Without question, we all know the telcos of the last century are a dying bread. Not so much because of mergers, but because they are asleep at the switch and while they know the cable guys are out there, they continue to be in denial of what the cable industry has done and will do to them.
The cable folks will gut and slaughter the telcos like the hogs that they have become because the cable MSO’s will win the game, not with better technology, but in the court of public opinion.
Carol Wilson of Telephony Magazine has picked up on the J.D. Power 2006 Residential All-Distance Telephone Customer Satisfaction Study. In a nutshell, consumers like their phone service better from the cable guys versus the telco. That has to be wonderful news to Cynthia Carpenter and her team at Level3, for their research has been aimed at learning how to get consumers to buy VoIP which puts more minutes on Level3’s best of breed all fiber network.
Cable knows how to market. They work community by community, the way the telcos of old did. But now, with global aspirations being on the minds of the leadership of the two major US phone companies, and with investment bank driven boards of directors, their priorities are not the same as the cable folks, who smell opportunity and are grabbing hold to win the game.