Yah, I think that the cable companies are desperate to retain customers, and historically, the way they did that was to make it as difficult as possible to switch providers. That meant selling triple play bundles, no matter how much the customer insisted they didn't want it. Now that so many customers are either dumping land line service entirely and just using mobile phones, or using third-party VoIP, the cable companies are resorting to practically giving away their phone service, solely to keep the customer hooked on using that phone number, and thus continuing to make it less convenient (in the average customer's mind, not for us techies) to switch.
In this week's news, the FCC is considering new rules to make it easier for cable customers to buy their own set top boxes, and the cable industry is in full-blown lobbyist attack mode. I suspect they spend more money on lobbyists than they do on providing phone service.