By Kathryn Balint
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Time Warner Cable has begun offering telephone service to some of its cable TV and high-speed Internet customers, becoming the second major cable company in San Diego County to compete against SBC Communications.

The move fuels the fierce battle for customers among the giants of the telephone and the cable industries, particularly in the county. As traditional telephone companies such as SBC have begun offering satellite TV service, the cable companies have launched telephone service.

«Here is more evidence of a thriving, competitive, intense environment in telecommunications in San Diego,» SBC spokesman John Britton said. «We think choice is a positive thing for customers when companies are investing for the good of our state.»

Time Warner quietly began offering telephone service to its customers in Mira Mesa and Tierrasanta earlier this month. It plans to expand soon into Scripps Ranch and Clairemont.

The service costs $19.95 a month for the first three months and $39.95 a month after that for residential customers who already subscribe to Time Warner’s cable TV and high-speed Internet service. The monthly cost is $44.95 for customers who subscribe to only one of Time Warner’s other services.

Time Warner’s «digital phone» service offers unlimited local and long-distance calls to anywhere in the United States and its territories. The service also includes call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID and an unpublished number at no extra charge. There is no installation fee.

Unlike traditional circuit-switched phone service, Time Warner’s digital telephone service uses voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) technology, transmitting voice in much the same way that e-mails are sent. But instead of using the public Internet to transmit calls, Time Warner uses its own network, making its voice data more secure and more reliable.

Time Warner’s partner, MCI, connects digital phone subscribers to the publicly switched telephone network.

«We have gotten incredibly good response, but it’s been a very limited offering of the service,» said Judy Walsh, president and chief executive of Time Warner’s San Diego division.

«Now our customers in San Diego with digital phone can enjoy all these free standard calling features as part of their phone package. They can spend all the time they want talking to friends and family across the country, and they don’t have to worry about the cost,» Walsh said.

The service is still in the «test mode,» she said. Customers are asked to give Time Warner feedback on the quality of the service.

Once all of the bugs are worked out, digital phone will gets its official San Diego County launch, probably by the end of the year, Walsh said. It will take until the middle of next year before Time Warner can offer service to all of its customers in the county, she said.

In the meantime, Time Warner has started a list of customers interested in subscribing to its new phone service when it becomes available. Additional information is as the company’s Web site, www.twcsd.com.

Time Warner provides cable television and high-speed Internet services to more than 200,000 customers, primarily in the northern areas of the city of San Diego, Coronado and part of Poway.

Cox Communications, the other major cable company in San Diego County, began offering telephone service in 1998. It has a calling plan similar to Time Warner’s, offering unlimited long-distance calls in the United States, starting at $38.89 a month.

SBC’s equivalent calling plan costs $42 a month.

The cable and the traditional phone companies offer «bundled» services at a discount to keep their customers from straying. When a customer buys a package with TV, phone service and high-speed Internet access, it’s called a «triple play» in the industry.

«There’s no doubt the bundle has become the choice of consumers because they get the convenience of one bill and dealing with one company,» SBC’s Britton said. «You get value, no matter which company you’re dealing with.»

Time Warner began exploring circuit-switched telephone service in 1993 in Rochester, N. Y. The company later decided to offer VOIP service, starting in 2000 with trials in Rochester and Portland, Maine.

Time Warner officially launched its digital phone service in February 2003 in Portland, Maine. Since then, it has been rolled out in about 20 of its 30 markets nationwide.

The company plans to provide telephone service in all of its markets by the end of this year, Walsh said.

 — 10-Fold Bandwidth Increase Enables VPN, VoIP and Videoconferencing Applications
- Replaces Weekly Data Tape Backups With Daily, On-Net Data Protection Capabilities

DALLAS, /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ Time Warner Telecom (Nasdaq: TWTC — News), a leading provider of managed voice and data networking solutions for businesses in Dallas and 43 other metropolitan areas, today announced the successful installation of its industry-leading metro Ethernet data services to Dallas-based Carreker Corporation in Dallas, Charlotte, N.C., Memphis, Tenn. and Atlanta.

Carreker Corporation, which provides consulting and software solutions to the financial services industry, selected Time Warner Telecom over other competitors due to the company’s ability to deliver cost effective networking solutions over its metro Ethernet platform to enhance the speed, flexibility, scalability, and reliability of Carreker’s banking data systems backup. Terms of the multi-year agreement were not disclosed.

«Time Warner Telecom’s Ethernet Internet service was the ideal solution to help us achieve a number of objectives,» said Bobby Adams, IT operations manager for Carreker Corporation. «For example, we’ve significantly enhanced our business continuity capabilities by substantially reducing our recovery window. Previously, our remote sites backed up data to tape on a weekly basis. Time Warner Telecom’s Internet service allows us to do this nightly, and for critical applications, every 15 minutes.»

