Cox Communications has only actively promoted bundled services for a short time, but already, its convenience is catching on.
After offering bundling to a limited area, Cox began promoting the service — now available to 67 percent of Cox’s service area — in September 2000.
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“We’ve been at it in earnest since then,” said Greg Bicket, vice president and general manager of Cox New England. “This has been the company’s mission for more than a decade.”
Bicket said broadband (by which multiple services are offered via one fiber optic connection) is a more efficient infrastructure — one that Cox has invested $300 million to install in Rhode Island. Customer response has been positive.
“It has exceeded our most optimistic projections,” Bicket said. “We’ve been at it for less than two quarters, and more than 15 percent of our customers have stepped up to bundled services.”
Cox offers discounts to subscribers who purchase more than one service; subscribers purchasing all three services — cable television, high-speed Internet and telephone — receive an additional $10 off their total bill.
Bicket said the combination of discounts can be as much as 30 percent.
“It adds more choice,” he said. “Customer satisfaction rises. The people who’ve tried it like it. This idea that was hatched more than a decade ago works.”
According to a study released by telecommunications research company The Strategis Group, while 90 percent of households show interest in bundled telecommunications services, only 17 percent currently purchase a bundle. The study, “The Consumer Telecom Market: Bundling and Usage Trends,” suggests that most carriers have yet to reach the bundling adoption rates they thought were possible.
Local and long distance phone services are the most likely services to be bundled, with 79 percent of bundles containing local service and 63 percent offering long distance. Other services prominent in bundles include Internet access (33 percent), wireless service (31 percent) and cable television (13 percent).
The Strategis Group found that the most common bundles to which consumers subscribed coupled local and long distance phone services (35 percent), local phone service and Internet access (16 percent) and long distance and wireless services (10 percent).
Based on Cox’s success with bundles in cable television, Internet and telephony, the company is exploring the possibility of offering other bundled services in the future, including home security, energy and video on demand.
“All these services are on the horizon,” Bicket said. “What was a cable TV company is now a full-service telecommunications company.”
Through Cox, 90 percent of homes in Rhode Island have access to broadband communications, which Bicket believes ultimately plays a positive role in the state’s economy.
