Which is it: toe-may-toe or tuh-mah-toe? Loo-e-ville or Loo-uh-ville? Wireless or not?

As you can see from the two stories below on Windstream and Embarq, companies, like people, speak different dialects. Both are talking about bundled services, but to Windstream wireless is as unnecessary as the "s" in Illinois, and to Embarq it is as essential as Disney is to Orlando, which is one of the locales the company chose to roll out its fixed/mobile converged service last month.

Windstream feels broadband access to the home and business is the linchpin to success and feels wireless can wait while it gets its video, voice and data bundle in place. Embarq doesn't deny that broadband is important--it has its own penetration plans--but it sees the future as a world of wireless and wireline convergence. How can the two biggest players in the independent market view the world so differently? Is this an all-or-nothing battle of ideologies where the winner gets to impose its vision on the rest of the world?

Not likely. Embarq and Windstream may be competing for a leadership position in the independent market, but their strategies are more opportunistic and, well, "independent" of each other. They don't compete for the same customers, except for those being proffered by the RBOCs shedding access lines or by other independent telcos. They may compete here in acquisitive bidding wars but not in the battle of ideas. At least not yet.

Their battles are both internal, fighting to address their most immediate needs. Their success or failure will be of most interest to themselves and their direct competitors rather than to each other. There is time enough, though not a lot, for both companies to adopt more similar strategies in the future once they have executed on their priorities.

So we can wish them both luck and urge them--as they say in Miz-ur-ee, or is it Miz-ur-ah--to show me!