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Charter Communications to Offer Local Phone Service to Madison, Wis., Area

Posted on: Tuesday, 31 August 2004, 06:00 CDT

Sep. 1--Charter Communications will add local phone service to its cable television and Internet offerings beginning next month.

After Wausau and St. Louis, the Madison area will be the third community in the nation to receive the Charter Communications phone service, which uses a system called Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Charter spokesman Dave Mack said customers could save roughly 10 percent to 13 percent if they order all three services. Phone service begins Sept. 9.

About 31,000 customers were using Charter's telephone services during the second quarter of 2004, but Mack said the company plans an aggressive rollout of the service through the end of the year. On Monday, Charter announced agreements with Sprint to provide long distance service connections and with Level 3 Communications and Accenture to help set up the service.

Barry Orton, a UW-Madison telecommunications professor, said even mainstream telephone companies are integrating VoIP with their systems. Charter and other cable companies have the advantage of being able to deliver video, the Internet and telephone services over fiber optic cable networks. All three services can't be delivered easily over the copper wire phone network.

"It's the way the telephone is going," Orton said of Charter's new service. "I think it'll be very popular and it'll be a very competitive service. They'll take a big chunk of the market away from the phone companies."

He said a small company called Vonage, which has been offering phone service over the Internet nationally, proved that the system could work. Besides Charter, he said Time Warner is offering phone service in some of its markets including Milwaukee. Time Warner plans to extend phone service soon in 34 markets.

Jay Krambs, a business telephone salesman with Forward Electronics of Wausau, where Charter already offers VoIP service, said his mother switched to it several months ago and seems happy with it.

Krambs said Charter probably is taking customers away from Verizon, Wausau's local telephone provider, but he hasn't heard about businesses switching to the service. Forward Electronics installs digital telephone, voice mail and auto attendant systems for businesses.

Krambs said VoIP systems are an increasing part of his business.

"It's definitely becoming more popular," he said. "That's the direction a lot of our systems are going."

SBC spokesman Howard Riefs said his company goes a step further than Charter by offering wireless services through Cingular as well as DSL (digital subscriber line) Internet service and satellite TV service through Dish Network.

"It's a very competitive market out there," he said. "Right now, customers are interested in determining the best price. They're not going after VoIP technology."

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(c) 2004, The Wisconsin State Journal. 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.

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