I don’t usually comment on my own experiences, but I feel compelled to do so today. Along with being a telecom industry analyst and consultant, I’m also an obvious consumer of telecom services. Over the past few days, I’ve had the most aggravating experiences in trying to establish new telecom service (we’re in the process of moving our offices), that it really makes me wonder about the true impact of competition on the marketplace. What I mean by that is, my experience in trying to buy services from both an incumbent telecom carrier and a national wireless company have been so frustrating and aggravating, it makes me wonder if competition and its impact really exists.

It seems to me that these service providers would have systems in place that allow me to easily spend money with them, rather than with their competitors. But what I found was a bureaucratic mess that put me in an endless loop of phone transfers to customer service reps who were either indifferent, incompetent, unable, or unwilling to accept my monthly check for their services. I find it absolutely amazing that I have spoken to seven representatives (not an exaggeration) from the incumbent telephone company to try to order business DSL service, and I still haven’t been able to get an order placed. This experience is either great news for their competitors or bad news for competition proponents. The great news angle is that if you can create a system that simply allows people to start spending money with you without having to jump through endless loops, you should be in business. The bad news is maybe incumbents have squashed competitors to the point that they can live with these incredible inefficiencies and care less about them. As for me, lesson learned. The next call is to the cable company, who is aggressively pursuing the small business market. Any bets on the number of reps I’ll have to talk to there, before giving them the opportunity to collect money from me every month?

Both Cox and Comcast made major announcements this week outlining new products targeting the small business sector. Cable companies see the lucrative small business market, estimated to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $130 - $150 billion (including voice, video, and data services), as their next big growth frontier. Residential triple play is a nice business as well, but large cable companies have anxious stakeholder and shareholder expectations to meet, that residential triple play may not meet alone. Competition for residential triple play is accelerating as well, and its impact is beginning to affect the stock price of publicly traded cable MSO's. Comcast recently hit a 52 week low on their stock price, due in large part to concerns that Verizon and AT&T are beginning to erode Comcast's growth. The small business sector is the next frontier for which we will see pitched battles between cable and telecom. Telecom carriers are not about to concede this lucrative business and will compete aggressively.

Cox's latest salvo is branded Cox Business Voice Manager. It offers a "telephony platform that integrates the desktop phone, PC and wireless devices." The platform appears to offer a rich suite of features including elements of fixed mobile convergence and unified messaging. The platform is built on Cox's IP enabled telephony network. In Comcast's case, they have decided to partner with Microsoft to deliver a hosted version of Microsoft's Communication Server platform. The service provides corporate-class e-mail, calendaring and document sharing, and 24/7 tech support. Comcast will make the service available free of charge to their business broadband accounts. Both of these announcements demonstrate that cable views the small business market with great anticipation. These moves are but a few of many to come, and they will challenge the incumbent telcos who currently own this space to respond.

AT&T just launched its new small business focused bundle, AT&T Complete Office Solution™. The new bundle offers a suite of services including business phone service (2 lines), DSL, and wireless service, with a starting bundle price of $181. Other parts of the plan include a directory listing, Internet security suite, unified messaging, and a toll free number. AT&T is targeting small and start-up businesses with this package and has developed an online small business resource center, called OnWardSmallBiz .

Check out the details of this new offering at AT&T’s site.