By Mike Boyer
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Time Warner Cable is beginning a phased rollout of its new residential telephone service in Southwest Ohio.

With 350,000 cable customers in a region stretching from Middletown to just west of Portsmouth, Time Warner poses the first real residential competition to Cincinnati Bell Inc., the incumbent provider.

The unit of Time Warner Inc. today notified customers of its Road Runner high-speed Internet service by e-mail that they can sign up for the service by going to a company Web site: www.twcinci.com.

"We're still in a testing mode,'' said spokesman Rob Howard, so the service isn't available everywhere in the company's 14-county Southwest Ohio service area.

As Time Warner turns up service in various neighborhoods, the company will contact those on its list to connect.

"This is a new business for us, so we want to make sure everything is done right,'' Howard said.

He said Time Warner doesn't plan to aggressively market the service until late this year or early next, when it will be available to all subscribers.

Cincinnati is the 10th of 31 markets nationally and the fourth in Ohio where Time Warner has introduced unlimited local and long-distance phone service using its cable network.

Time Warner is using Internet Protocol technology, which breaks voice messages into digital voice packets sent over its network. Unlike the emerging Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, Time Warner isn't using the public Internet to carry calls. Rather, Howard said, the company uses its own secured network to manage calls and is teaming with either MCI or Sprint to deliver calls beyond its cable network. In Cincinnati, Time Warner is working with MCI.

Current customers of Time Warner Cable will pay $39.95 a month for the service, which includes features such as call waiting, caller ID, one voice-mail box and 911 emergency dialing. Customers can keep their phone numbers if they want and can use their existing phones and phone jacks to access the service. There is no installation fee.

Customers with high-speed data service can get that service and phone service for $79.90 a month. Eventually, Time Warner will make the phone service available to non-cable subscribers for $44.95 a month.

One concern about digital phone service is that it can be interrupted when electric power is out. But Howard said any customer with a cordless phone faces that problem.

He said the company's research found customers aren't deterred by that risk and more than 60 percent have cell phones as backups.

E-mail mboyer@enquirer.com