Time Warner Telecom has completed a virtual private network (VPN) link between Carreker’s Dallas headquarters and Disaster Recovery (DR) site with its 10/100 Mbps Ethernet over SONET Native LAN service, and Charlotte and Memphis with 10Mbs, burstable to 100 Mbps, Ethernet Internet service. Carreker plans to include its Atlanta office in this network by year’s end.

This represents an operational shift for Carreker, away from deploying more expensive point-to-point T1s through a legacy provider, to the more economical Time Warner Telecom, high-bandwidth, Ethernet-based Internet service.

Adams credits being on Time Warner Telecom’s national IP network backbone with delivering low transmission latency-a key consideration for the deployment of the company’s new services. «In the interest of improving our operational performance, we wanted to deploy voice over IP, e-conferencing, video, project and software configuration management applications,» explained Adams. «The large bandwidth and negligible latency times we’re getting from Time Warner Telecom make that possible. We’re in the pilot stages for these tools and things are looking great so far.»

«Our service offering gives companies like Carreker Corporation an attractive alternative to using more costly dedicated T1s or DS3s,» said Adam Sheiner, vice president and general manager for Time Warner Telecom in Dallas. «Customer IT managers find our Ethernet-based services deliver the bandwidth required to deploy value-add communications applications at a price well within their budgets.»

Time Warner Telecom’s Native LAN service has been designated a Cisco Powered Network service, signifying that this service is built around Cisco’s industry leading technology.

About Time Warner Telecom

Time Warner Telecom Inc., headquartered in Littleton, Colo., is a leading provider of managed network solutions to a wide array of businesses and organizations in 44 U.S. metropolitan areas that require telecommunications intensive services. One of the country’s premier competitive telecom carriers, Time Warner Telecom integrates data, dedicated Internet access, and local and long distance voice services for long distance carriers, wireless communications companies, incumbent local exchange carriers, and such enterprise organizations as healthcare, finance, higher education, manufacturing, hospitality, state and local government, and military. Please visit www.twtelecom.com for more information.

About Carreker

Carreker Corporation improves earnings for financial institutions around the world. The Company’s integrated consulting and software solutions are designed to increase clients’ revenues and reduce their expenses, while improving security and increasing the value of their customer relationships. Carreker provides products and services to more than 250 clients in the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia, New Zealand, South Africa, South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Clients include the full range of community, regional and large banks, among them more than 75 of the largest 100 banks in the United States. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas since 1978, Carreker Corporation has offices in London and Sydney. For more information, visit www.carreker.com.

Introduction of phone service by the cable company will result in the hires.

By Tim Knauss

Time Warner Cable’s plan to provide phone service over its cables will bring more than 40 jobs to Central New York.

The company will begin hiring technicians, sales agents and customer service representatives early in 2004 and plans to begin offering phone service by the end of the second quarter, said Jeff Unaitis, speaking for Time Warner Cable.

The company has advertised for a general manager to run the local telephone business, Unaitis said.

Time Warner Cable introduced what it calls «Digital Phone» in May in Portland, Maine, and plans to roll out the service in many of its markets during the coming year. Recently, the service was introduced in a second market, Raleigh, N.C.

Instead of sending calls over telephone wires, Time Warner Cable sends calls over the same lines that carry its TV and Internet signals.

Customers make calls as they normally would. A cable modem attached to the telephone converts each call into a digital signal and transmits it over cable lines to a data center. Before being handed off to the traditional phone network, calls are converted back into analog signals.

Each call from Portland is processed by equipment at Time Warner Cable’s office in DeWitt, which serves as the company’s Internet hub for the Northeast. A so-called «soft switch» provides dial tone and routes the calls.

Time Warner Cable’s plans to extend the service to new areas got a boost Monday, when the company announced agreements with Sprint and MCI that will help speed up the nationwide rollout. Time Warner plans to introduce phone service in most of its markets by the end of 2004, said Keith Cocozza, speaking for the company.

Sprint and MCI will help Time Warner provide long-distance service, interconnect with traditional phone networks and offer services such as caller ID and E-911.

The price in Portland for unlimited local and long-distance calls is $39.95 for digital cable or Internet subscribers, and $49.95 for nonsubscribers. More than 8,000 customers in Maine have signed up since May, Cocozza said.

To make room at the DeWitt office for new employees who will focus on phone service, Time Warner Cable plans to move its advertising sales group from DeWitt to the third floor of its downtown News 10 Now building, Unaitis said. The space, which is unoccupied, will be renovated soon to accommodate the move, he said.

