Coming soon to a cable digital phone near you...

City by city, town by town, people are starting to hear about something new from their cable company: Telephone service. So far, it's what you would expect your phone to do: It rings. You answer. You talk. You hang up. If you're not there, the person calling you leaves a message into an electronic mailbox.

Sounds pretty much like what you can already get from the phone company, right? That's by design. In order for cable operators to entice customers away from telephone companies that have been selling phone service for more than 100 years now, they needed to make certain their offers were equivalent, both in features and in overall stability.

That part is done. The next thing to watch for is the new temptations that will come with cable phone offerings. Many are already in the works, deep inside the engine rooms of the nation's cable providers. Here's a glance at one of them:

"Find Me" (Or Not). You desperately need to speak to your spouse, but you know her schedule is as hectic as yours today. Or, you just need a few hours of complete silence, away from things that beep. Either way, you go online, and adjust your "presence" settings for your phone.

In the case of your spouse, you set yourself up to make all of your phone lines ring — cell first, then office, then home — until her call finds you. In the case of your workload, you set yourself up in "do not disturb" mode. It's a click of a mouse.

Kind of puts a whole new spin on "one ringy dingy, two ringy dingy," now, doesn't it?