2:30 PM -- I was at a dinner party the other night. A relative asked me, "Have you heard of the Verizon thing called FiOS?

"Well, yes, of course!" I said. I mean, how often do we ever really get to engage people on this stuff in the real world?

"Well, we're getting it."

Here's the longer story: Their video supplier is DirecTV Group Inc. (NYSE: DTV). They'll never switch from satellite for TV, because the man of the house is an NFL Sunday Ticket addict. Originally they had Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) for data, DirecTV for video, and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) for voice.

Comcast approached them with a cheaper voice bundle with the data. They took it. Only one problem -- it never worked very well! Several days without dial tone, the quality wasn't there, and they experienced general frustration. (See Comcast Suffers VOIP, Broadband Outages .)

The FiOS sales guy was going door-to-door in the neighborhood, 'cause he wanted to string as many people up at once. And he sold them. So they'll be with Verizon for both voice and data, though they are sticking with satellite for video. So Verizon (and DirectTV) wins this cable vs. telco battle.

This little story just shows you two things: "Triple Play" could really just be a myth, as people still shop for each service and evaluate each separately; and the cable companies have to have rock-solid voice networks to really compete with RBOCs.

— R. Scott Raynovich, Triple Play Editor, Light Reading