Comcast adds phone service.

Byline: Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

The line between cable television and telephone companies will fade to a lighter shade of gray today when Comcast begins offering local and long distance phone service to Eugene-Springfield customers over its own cable communication network.

Comcast is expected to announce the new option today, making its Lane County customers the second group in Oregon to be offered digital voice connections. The company has offered the service for about a year in the Portland/Vancouver area, and has made it available to customers in about 20 other areas around the country.

"I think it's a fundamentally better customer experience," said Theressa Davis, a Comcast spokeswoman for Oregon and southwest Wash- ington.

"Now our customers can get a terrific home phone service, high-speed Internet and video," she said.

The new phone service includes unlimited local and long-distance calling, as well as a cluster of a dozen features including call-waiting and caller ID. It will cost $39.95 per month for customers who also subscribe to Comcast's cable television and high-speed Internet services, $44.95 per month for those with one of the other services and $54.95 per month for telephone-only customers.

"It will enable customers to bundle all three products," Davis said. "We try to offer integrated products."

Qwest, the conventional phone company serving the Eugene-Springfield area, also has broadened its offerings in recent years. It offers high-speed Internet in areas served by DSL phone lines, and has partnered with DIRECTV to make an array of television channels available to its customers via satellite dish.

Qwest's own digital voice phone plans range from $40.99 to $47.99, depending on the number of calling features selected, and its basic local-only telephone service starts at $25.99.

Company representatives did not return telephone calls placed to Qwest headquarters in Denver on Wednesday, seeking comment on the Comcast phone plans.

Davis, the Comcast spokeswoman, emphasized that her company's phone service is a different animal than "Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)" services that have been offered by other companies.

Like those other companies, Comcast will use a data network to transmit voice phone calls. But Comcast will use its own broadband network to transmit the calls, rather than relying on the public Internet.

"The best way to describe it is that it's a plain, old home telephone service," Davis said. "The worst way to describe it would be `Voice over Inter- net.' "

Customers who choose the service will have a "terminal adapter" installed at their home, to connect existing in-house phone lines to their cable lines. They will then be able to use existing phones and answering machines - they can even arrange to keep existing phone numbers - and those who don't subscribe to high-speed Internet will be able to continue using dial-up computer modems.

However, Comcast is encouraging customers to use all three of its communication services - even offering a 12-month introductory plan of $99 per month for phone, Internet and cable television - in part because of the potential to intertwine the services.

For example, Davis said, a future option for cross-platform subscribers will be a telephone caller ID feature that will display a message on the user's television screen if a phone call is being missed.

"The future sees really cool things, when (phone, Internet and television services) all integrate together," she said.

Joe Mosley can be reached at 338-2384 or jmosley@ guardnet.com.