Adelphia to drop long distance; go voIP
[Ntop responded to an RFP from Adelphia re providing cable telephony to them about 2 months ago; this is the most concrete statement I’ve seen from Adelphia re actually deciding they will go voIP]
Adelphia to drop long-distance
By Kristi Swartz, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 7, 2004
Adelphia Cable is getting out of the traditional telephone business.
The Florida Public Service Commission on Tuesday approved a request from Adelphia Telecommunications of Florida Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the nation's fifth-largest cable provider, to stop selling long-distance service.
Adelphia began offering the service to consumers in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties in 1997, but decided late last year to work instead on Internet telephony, otherwise known as Voice-over Internet Protocol or VoIP, which allows people to make phone calls through their computers.
"We're focusing our efforts on VoIP through our cable platform," said Chris Melcher, vice president of law and public policy for Adelphia's Southeast region, which is based in West Palm Beach.
Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Adelphia has 560,000 customers in this area and is nearly finished improving its cable networks so it can offer digital cable and high-speed Internet to all of its customers. The upgrades are a gateway to offering VoIP, which the company plans to do next year, executives have said.
"The cable companies are going to look exactly like the phone companies," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst in Marietta, Ga. "They are all going to have a line that's going to come into the home, it's going to be a broadband line, and everything is going to plug into it."
The cable companies are simply ceasing to offer traditional phone service because they couldn't make money off it and are beginning to sell VoIP where they have complete control over their network, he said.
Steve Wilkerson, president of the Tallahassee-based Florida Cable Telecommunications Association, said he's seeing more cable companies get into VoIP. |
