A week ago, after patiently waiting for the price to drop and the long-term test results to come in, I broke down and finally bought an iPhone. As I sit in class, politely ignoring the professor lecturing just four rows in front of me, I’m pounding out a few hundred words about how the super-hyped smartphone/iPod/web browser has changed the way I interact with the world—a tremendous feat considering the iPhone has no physical keyboard.

First, and most surprising, is the fact that the iPhone has nearly replaced my laptop. I receive and send email, update and view my calendar, and perform my morning routine of newsgathering—all before I even get to class each morning. The only time I've abandoned my phone in favor of my laptop was in setting my starting lineup in my fantasy football league. ESPN's graphic-intense site simply takes too long to navigate on AT&T’s EDGE network. Speaking of which, the dual modes of the phone come in extremely handy around campus where Wi-Fi is abundant and cellular service is spotty. I'm constantly connected in a way that would disgust even the worst "crackberry" abusers.

Sprint Nextel has dropped out of a consortium with cable companies created to bid on wireless spectrum. A news report or two this week erroneously confused that venture with the company’s other cable JV. Be clear: Sprint’s spectrum decision has nothing to do with and does not affect Pivot, the mobile telephone service offered through a separate joint venture with several cable companies, including Cox.

Jeff Baumgartner reported (correctly) on the spectrum announcement in Light Reading’s Cable Digital News :

Sprint's involvement in SpectrumCo has been limited from the get-go. It did not participate in the auction, but did serve as a member of the bidding consortium. It held a non-voting 5 percent equity stake at the time the SpectrumCo partnership was formed. Sprint's withdrawal will allow it to recoup its investment. Sprint said it is withdrawing from the spectrum consortium so that it can focus on "primary strategic initiatives" with the cable industry, which includes the "Pivot" cellular service joint venture with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, and Bright House…. "This action has been long-planned and the withdrawal from participation in SpectrumCo does not reflect a change in strategy or focus," the company said in an emailed statement. "Sprint Nextel and its cable partners remain committed to their current initiatives, including Pivot."

Cox’s 2nd quarter highlights included the lowest customer churn (2.5%) in company history. (Here’s some media coverage of the announcement and here’s the official Cox release.) It’s a testament to the power of a “bundle” of services, even in the face of increasing competition. Another highlight is that, by selling multiple services into single homes, the company’s subscriber gains in the past year have more than made up for the loss of customers due to the company sale of cable operations representing about a million subscribers to Cebridge Connections last year. Overall, more than 60% of Cox’s roughly 6 million customers subscribe to at least two of the three major services, and bundled customers increased 11.9% over 2006. Speaking of the bundle, Cox will celebrate a full decade of delivering the bundle of cable, phone and high-speed Internet next month. It was September 1997 when Cox launched telephone in Orange County, Calif., completing the bundle and becoming the first major provider to commercially deliver cable, phone and high-speed Internet over a single broadband network.

This Los Angeles Times editorial takes a swipe at the telcos for hiking fees on custom calling features:

AT&T and Verizon wasted little time taking advantage of the freedom that the California Public Utilities Commission granted them in August. Unleashed from regulations that limited how they priced many of their services, California's largest telcos quickly hiked the fees they charged for many of their custom calling services, such as caller ID and call waiting. The phone companies had argued for unlimited "pricing flexibility" by pointing to the many phone lines they were losing to rivals, such as cable TV operators. They also said allowing them to respond quickly to competitors' promotional offers would (in AT&T's words) ensure that "customers reap the full benefits of competition."

Cable companies rank highest in telephone customer satisfaction in all six U.S. regions, according to J.D. Power and Associates’ latest study. Cable completely beat out the traditional telcos for the first time. Cox Communications is again tops in three of six regions, while Bright House, Cablevision and WOW! each top a region. Verizon, AT&T and Qwest were shut out at the top of all regions.

The study measures telephone customers’ satisfaction with their local and long distance providers in six major areas: performance and reliability, customer service, billing , image, cost of service, and offerings and promotions. The findings underscore the critical importance of bundling for service providers.

Okay, this one may scream self-promotion, but we simply couldn’t ignore an article in the current BusinessWeek, “A Cable Company People Don't Hate – How Cox is keeping customers happy and stealing business from the phone giants.” Yes, we cringe a bit at digs like the one in the headline, but, then again, we have to admit it’s a fair dig since Cable’s customer service record hasn’t always been sterling. But back to the present: the article addresses not only Cox Communications', but the industry’s, successful entry into the phone biz and our push into wireless. Here’s a snippet:

There's a ton of money to be made in phone service--about $60 billion of yearly revenue just on voice plans for U.S. consumers. And don't cable companies know it. For years they have been laying miles of new fiber-optic cable and doing everything they can to steal chunks of that business from the phone giants. So far they've managed to pull away about $4.6 billion in phone revenues, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

In the scramble for every customer, one cable outfit seems to have hit upon a formula that works: beating the phone companies at customer service. In recent surveys conducted by J.D. Power & Associates Inc., owned by Business Week parent The McGraw-Hill Companies, Atlanta-based Cox Communications outscores traditional phone providers such as AT&T, Verizon Communications, and Sprint Nextel. On a variety of metrics, from network performance and reliability to billing and cost, customers in several regions describe Cox as their preferred provider.

