VoiceManager also is available in Rhode Island; Connecticut; Hampton Roads, Va., Kansas; Las Vegas, Nev., Oklahoma; Omaha, Neb.; Phoenix, Orange County, Calif.; and San Diego, Calif.

 

Cox (News - Alert) Business VoiceManager offers unified messaging, personal call manager, call control features such as Find Me/Follow Me, and simultaneous ring to multiple phones.

 

Some independent service providers focused on mid-sized or “smaller” business communication markets have argued in the past that cable companies would not find wild success in the business markets. Those opinions tend to be held by firms that compete largely in the distributed, multi-location customer segment, if only because at the moment it is easier to create a seamless national service for customers using wholesale facilities leased from other telecom service providers, than to attempt the same thing inside a single cable operator’s footprint, or across multiple cable operator footprints.

 

That may change over time, but for the moment cable companies are attacking the single-site organization with requirements for eight to perhaps 12 phone lines and broadband access, perhaps with wireless being part of the bundle. There is no getting around cable’s new competition in the small business market, and many of us would not bet against them.

 

And even if one were to argue that cable operators as a whole are not a serious threat, Cox has proven formidable in the voice space for years, and obviously can handle business broadband. So far, I do not detect rumblings from small business specialists about “running into cable” on the streets. One suspects it won’t be long before that changes.

 

In other news, Cost Business announced the availability of its New ‘Cox Business VoiceManager’ in Northern Virginia.