Cox testing new cell phone service

Cox Communications Inc. began offering cell phone service to three residential test markets in various parts of the country last month, but the telecommunications giant isn’t saying when it will be ready to provide the service here in New England.
Cox is the first cable company in the country to launch fully integrated wireless phone and mobile high-speed Internet service, now being offered to test groups of Cox customers in Hampton Roads, Va., Omaha, Neb., and Orange County, Calif., the company said in a Dec. 8 release announcing the new service.
The company intends to expand the service to other residential customers at the three locations during 2010 and will deliver the same service to business customers “in the future,” Cox said, without providing a specific timeframe for when business service would be added or where it would debut.
“We’re excited to let consumers know that they soon will have a better choice for wireless service,” said Pat Esser, president of Cox Communications Inc. “We’ve carefully considered the unmet needs of wireless customers and we’ll be delivering a service … to address those needs.” Cox says more than 40 percent of its residential customers utilize its telephone service and two-thirds of its subscribers take phone, Internet and cable services.
In anticipation of a full-scale launch, Cox is asking the public for feedback on the kind of cell phone service they would prefer and “what they’d like to change about their current wireless services,” by visiting the company’s Facebook page at budurl.com/FBWirelessBoard.
A check of the comments reveals that most potential Cox customers are asking for roll-over minutes, a service that major competitor Verizon Wireless does not generally offer. In response, Mike Murphy, New England public relations manager for Verizon Wireless, told Providence Business News “Customers who continually have excessive unused minutes at the end of the month are probably on the wrong plan to begin with, or would be better served by a prepay product. Verizon Wireless customers can change monthly minute plans without agreement extensions. Ocean State residents also have a choice between several prepay solutions” on Verizon’s 3G network.
Murphy declined to comment on Cox’s move into mobile phone service.
Stephen Bye, Cox’s vice president of wireless service, in a Dec. 16 interview with trade magazine FierceWireless, which bills itself as the wireless industry’s daily online monitor, said there is no timetable for the general launch of cell phone service in 2010.
As Cox has done in the past when launching new services, he said, “a deliberate and disciplined approach” will be taken because “this is not a small investment or a small undertaking for a company like ourselves, and we want to do this right.”
Cell phone service throughout the Cox clientele will be “rolled out as we go,” Bye said, “and as we build on the successes that we have, we’ll gradually roll it out into all of our markets.”
Bye said the company decided to enter the wireless market because Cox sees a demand for the service among its customers and “we want to satisfy their needs as a total communications provider.” Secondly, the company said it sees an opportunity for added business as video and data services become more prevalent on mobile devices outside the home. Noting that Cox has a “strategic relationship” with Sprint Nextel “on a number of different levels,” Bye said Cox will use Sprint Nextel’s mobile network in some markets, but also is building out its own 3G and 4G wireless networks as well. Cox is using the nearly $550 million worth of spectrum frequencies it bought in the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Advanced Wireless Services and 700 MHz wireless auctions, CNET News reported.
For the 4G network, Cox has joined Long Term Evolution, also the technology of choice for AT&T and Verizon, according to Tamara Chuang, who writes “The Gadgetress” online column for the Orange County Register in California. In her Dec. 8 posting, Chuang notes that further details about Cox’s cell phone service are sparse because Cox, a privately held company, for competitive reasons will not disclose pricing or types of handsets that will be offered.
Previous published reports said Cox subscribers would be able to use the company’s cell phones to program home DVRs, gain access to e-mail and voice mail received at home and watch television shows on their handsets. Some analysts, including Marguerite Reardon of CNET News, have suggested that Cox will emphasize mobile TV service and, Reardon said, is considering opening a mobile application store like the one that Apple offers for the iPhone.
To celebrate Cox’s entry into the cell phone business, the company is donating new computer technology centers, valued at $25,000 each, to local boys and girls clubs in Hampton Roads, Omaha and Orange County. The youth clubs were chosen “because of their commitment to enriching the lives of young people, a commitment Cox shares,” the company said. •