Robbins chastises industry for unfair competition

LAS VEGAS--With retirement only two months away, Cox Communications President and CEO Jim Robbins didn’t mince words in challenging the telecom industry to fight fair on the regulatory front, as telcos “scramble to get into video.”

Robbins was originally scheduled to share a stage with SBC Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre but instead followed Whitacre’s last-minute replacement Lee Ann Champion to the Telecom ’05 keynote stage. Champion, senior executive vice president of IP Operations and Services at SBC, had touted her company’s Project Lightspeed as the industry’s most aggressive deployment of next generation technology.

Robbins immediately chided SBC for aspiring “to do what we’ve been doing for a number of years” in offering voice, data and video as a bundle, pointing to Cox’s 1 million triple-play customers as proof.

“Cable has invested $95 billion since 1996 in capital on infrastructure upgrades and facilities improvements,” Robbins said. “It isn’t reasonable to penalize us for our foresight now that the Bells are jumping on the bundling bandwagon and scrambling to provide video.”

Robbins criticized the telephone industry for trying to use regulation to “tilt the playing field” in its favor, specifically citing the Texas statewide franchise bill as a “blatantly discriminatory piece of legislation” that makes local video franchises unnecessary for telcos but leaves “cable stuck with the old rules.”

“To create a distinct set of franchise rules for one group of competitors doesn’t come close to passing the red-faced test,” he said. While agreeing that the “patchwork quilt” of local franchise rules and regulations needs to be replaced, Robbins accused the telephone industry of using its “deep pockets” and legions of lobbyists to gain an unfair advantage.

“Let’s go head to head and let consumers pick the winners,” he said. “Let’s play fair--there’s too much at stake not to. Predatory behavior serves no one.”

According to a Verizon spokesman, the statewide franchise rules in Texas will apply equally to telcos and cable companies, but the cable firms must live up to their existing franchise agreements until those expire.

Cox has built its strategy around customer service, Robbins said, and is taking that approach into the business market, where Cox Business Services is now generating half a billion dollars in business. The company is also continuing to improve its service bundle, although Robbins did not provide specifics on how.

He did take a shot across Verizon’s bow as well, with photographs he said showed shoddy work in that company’s FiOS network construction.