Tech Sessions: Evaluating Mediacom's business phone service

by Jonathan Sessions

July 10,2009

Jonathan Sessions (@JSesh) is an owner of Tech 2. Reach him at jonathan@jonathansessions.com or 573-443-1555. www.jonathansessions.com.

As Internet speeds continue to increase, service providers are able to utilize the expanded bandwidth for new services. Phone companies are now offering TV services, while cable companies are providing phone services. Mediacom has been providing phone services to homes for a while and just started a business phone service, providing much needed competition to CenturyLink (formerly CenturyTel).

Already a Mediacom cable and Internet subscriber, we at Tech 2 were offered the chance to be the first customers of Mediacom’s Business Phone Service.

It felt risky being the cable company’s guinea pig. But I was willing to take the risk because of Mediacom’s track record with its phone service to homes. Also, our office is directly across the street from Mediacom, so we knew where to find them if we had problems.

I felt even more confident after the preliminary visit by a Mediacom representative. I was copied on an e-mail sent to Mediacom corporate with the subject line, “It doesn’t get any better than this!” The e-mail outlined all the things that would make the Tech 2 install easy.

The e-mail: (with my translations)

1. It’s directly across the street from the office. (Again, I knew where to find them.)
2. High Speed Internet and video is active, passes drop cert and cable input and splitter are on the plywood. (We already have Internet and cable from them, the signal strength is good, and the cable line comes in next to the plywood with our phone lines.)
3. There are two phone lines to port, and they were easy to identify on the punch down block. (They found the lines from CenturyLink easily on the punch block, the device that connects the lines from the phone provider and our internal lines that go to the wall jacks.)
4. There is ample room for the eMTA and IDC Bridge (the massive piece of plywood in our phone closet is big enough to place the Mediacom device that translates the data from a cable line into phone lines).

About a week after the preliminary visit, I met a lone tech in my office. I expected to see a tech and the Mediacom trainer who came to the preliminary visit, but instead a single tech with limited phone installation experience (read: none) came to complete the install. Not surprisingly, Tech 2 was his first experience with business phones, and he was fresh out of the Mediacom business phone boot camp (all of his tools were brand new and still in the packaging).

Uh-oh, I thought.

After getting the new equipment mounted and connected, the tech tracked down lines from CenturyLink on our punch block, but was clearly distressed. He explained that Mediacom trained him on an empty punch block, so he was having trouble figuring out ours. Now, I was distressed.

While the extra wires from our internal router were confusing, he figured it out eventually. He disconnected the CenturyLink lines, connected the lines from the new Mediacom device and called to have our numbers ported from CenturyLink to Mediacom.

It worked. Within a few minutes, both of our lines were working.

We did discover a hiccup immediately after setup. Mediacom had automatically given us call waiting, which prevented calls from rolling over to the other line. But Mediacom quickly fixed the problem.

We have been operating with Mediacom phones for over a month now without issue. Calls are clear from both sides, even when our office is experiencing heavy Internet usage. Most impressively and pleasing, our phone service was uninterrupted during two recent Mediacom Internet outages. I figured our phones would be down every time Internet service failed, but surprisingly that wasn’t the case.

So what’s the bottom line? It costs pretty much the same as CenturyLink’s business phone service. But by bundling it with all of our other phone services, we were able to save money. Offering one to eight lines, it works as simply as a landline from the phone company and offers all basic phone features (call waiting, ID, voicemail, etc,) plus several enhanced options like e-mailing the audio from voicemails. Just as easily, the service can be used with any new or existing phone systems. For more information visit http://mediacomcable.com/BusinessServices/busPhone.html.

So far, we have been very pleased with Mediacom’s phone service. The call quality and reliability are as good as the phone company’s, and the Internet service is better. The technicians are a tad inexperienced, but they have the basics down. Our technician worked quickly and called us later to make sure everything was up and running as planned.

Mediacom’s new business phone service isn’t going to work for everyone because it’s not available everywhere. But for some business customers, it’s worth looking into because it allows for cost savings through bundling services. And in a tough climate for businesses, every potential savings is worth a closer look.