TWC Launches Caller-ID TV In Rochester, N.Y.

For Paul Stisser, caller ID on TV just makes life easier. For Peter Stern, it’s the vision of convergence.

Time Warner Cable rolled out caller ID on the TV to its 20,000 voice and video subscribers in Rochester, N.Y., last week, its largest deployment of the service application to date.

“It makes it a lot easier when we’re chasing [1-year-old son] Jacob around the house and we can see who is calling without leaving the room,” Stisser told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

Building on an earlier rollout in Columbia, S.C., caller ID on the TV allows voice-over-Internet protocol subscribers to “see” who is calling as they watch television. Once a call comes in, a small box appears in the upper left hand corner of the screen with the caller’s name and phone number. The information remains on the screen through two “rings,” then disappears.

“We’re changing the value proposition of the bundle, from the more you buy the more you save to the more you buy the better it gets,” Time Warner Cable executive vice president of product management Peter Stern said.

Early reviews in Rochester are glowing, Stern said: “People wax ecstatic about the product.”

Some other upstate New York markets, plus some Texas markets, look like the next areas where caller ID on the TV will be rolled out.

More “making life easier” features are on the way, Stern said, such as sending calls to voicemail using the remote control or Road Runner e-mail displays on the TV.