Comcast to Launch Net Phone Service in Hub

Apr. 14–Comcast Corp. will begin rolling out its new $40-a-month unlimited Internet phone service in metropolitan Boston next month, taking dead aim at Verizon Communications Inc.’s franchise just as Verizon begins pushing into the television business.

While Comcast’s service will carry phone calls in the same digital-packet format as much cheaper services from companies like Vonage Holdings Corp., Comcast executives are bristling at being lumped in with other “Internet telephony” providers.

Calls will move on private networks controlled by Comcast, not the Internet at large, and Comcast will offer several features cheaper rivals don’t. Among them: Technicians who hook up all of a home’s phones, not just the one next to the computer modem; emergency 911 calling services; and eight-hour battery-powered backup to keep phone service functioning during blackouts. The service will also give people access to voice mail through their e-mail accounts.

“You get the same or better reliability that you get from Ma Bell,” Comcast chief executive Brian L. Roberts said yesterday in a speech to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. “We think our voice over Internet protocol is different from all the other VOIPs you’ve heard about.”

Comcast already has about 300,000 phone customers in New England who get service — the same conventional technology as a Verizon landline — delivered over cable lines. However, that cable phone service is unavailable in Boston and several dozen of the 342 other New England communities Comcast serves. The Internet phone service will be the first telephone product Comcast markets in Boston and many other area communities.

The Internet phone service will be roughly $10 a month cheaper than Comcast’s current unlimited nationwide calling plan, although the $40 rate applies only for people who take both $40-plus cable TV and $43 broadband Internet access. The rate is $45 for subscribers who take either TV or broadband, and $55 as a stand-alone service.

“We’re extremely competitive and better priced,” Verizon spokeswoman Bobbi Henson said. Verizon customers can get high-speed Internet service and unlimited nationwide Internet calling for $60 a month, more than $20 a month less than Comcast. Adding a conventional phone line with unlimited nationwide calling with broadband would cost $8 less than Comcast. Vonage, AT&T Corp.’s CallVantage, and other services are $10 to $20 cheaper than Comcast.

“Comcast isn’t introducing anything new and better,” added RCN spokeswoman Brooke Tyson.

Comcast’s push into phone service comes as Verizon has launched a $5 billion deployment of a new super-high-speed fiber-optic network called FiOS in parts of 14 states, including at least 39 cities and towns in Massachusetts. Verizon has begun signing up customers for Internet access at speeds up to five times faster than Comcast’s, and later this year plans to begin offering television over FiOS.

Comcast Cable president Stephen B. Burke said in an interview he remains confident Comcast will fare better attacking Verizon’s core phone business than Verizon will trying to get into TV.

With more than $39 billion spent since 1996 by Comcast and its predecessors revamping cable systems for Internet and phone service and new digital, high-definition, and video-on-demand TV services, Burke said, “We’ve finished our network investment. Theirs is all still ahead of them.”

Citing rivals such as RCN Corp. and satellite providers Dish Network and DirecTV, Burke said. “Verizon will be the fourth or fifth operator coming into the video market. In the facilities-based wireline phone business, we’re the second. History shows that when you’re the second person to come in, you do a lot better than when you’re the third or the fourth or the fifth. And the video business is very complicated.”

Burke said Comcast wants to soon include wireless phone plans in its service bundles and said the idea of a hybrid cellphone that switches over to unlimited fixed-price Internet phone service inside subscribers’ homes “we think is a big part of our future.”

Gary Forsee, the chief executive of Sprint Corp., a key telecom partner for many cable companies, recently predicted such “combo phones” will hit the US market next year.

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