By Andrea Matetic, Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly
A seemingly innocuous Comcast billboard on Jefferson Boulevard is a declaration of war.
The billboard previews the melding of cable television, Internet and phone service: “One company. One bill. One low price.”
As cable giants like Comcast stomp onto the territory of telecommunications titans like Verizon and vice versa, the battlefield is nationwide, but Fort Wayne is home to a particularly intense skirmish.
Verizon’s $65 million commitment to construct a fiber optic network in Fort Wayne and New Haven upped the stakes locally.
“We’re going to see Comcast and Verizon go toe-to-toe,” said Matt Hibiske, director of marketing at INdigital Telecom in Fort Wayne. “It’s going to be really interesting to see. You’re going to see some big battles for market share between these two companies.”
The giants are getting ready for the battle as Comcast prepares to roll out phone service via the Internet and Verizon works to offer television service.
Companies like Vonage and AT&T’s Call Vantage have already offered similar phone services that allow customers to make phone calls using their personal computers and Internet connections.
But Comcast’s is different. Its voice-over Internet protocol (VOIP) technology requires no PC or Internet connection but uses existing telephones and outlets and travels over Comcast’s broadband network.
“We wanted to employ (the same idea) into more traditional outlets,” said Mark Apple, regional vice president of communications at Comcast’s Indianapolis office.
The VOIP technology, he said, is less expensive than circuit switch technology, which is what phone companies use.
A Comcast customer who purchases all three services — cable television, high-speed Internet and digital voice — will only have to pay $39.99 per month for digital voice in addition to the other three services.
The $39.99 rate also includes 12 advanced calling features, such as voice mail, caller ID, three-way calling and call rejection, which are usually accessories that cost extra. Comcast customers can also check their voice mail anywhere through a PC and Internet connection, instead of having to call long distance.
Indianapolis was the first city in the country to get the new technology in January. Currently it is one of four cities; the others are Philadelphia, Springfield, Mass., and its suburbs, and Portland, Ore.
“We want to launch Comcast digital voice in every market by the end of 2006,” said Apple.
Although Comcast has not yet announced a launch date for Fort Wayne, Apple said it could be sooner than that.
Verizon is also staying quiet about its plans.
“We have not announced video service yet,” said Jane Howard, Verizon’s director of external communications. But that doesn’t mean Verizon isn’t keeping up with the competition.
Last March, Verizon began installing fiber optic cables around the Fort Wayne region, which is only one of 13 communities to have the fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) in the country.
Currently Verizon’s DSL Internet speeds are at 3 Mbps (Megabits per second) downstream and 768 Kbps (Kilobits per second) upstream, as upgraded in April of this year. (Downstream speeds measure the time it takes for a computer to download information, and upstream speeds measure the time it takes to upload information.)
When FTTP is in effect, Verizon customers can choose between three levels of Internet speeds: 5 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream, 15 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream, or 30 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream.
To illustrate the speed of the FTTP connection, Verizon compares it to how fast dial-up, DSL and cable could download a full-length movie. A dial-up connection at 56 Kbps will take about 5 days, a DSL or cable hook-up at 1.5 Mbps will take about 4.5 hours and a fiber-optic connection at 30 Mbps will take 13 minutes.
Verizon’s current Internet costs run between $29.95 and $44.95, depending upon whether a customer has another Verizon phone service and also which level of connection speed he or she desires. For customers who commit to one year with DSL, Verizon charges $19.95 for the first three months, and then $29.95 for the remainder of the year. Fiber-optic Internet connection costs will run between $34.95 and $199.95.
Comcast’s cable Internet speeds will be upgraded this summer to 6 Mbps downstream and 384 Kbps upstream, and for the higher level, 8 Mbps downstream and 768 Kbps upstream, which costs an additional $10.
Comcast also is also having a sale until the end of August. Cable Internet is $19.99 per month for six months and then $42.95 per month along with Comcast cable television — which can cost anywhere between $47.89 and $102.99 — and $57.95 per month for Internet alone.
At the end of March, Comcast had 7.4 million broadband subscribers, more than any other cable company. Verizon had 3.9 million subscribers, second behind SBC among phone companies, according to Leichtman Research Group.
Rob Kaiser of the Business Weekly also contributed to this story.
Copyright 2005, KPC Media Group Inc.