the home. Why use spotty coverage? I’m not claiming to replace the need for why you’d have a cell phone but with these additional features I’m saying there’s no reason for you not to have a home phone.”
“All that we’re doing is continuing to try to improve our services, make them better, more convenient for our customers,” she said. “Especially in an economy where customers are looking to save some money, Comcast Digital Voice is a value proposition.”
• E-mail Kara Rowland.
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