In 2007, J.D. Power and Associates’ annual rankings of telephone service provider customer satisfaction ranked cable companies #1 in customer satisfaction in all six US regions. More than 15 million customers currently enjoy cable’s phone service, and it’s no wonder cable companies are signing up millions of new customers every year.

Cable’s telephone service often comes as part of a “bundle” where multichannel video, high-speed Internet and voice services are offered as a package and billed in a single invoice, providing a better value and more simplicity for customers.

Cable’s digital phone service makes possible new features not available through traditional telephone service – such as Web portals that allows customers to review their calling history or listen to voicemail messages online when away from home. Digital phone service is a revolutionary technology that has the potential to completely change how phone calls are made and how voice services are used.

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It’s worth noting that cable’s phone business has grown in a fairly short period of time. The current competitive age can be traced back to the passage of the deregulatory 1996 Telecommunications Act. Following that, the cable industry invested more than $100 billion in private capital to upgrade its network infrastructure in order to provide broadband services.

But even before today’s IP-based phone service, some operators took the plunge into phone. Back in September of 1997, Cox Communications launched circuit-switched phone service in Orange County, California. Comcast (via its acquisition of AT&T Broadband) also has a base of circuit-switched customers that were generated following the acquisitions by AT&T of TCI and MediaOne in 1999.

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