Sprint Spinout Embarq Fighting MSO's VoIP Efforts
In 18 states where Sprint used to have local phone service, its now using the name Embarq, a spinout company. In the markets it serves the renamed legacy carrier is doing its best to stave off the incursion of the cable company's efforts to switch customer's to VoIP.
I see the value in marketing, which is clearly what Embarq is doing in every market they are playing in, but what is really impressive here is they are working hard at selling a blended wireline and wireless offering, something that of the three majors (AT&T, Qwest and Verizon) only Qwest really has been pushing for any length of time.
The comments in the story about VoIP not being of good quality may though not be accurate. I have to wonder how many cable markets are still using an older "digital voice" technology that was nothing more than ATM over Sonet, which meant it was just like the PSTN line, but traveled over the cable network.
One notable thing about the Embarq situation is that Sprint Nextel is powering a lot of the very cable phone offerings that Embarq is fighting against (particularly where the MSO is TWC or Mediacom...)
Posted by: SC | May 28, 2007 at 12:11 PM