Cable firms rank high with phone customers

July 13, 2006|Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Cable providers who offer phone service ranked highest in customer satisfaction in five of six US regions, surpassing traditional phone companies among people who subscribe to national calling plans, according to a J.D. Power & Associates study.

Overall, however, customer satisfaction continued to decline while the average monthly bill rose again, with traditional phone companies charging substantially more than cable providers, the national survey released yesterday found.

Cox Communications Inc., which a year ago was the only cable company to take top honors in just one region, ranked highest this time in half of the six regions defined by J.D. Power: the Northeast, West, and Southwest, the customer-satisfaction survey found.

Verizon Communications Inc. was the only traditional phone company ranked highest in one of its territories, leading the Mid-Atlantic region .

The rankings did not include Vonage Holdings Corp. and other providers that use the technology known as Voice over Internet Protocol even though many of the cable companies ranked in the study rely on VoIP to connect their customers.

While Vonage now has more than 1.6 million users, that customer base is spread too thinly to measure against the more concentrated clientele served by cable and regular phone companies, said Steve Kirkeby, executive director of telecommunications and technology research at J.D. Power.