Last week at Supercomm, Larry had the chance to moderate a lively panel debate between SBC and Verizon (representing traditional phone companies) and Cox Communications (representing the cable industry).

The debate centered on which provider can best serve up a triple-play offering that includes voice, video, and high-speed data services including Internet access.

Panelists Ed Cholerton, SBC’s vice president of consumer marketing for Lightspeed and broadband; Marilyn O'Connell, Verizon’s senior vice president for broadband solutions; and David Pugliese, vice president of product marketing and management for Cox Communications all provided a civil and well-informed perspective on why their respective companies were best suited to offer these services.

The panel’s consensus was that no one player would likely dominate the national triple-play market, although regional market shares would vary. All participants agreed that customers who bought into a triple play were more likely to stay with the one-stop-shopping model.

They did not agree, however, on the importance of adding wireless as a fourth factor to the consumer mix. While Verizon and SBC believe cellular is key to a complete package, Cox maintains that the highly competitive cellular market and wide range of consumer needs make mobile services more attractive as a stand-alone purchase.

The most contentious issue came up when discussing whether phone companies should be required to secure a local franchise agreement before offering video services. Cox maintained that the phone companies should be required to secure franchise rights, Verizon maintained that franchise rights would be acceptable so long as they were not monopolistic, and SBC’s position was that open competition would best serve the market. (Larry noted that it is no wonder this issue is being fought within the legislative and judicial avenues by the industries.)

Perhaps the most refreshing point that was made by and agreed on by the panelists was that high-quality customer service and customer experience are the most important factor to capturing and keeping the market.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.