Hi Kevin, Interesting article about bundled services from COX in RI.
Hi speed IN, plus phone. I recall you had asked Frank about a site that explained the whole structure of ATHM's network. Thought you might like this article as it breaks down the complex into 'public' size understanding...which I appreciate @times!
projo.com
By TIMOTHY C. BARMANN
Journal Staff Writer
Cox Communications will begin its long-awaited telephone service for residential customers tomorrow, ushering in a new era of competition in Rhode Island.
The cable giant is expected to announce today that residents of Cumberland, Lincoln, Smithfield, North Smithfield and Woonsocket will be able to sign up for a service that carries their telephone calls over the same wires that Cox uses to deliver television pictures and high-speed Internet access.
Current Cox customers will pay $11.95 a month for a single phone line, which is 3 percent to 31 percent below Bell Atlantic's prices, depending on where they live.
Cox's entry into the phone business will mark the first time Rhode Islanders will be able to get local and long-distance telephone, television and high-speed Internet service from a single company.
''This is a wonderful situation for subscribers,' said Thomas Ahern, administrator of the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers. ''They're now going to be given a choice between facilities-based competitors.'
Bell Atlantic, which has the most to lose in terms of market share, said the new competition was expected and the company welcomed it.
Cox becomes the second company to offer residential telephone service in Rhode Island besides Bell Atlantic. The first was Log On America, of Providence, an Internet-access provider that entered the phone business in Rhode Island last September.
The competition is largely the result of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which opened up local telephone monopolies that had been controlled by the regional Bell telephone companies.
Cox's service, called Cox Digital Telephone, will be available initially to 51,596 homes in the five northern Rhode Island communities, starting tomorrow. It will be available by this summer in Pawtucket, East Providence and Central Falls. The company said other Cox areas will get telephone service later this year.
The service may appeal mainly to current Cox television or Internet customers because they will receive a package discount for subscribing to more than one service.
The cost for a single telephone line for a customer who receives another Cox service will be $11.95 a month. By comparison, Bell Atlantic charges $12.30 to $17.26 a month for a single line, depending on the community.
That means that current Cox customers who pay the highest rate for telephone service from Bell Atlantic can save about 31 percent off the cost of a single phone line.
The Cox service includes call forwarding, but does not include calls to directory assistance, which are billed at 50 cents each.
Those who order two lines can also save over Bell Atlantic prices. Cox customers will pay $9.95 a month for a second line, for a total savings of between 11 percent and 37 percent, depending on the community.
Customers will be able to choose any long-distance carrier they like, or go with Cox's long-distance service at 10 cents a minute.
Cox will also sell the same type of calling features that Bell Atlantic offers, such as caller ID and call waiting, at up to 20 percent less than Bell Atlantic's prices, the company said.
Non-Cox customers can also sign up for service, but there may be little, if any savings. The cost for a single line is $19.95, including call forwarding.
Cox is by far the dominant cable company in Rhode Island. With 288,000 subscribers as of December 31, the company supplies service to 96 percent of all cable customers in the state. About two-thirds of the state's households are Cox subscribers. The only areas Cox doesn't reach are Barrington, Warren and Bristol, which are served by Full Channel TV; New Shoreham, which is served by Block Island TV; and Foster, which has no cable service.
Cox began offering phone service to businesses in Rhode Island last year when it won a five-year contract to provide phone, cable and data services to most of the Providence Place mall tenants and the mall itself. The company had about 100,000 telephone subscribers in other parts of the country as of late last year, the company said.
Scott Hightower, director of consumer broadband services for Cox, said the company chose to roll out the service in northern Rhode Island first for two reasons. For one, those areas are where Bell Atlantic's rates are the highest. And the network in that area was one of the first areas that Cox upgraded to allow information to travel in both directions.
''We have that plant so it's perfectly fine-tuned, in pristine condition,' he said. The company has invested about $250 million overall to improve its network in Rhode Island.
Customers who switch from Bell Atlantic will be able to keep their phone numbers, and continue to be listed in the phone book, he said.
To establish service, a technician installs an interface box on the side of a customer's house. From there, a connection is made to the house's phone wiring. Existing phone jacks will continue to work as before.
''There's no need to make any changes,' Hightower said. ''The dial tone sounds the same.'
Phone calls will travel over the cable lines to a ''node' -- a piece of equipment that connects the cable wires to Cox's fiber-optic network. From there, calls will travel to Cox's switching facility in West Warwick. Then calls will go in one of three directions. Long-distance calls are routed to a switching facility in Providence. Local calls will go either to a Bell Atlantic switch in Providence, or back out to Cox customers.
Even though voice, Internet and television transmissions all travel over the same wires, they are sent at different frequencies, so they don't interfere with each other. All three can be used at the same time, Hightower said.
Cox will mirror the local calling boundaries that have been set up by Bell Atlantic, and charge 10 cents a minute for calls made beyond those local calling boundaries within the state. However, Cox will make all calls going into Providence a local call. Bell Atlantic is working to implement one-way calling into Providence, a project it says will take more than a year to complete.
Should people worry about getting their phone service from a newcomer to the phone business? Hightower says Cox has been offering phone service for more than two years now, including in the Hartford area since 1998.
''Cox continually ranks high in the cable industry in overall customer satisfaction, and our network reliability is a near-perfect 99.986 percent,' said Greg Bicket, vice president and general manager of Cox's New England operation.
The company has trained more than three dozen of its 175 to 200 technicians in Rhode Island to handle telephone service installation and maintenance, and eventually all will be trained, Hightower said.
Backup batteries on utility poles will kick in if the power goes out. Those can last about four hours, Hightower said. Generators are also in place to supply electricity during a power failure, he said.
What kind of impact could Cox have on the market place?
Rhode Island researchers have concluded that people are ready to switch local phone companies.
A study last summer by the University of Rhode Island found that only 44 percent of telephone customers would stick with Bell Atlantic when competition arrives in the local phone market.
The new competition could spur lower rates. In Connecticut, Cox began offering phone service in five communities in 1998. Last June, Cox lowered its phone rates by about $2 a month to try to grab more customers away from Southern New England Telephone.
Lillian McGee, a spokeswoman for Bell Atlantic, said the company had no plans to change its rates in response to Cox entering the phone business.
Although Bell Atlantic will lose market share to Cox, it stands to benefit by showing local and federal regulators that the local phone market is opening to competition. Bell Atlantic needs to demonstrate that before it will be allowed to offer long-distance telephone service in Rhode Island.
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