Time Warner Cable has about 1,000 employees in the region, 750 of whom work in the greater Syracuse area.

STAMFORD, Conn.(BUSINESS WIRE)Dec. 8, 2003--
Multi-Year Agreements to Provide High Value, Carrier Grade IP Voice Service

Time Warner Cable today announced strategic partnerships with MCI and Sprint, two of the nation’s leading telecommunications companies, for the nationwide deployment of Digital Phone, Time Warner Cable’s residential Internet protocol («IP») voice service. Building on the successful rollout earlier this year in Portland, Maine, Time Warner Cable recently launched its residential IP phone service to select customers in North Carolina. The multiple-year deals with MCI and Sprint will help enable the company to continue its aggressive rollout throughout next year.

«We are pleased to partner with MCI and Sprint and benefit from their experience in delivering high quality phone service, their focus on customer service, and desire to be at the cutting edge of VoIP network development,» said Time Warner Cable Chairman and CEO Glenn Britt. «Capitalizing on their local points of interconnection, our broadband cable system and the efficiencies and flexibility of IP technology, Time Warner Cable is now poised to deliver consumers local and long distance telephony services more efficiently, at a lower cost, and with the reliability and quality of service that customers require.»

MCI and Sprint will assist Time Warner Cable in the provisioning of Digital Phone service to customers, termination of IP voice traffic to the public switched telephone network, delivery of enhanced 9–1–1 service, local number portability and carrying long distance traffic.

The agreement also marks a major expansion for MCI and Sprint into the cable wholesale market resulting in a prospective revenue stream with strong growth potential. Both companies plan to leverage their telecom assets and communications expertise in order to help drive this expansion and deliver telephony solutions.

«Time Warner Cable is a known leader in the industry and it is great to partner with them as they engage in another industry-first with the deployment of Digital Phone,» said Paget Alves, president of strategic accounts, Sprint. «Sprint’s value proposition to the cable industry makes sense as an alternative to cable operators’ building their own voice infrastructure as well as leveraging our existing networks, management experience and technical knowledge. Our intent is to fulfill as many of their telecommunications needs as they want--from basic transport to a fully outsourced solution that includes network design, implementation and management, all backed by guaranteed performance and comprehensive support.»

«The time has come for a new solution that delivers all of the simplicity, quality and value that customers want — full service communications, high-speed Internet and video -- all in one package, on one bill, from a single provider,» said Jonathan Crane, MCI executive vice president of corporate development and strategy. «This partnership represents the next evolution in consumer communications — leveraging the added capabilities of cable and the global reach of the MCI IP network to create services that leave the old public switched network behind.»

Digital Phone includes unlimited local, in-state and domestic long distance calling for one low monthly price. By leveraging new technology on its existing advanced managed network with quality of service standards, Time Warner Cable is able to offer phone service at a flat price and ensure that customers receive the level of quality offered by traditional telephone service.

Consumers switching to Digital Phone can keep their existing phone numbers and retain their directory listings. Standard features of the service include 411 directory assistance, 611 service calls, Enhanced 9–1–1 emergency service, operator assisted calls, call waiting, caller ID and voice mail. Additionally, the residential phone service connects to each telephone jack in the home by utilizing whole-home wiring.

About Time Warner Cable

Time Warner Cable owns and manages cable systems serving 10.9 million subscribers in 27 states, which include some of the most technologically advanced, best-clustered cable systems in the country with more than 75% of the Company’s customers in systems of 300,000 subscribers or more. Utilizing a fully upgraded advanced cable network and a steadfast commitment to providing consumers with choice, value, and world-class customer service, Time Warner Cable is an industry leader in delivering advanced products and services such as video on demand, high definition television, high-speed data, wireless home networking, and digital video recorders. Time Warner Cable is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc.

About WorldCom

WorldCom, Inc. (WCOEQ, MCWEQ), which currently conducts business under the MCI brand name, is a leading global communications provider, delivering innovative, cost-effective, advanced communications connectivity to businesses, governments and consumers. With the industry’s most expansive global IP backbone, based on the number of company-owned POPs, and wholly-owned data networks, WorldCom develops the converged communications products and services that are the foundation for commerce and communications in today’s market. For more information, go to [ >>> ]

About Sprint

Sprint is a global integrated communications provider serving more than 26 million customers in over 100 countries. With approximately 68,000 employees worldwide and nearly $27 billion in annual revenues, Sprint is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying state-of-the-art network technologies, including the United States’ first nationwide all-digital, fiber-optic network and an award-winning Tier 1 Internet backbone. Sprint provides local communications services in 39 states and the District of Columbia and operates the largest 100-percent digital, nationwide PCS wireless network in the United States. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.