Anyone have phone service thru their cable company?

What is your experience with it?

Cox is offering this in Oklahoma City and soon to Tulsa(end of the year) so I'm intrigued as its cheaper and then I would switch over to their Cable modem(but to be honest I have had no issues with my DSL). It's just cheaper to have both thru Cox than anything.

According to their site they are offering a bundle which is High Speed internet + phone service with all the goodies for $49.95 a month for both. Cable modem service is usually $39 anyway so that's not a bad deal.

They have other deals but this is the one that interests me.

I can barely get cable service through my cable company. (Aldephia) I shudder to think what would happen if they were responsible for my phones as well. (For phones and DSL I depend on BellSouth to louse up my service and give me agita. )

Actually in all fairness to BellSouth they've provide very good service except when I've moved and then they've invariably screwed up both my phone and DSL service for several days, cancelling the number they promised I could take with me, issuing me one or more temporary numbers and then finally getting the whole thing working about a week later. (Straightening out the bills then takes several months.) My theory is if you want them to do an order right, you have to give it to them wrong.

But once I'm settled wherever I'm living, BellSouth tends to do alright by me. I'm very happy with my wireless home networking and other things they got going for me, and it is very cool that my TiVO can use my DSL connection to connect to the mothership instead of using a dial-up connection.

Adelphia, by contrast, is generally useless on all fronts the service goes out for no apparent reason at odd hours or the sound goes away on some of the upper channel numbers on the digital service. (I can usually fix this by switching off the channel and then coming back to it when watching live, but obviously this doesn't help when I'm out or asleep and the TiVO is recording a show for me.)

I prefer having two separate companies, even if it costs a little more, if only because I know that if the phones go down I can always watch a little TV, or if the TV is out I can surf the web and catch the news that way, but if one company provided both I'd face the specter of being cut off from the outside world entirely if a single entity screwed something up. And given Adelphia's porpensity for messing something up on an almost daily basis, I certainly wouldn't want them anywhere near my phone service. My wireless bill is high enough as it is.

(And Dish and DirecTV are not options. Sadly my condo faces due north and there is no part of the outside of the building that I have access to that would allow me to have a sat. system. Otherwise, believe me, I would. I had DirecTV for three years and having to go back to cable was one of the most painful parts of losing my house. )

Regards,

Joe

I would suggest not going this route, for the simple reason that if the power in your area (or your house) ever goes out, the modem or whatever you use to connect the phones to will likely stop working. Also, I believe the cable box outside your house that provides cable to several houses at a time runs on the power grid. Ocassionally when we've had the power go out, it's usually another 5 minutes after it comes back on for the outdoor cable box to initiate or something.

At least with phone lines, it'll stay on even if the power doesn't.

Power going out to cable and taking out phone service isn't nearly the issue it once was given that most families have cell phones in addition to land lines now. I know several people who get their phone service through the cable company and are satisfied. I would as well, except for the fact that the cable company can't offer me a better deal than Bell South.

I had cable modem, cable tv and phone service all from the same provider for a while. It worked well, and the cost saved about $10/month for the phone.

Then we had that massive power outage where nearly all the NY metro area and northeast coast lost power due to the grid going down. Nothing worked, including our cell phones....But those with regular landline phone service thru Verizon had no problems with their phone service.

Not that something like this is going to happen every year, but I didn't like the idea of being dependent on one company and I ditched the cable phone service.

My cable company doesn't offer phone service, but I did start using Vonage phone service about 6 months ago and it's been great. www.vonage.com

Compared to Bell I'm saving about $500 per year and now I have a second 800 number by folks can call me with, so they save too. For a deal like that I'll just use my cell phone if the power goes out. (That did happen once so far and my cell phone worked.) The money I'm saving actually pays for my cell phone and then some.

Voice quality is easily as good as it was, reliability is fine (as long as your cable or DSL modem is up and running and mine always seems to be), and their website has a great interface where you can change all of your feature options with a click. You can also see who's called and retrieve your voice messages on the web from any computer anywhere by clicking on them, if you choose to.

Pretty cool, I won't be going back to Bell.

That still can cause an issue. During the blackout last year, none of my cell phones (I have 4 from 2 different companies) could place a call. I beleive the signal repeater towers used to relay the call run on the power grid.

I am using Cox for phone and internet in Tucson for about 7 months and haven't had a problem yet. I can't stand Quest (after they stole money from everyone in the state of Oregon (in the 90s and finally had to pay it back)) so I couldn't be happier giving my money to Cox.

Michael

After last summer's blackout, a lot of people in this area have switched back to regular phone service from their cable company for this very reason. As Mark stated, too, cell phones were not a solution in this situation, since cell phone service was not available during most of the blackout, either.

Why don't you try the cable service and if it doesn't work switch back? If it works you save some money and will be happier, if it doesn't money difference over a short period of time couldn't be too expensive.