Comcast is preparing to add to its home-phone service features such as SMS text messaging and e-mail access from cordless handsets. The features, for use on a phone that Comcast will begin offering new customers this year, may persuade some younger subscribers to buy home phone service, said Catherine Avgiris, Comcast's general manager of voice services. Comcast pitches customers age 30 to 45 its VoIP services, but its video and broadband services are popular with those under 30, she said. New features like out-of-sequence voicemail retrieval, integrating address books, e-mail and SMS on a cordless phone and putting caller ID notification on a TV set also create an idea of what Comcast's future wireless services may look like. They also help make the case that Comcast's phone service shouldn't come under legacy regulation, Avgiris said. nnSome regulations from telecom, such as the right to interconnect, should apply to VoIP, but others are too burdensome, she said. Meanwhile, Comcast has complied with rules such as CALEA and E- 911, she said. In June, Comcast finished moving customers off the phone service it acquired by buying AT&T Broadband in 2002. Notifying customers and moving them to its VoIP service a competitor took about two years, Avgiris said. Seventy to 80 percent of the phone customers stayed on through the switch, she said. Comcast had been leasing the network assets used for the old service from AT&T, but the contract ended in June. "We felt it was important for us as a competitive provider to have our own facilities," Avgiris said. That makes it much easier to introduce new services that Comcast has planned for later this year, she said. "We have the flexibility to really converge services in a way some of our competitors may not."
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