Embarg Launches Call-Screening Service for Some Subscribers

Tag : Internet Phone Call

Land-line phone company Embarq Corp. has launched a service that lets customers screen theirvoice mail, the latest offering designed to make traditional phoneservice more appealing amid growing competition from wireless andcable providers.
The call-screening service, which is free for Embarq's voice-mailsubscribers, sounds a tone when callers begin recording a message.The subscriber can then pick up the receiver and listen inreal-time, interrupting if he wants to talk to the caller. Embarqis the fourth-largest phone company in the U.S., with six millionsubscribers.
Consumers with answering machines have always been able to screenmessages, but that feature hasn't been widely available in voicemail, which has grown more popular in recent years. According toresearch firm Yankee Group, about one-third of U.S. households usedvoice mail with their land lines in 2007, up from 18% five yearsearlier.
Spun off from Sprint Nextel Corp. two years ago, Embarq lacks its own wireless division, andit has focused new products on traditional phone service. Earlierthis year, the Overland Park, Kan., company unveiled the eGo, anInternet-enabled home phone, and it has tested services moretypically associated with cellphones, like text messaging, forland-line subscribers.
Those subscribers declined by about 170,000 during Embarq's secondquarter, mirroring land-line losses across the telecommunicationssector.
Initiatives like call screening are designed to retain customers bymaking their home phone service more appealing, says HarryCampbell, Embarq's president of consumer markets. "The ability toscreen calls, and answer them if they choose to, is actually prettyimportant, and it's one of those things you can't do on yourwireless phone," he says.
Write to Andrew LaVallee at andrew.lavallee@wsj.com