Bright House digital phone service: beware

Bright House Networks, a cable provider in portions of Florida, Alabama, Cali, Michigan and Indiana, is heavily touting its new digital phone service. And the service has its advantages, like the comparatively low cost and unlimited long distance thrown in.

Understandably, Bright House can't match the old-time telcos for dial tone reliability (yet). Too many moving parts. Obviously, the way to compensate for this is with super-responsive service. After all, phone service is a family safety issue. You need it be there when you need it to be there.

This is not obvious to Bright House. So beware.

Bright House supports its phone service with the same old 1980s cable TV model: "Bubba will be at your house between 8 am and 8 pm sometime between now and the next passing of Halley's Comet."

Totally, totally unacceptable for phone service. Why is this so hard for Bright House to understand?

Sadly, it might take a family tragedy--a fire, a needless death--that could've been prevented had Bright House been on top of their service to shake the company awake.