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Comcast Taking Digital Phone Orders

Posted on: Friday, 9 December 2005, 18:00 CST

By Doug LeDuc, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Dec. 9--Billboards have been up for months saying Comcast Digital Voice was coming to town. Now the new digital phone service is up.

After a month of testing, Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp. announced Thursday it has started taking orders here for a service with unlimited local and domestic long-distance calling, Web access to voice mail, and 12 of the most popular calling features.

The provider of cable television and high-speed Internet service will begin installing the residential phone service in the area next week. It will be available in Fort Wayne, New Haven, Huntertown, Woodburn, unincorporated Allen County and Huntington.

"Most people are going to want to keep their existing phone number and ... that process takes about a week," said Mark Apple, regional vice president of communications in Indianapolis. It requires Comcast to contact local phone service providers, he said, "to let them know these people are switching to us, and they want to keep their phone number."

In most cases, the number-porting process also will involve the dominant provider of local phone service in Fort Wayne, Verizon Communications.

"I think it will be the first significant competition for Verizon in Fort Wayne for local phone service," Apple said. To control the quality of Comcast Digital Voice, the company will use its private network rather than the public Internet for the service.

But, because it is digital, the Comcast product will come with most of the features consumers like in services based on Voice Over Internet Protocol technology.

Comcast Digital Voice will work with existing touch-tone phones and residential phone wiring, and can be installed in a couple of hours, Apple said.

Comcast will offer a discount on the cost of its cable television, broadband and phone services to customers willing to buy them in a bundle, and it expects customers to appreciate the convenience of paying for them in a single bill.

The monthly cost of the service is $39.95 for customers who also subscribe to the company's cable television and broadband service, $44.95 for those who subscribe to one of those other services, and $54.95 for customers who aren't buying any other Comcast products. The service handles 911/E911 calls the way traditional phone companies do, and when it is installed in a home, it is equipped with up to several hours of battery backup in case of power failure. E911, or Enhanced 911, gives emergency dispatchers a geographic location of a 911 call from a cell phone.

Indianapolis was the first Comcast market to get the service, and it has been available there since January. By the end of the year, the company will have it in 20 markets available to more than 15 million consumers.

Without saying how many of its customers subscribe to Comcast Digital Voice, Apple said more than 75 percent of those who do "are choosing to take all three products from us. We're finding the bundling option is very popular with our customers."

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To see more of The News-Sentinel, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.FortWayne.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

CMCSK, VZ,

Source: The News-Sentinel (Fort Wayne, Ind.)

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