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Time Warner Offers Phone Service in South Carolina

Posted on: Wednesday, 20 October 2004, 19:00 CDT

Oct. 20--Time Warner Cable has started offering digital telephone service in the Columbia area, Orangeburg and Florence, company officials said Tuesday.

The cable and Internet service provider joins a crowded field of telecom companies that are trying to lure customers to VoIP -- voice over Internet protocol. VoIP uses the same digital technology as the Internet to package and send data over networks.

And Time Warner says the benefit is convenience.

"This lets customers have phone service, cable and Internet on one bill," said Charlene H. Keys, vice president of Time Warner's Digital Phone Service in Columbia.

The price of the new unlimited local and long-distance phone service depends on discounts for buying other Time Warner services, Keys said. The price will range from $39.95 to $49.95 per month.

The service uses VoIP but on a proprietary network, not on the Internet, for security reasons, Keys said. The company is working with Sprint and MCI to interconnect that network with the traditional phone network, she said.

Time Warner's move into phone service gives a new competitor to BellSouth, but Henri Etta Baskins, regional director of BellSouth in the Midlands said: "They are one of many. We're not a monopoly like we're accused of being."

Nonetheless, BellSouth officials are concerned about regulatory challenges that Time Warner's technology presents, BellSouth spokeswoman Marcia Purday said. Cable companies are regulated differently than traditional phone companies, and that could put the latter at a competitive disadvantage, Purday said.

"People are changing the way they communicate, and the public policy of how we are regulated needs to be changed to create a more even playing field," Purday said.

Keys would not comment on BellSouth's efforts to change phone regulation in South Carolina.

In September, BellSouth had about 1.1 million phone lines in South Carolina, down from more than 1.4 million in December 1999, a 21 percent decrease, according to company and government figures.

Time Warner Cable has a few hurdles of its own in offering phone service.

Keys said the company is waiting for certification to offer phone service in Lexington, but expects to make that offer in March 2005.

The company should be able to offer phone service in Myrtle Beach and Sumter by the end of 2004, she said.

BellSouth has made its move into TV service. In August, BellSouth started reselling satellite TV service from DirecTV in discounted bundles of telephone service and TV service. At the time, BellSouth said it was the only business in its nine-state region to offer bundles of phone services, Internet service and digital TV service.

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Source: The State (Columbia, S.C.)

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