Techdirt has a post about the BusinessWeek article, here.

In “Consumers finally get a grip on VoIP,” USA Today highlights the rapid growth of residential telephone service delivered via Voice over Internet Protocol technology. According to the article, there were about 8.6 million VoIP users at the end of 2006, with 22.5 million predicted by 2010. As the article points out, those customers are attracted mainly by the robust phone features and lower prices enabled by VoIP. But the article also illustrates the continuing confusion between the two methods of VoIP delivery. One is Internet telephony, in which calls are routed over the World Wide Web and are therefore subject to the speed limitations of the user’s Internet connection and traffic on the public Internet. The other method is managed VoIP, in which calls are routed over private, managed backbone networks and are therefore not dependent on broadband connections or the vagaries of the public Internet. The millions of customers who get their phone service from cable companies (including Cox Communications) experience the managed method. Today’s article—indeed, most pieces about VoIP—didn’t make a clear distinction between the two delivery methods. But while customers ultimately don’t care how their calls are routed, the difference between the two is critical—as it’s ultimately a matter of quality and reliability.

This year at Cox Communications, we’re celebrating 10 years of delivering a bundle of cable, telephone and high-speed Internet services. As our 2006 accomplishments demonstrate, the benefits of bundling continue to make a huge positive impact. Some highlights: The number of new cable customers who also subscribe to Cox’s phone and/or Internet services is 60%, a record high. Customer churn (i.e., disconnects) is at an all-time low. In all, as of the end of 2006, Cox had 3.4 million “bundled” customers, representing an increase of about 15% over 2005. The bundle will soon grow larger with the addition of a fourth service, wireless. In related bundling news, Verizon said this week that, in an effort to compete with the cable bundle, it will integrate its wireless service, previously offered separate from landline and other services, into its bundle. Verizon also said its FiOS service added 89,000 TV customers in the quarter, although the company's profits declined 38% due to its aggressive fiber roll-out. Meanwhile, AT&T’s U-verse TV service added zero customers in the fourth quarter.

Not surprisingly, we love the current cover story in Telephony magazine, “The Best Phone Company in America?” Of course we love that it implies (without explicitly answering the question posed in its title) that Cox Communications is that phone company. But beyond the obvious self-serving, self-congratulatory reasons for us to love reporter Carol Wilson’s article, we above all respect and admire its painstakingly thorough review of the dozens of steps and components required to successfully launch and deliver cable telephony. In what is essentially a tutorial for new entrants in the telecom space, the article addresses basically every gory detail of the telephony biz—network redundancy, powering, billing and provisioning, customer care, knowledge management, training, research, etc.—in a surprisingly readable way. Granted, we admit that, other than Cox employees, it likely will be the rare reader who will stick with every one of the more than 3,500 words in the thing. But for those who like their business news unabridged, it definitely provides some enlightening historical context to the current hyper-competitive telecom marketplace.

Over the past several years, cable companies have made the transition to multi-service providers of more than just cable—a journey that started for Cox Communications with the launch of high speed Internet in 1996 and digital telephone in 1997. Cox has led the industry in “bundling” services. Yesterday, Cox announced that 57% of its nearly 6 million residential customers subscribe to more than one service—a 16% increase in bundled customers over the past year. But reflecting the ongoing transition away from just cable, Cox also has made a concerted effort recently to ensure a “line into every home” and pursue business out of every home passed by its network, even if that home has no interest in cable. Yesterday Cox announced success with that strategy, reporting an industry-leading number of non-video customers (432,000 of them) who choose Cox for high speed Internet and/or telephone, but not cable. Cox President Pat Esser described the rationale of Cox's "line in every home" strategy this way: “Our world is changing, and we needed to change our marketing strategies too.” Even so, Cox also saw strong video growth in the third quarter, growing basic cable subscriptions by 1.6%. Click here for Multichannel News' coverage of Cox's announcement.

It seems like confusion was in the air at an IPTV workshop last week at the Fall 2006 VON (the "Global IP Communications Industry Event" in Boston). Telephony magazine, which sponsored the IPTV workshop, reported: "…it was also clear for the 150-plus attendees today that, while it’s certain telecom service providers must compete with cable and do so immediately, it’s much less certain which network approach will serve them well in doing so."

Following presentations from Verizon and BellSouth, the mostly telco audience had no shortage of questions, ranging from “How do you know if you have enough bandwidth?" to "What’s the greater risk, taking longer to build out an all-fiber network or building a near-term fiber rich network that doesn’t go all the way into the home?” Perhaps the Telephony writer summarized it best as she began to recap the workshop: "It’s clear that there is still uncertainty among telecom service providers when it comes to what form of fiber optic access network makes the most sense – fiber to the premises, fiber to the curb or fiber to the node." Just imagine how things would’ve heated up if a cable operator had actually been in the room.

Yet another new research report underscores the growing popularity of bundling up on multiple communications services. According to consumer research firm Telephia, nearly 43% of online households subscribe to a bundle of at least two services (among Internet, phone and TV) from a single provider. The company’s research revealed that price was the leader in driving consumers to bundle, along with customer service and convenience. While we certainly love reading more and more about the business and consumer benefits of bundling, we can hardly resist the urge to respond (oh so maturely) “duh.” From the time Cox Communications launched high-speed Internet in 1996 and digital telephone shortly thereafter, we’ve experienced first-hand that customers love the convenience and value of getting multiple services from a single source. However, for a long while, it was pretty lonely in the bundling camp; only recently have most other major providers woken up to the benefits of bundling. Meanwhile, Cox remains the best bundler, and more than 50% of the company’s nearly 6 million customers subscribe to at least two of Cox’s major residential services (cable TV, phone and high-speed Internet services).

Intriguing quote from Forrester Research analyst Maribel Lopez in an Associated Press article today about the major RBOCs' TV strategies: "Telcos expect to grab 20 percent-30 percent of the market just by showing up. We think acquiring TV subs in a three-way battle will be much tougher than that.... Assuming telcos execute flawlessly, they still have to steal customers in a saturated market whose growth is largely tied to population growth." The article reports that the major telcos are seeing higher stock values following a tough 2005, citing wireless growth and cost-cutting, but noting that the rise in stock price comes as the telcos suffer continued loss of phone customers to VoIP providers, including Cable. In fact, as of the end of the second quarter, the number of Internet-based phone customers had risen 150% from a year earlier, to 7 million. As we all know by now, the loss of phone customers is driving Verizon and AT&T's push to upgrade their networks with fiber. Speaking of which, Verizon says its $20 billion fiber-to-the-home project had helped garner 110,000 FiOS customers at the end of the second quarter—“a level the company said represented an average market penetration of 15 percent,” according to the AP.

But some analysts aren't sure that early success can be seen as indicative of how the battle will play out. Already, Verizon's FiOS rollout has sparked a nasty arms race in the Long Island region of New York, where cable provider Cablevision Systems Corp. has been boosting its Internet speeds in retaliation. Meanwhile, in a possible sign of the technological challenges phone companies face with their foray into cable, the new AT&T has fallen well behind with its original timetable for U-verse. That service, which uses Internet technologies to deliver TV over a copper phone line, costs only a fraction of the investment of FiOS, but the company has yet to show enough confidence for a full-scale market launch.

It was nice to see recognition of the great strides Cable has made in the business services market, in a Reuters article this week:

After winning over many consumers by packaging phone, Internet and TV services into attractive bundles, cable is planning to attack the estimated $100 billion corporate market....Telecommunications analysts said companies like Verizon and AT&T Inc. have become complacent in serving small and medium businesses because they have not faced the same competitive or regulatory pressures as in residential markets.

Following up on the news from yesterday that Cox Digital Telephone and other cable phone services dominated the latest J.D. Power and Associates customer satisfaction study: Of course we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to toot our own horn with a press release, which gives specific results from the three regions in which Cox Communications ranked highest in customer satisfaction. And, just in case you weren’t aware, it clarifies that Cox is the largest cable telephony provider in the nation.

Okay, that's it for the shameless self-promotion (for now, at least).

Cable companies ranked highest in five of six regions in the marketing research firm’s annual study of consumers’ satisfaction with their local and long distance telephone providers. Cox Communications alone took the top spot in three of the regions. From J.D. Power and Associates:

As cable companies aggressively entice telephone customers with attractively priced service bundles, many are also outperforming traditional telephone companies in satisfying customers, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2006 Residential All-Distance Telephone Customer Satisfaction Study (SM) released today.

The study, which measures customer satisfaction with both local and long distance telephone service, finds that cable companies rank highest in customer satisfaction in five of six U.S. regions. In 2005, just one cable company—Cox—led any of the regional customer satisfaction rankings. Cox Communications now ranks highest in three regions, while newcomers Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable each rank highest in one region. Verizon is the sole traditional telephone company ranking highest in a region.

The 2006 study marks the fourth consecutive year Cox Digital Telephone has dominated in J.D. Power's West region rankings. This is the first year in which the company qualified for inclusion in the study in other regions (based on total subscribers in those areas). Click here for the full press release, “Cable Companies Dominate Customer Satisfaction Rankings for Local and Long Distance Telephone Service; Cox Communications Ranks Highest in Three Regions, While Bright House Networks, Time Warner Cable and Verizon Each Rank Highest in One Region.”