Ah…the coveted triple play.  The name of this extremely rare  occurrence in baseball (except for the Philadelphia Phillies a few nights ago) now lends its name to one of the most profitable series of consumer services in telecommunications industry history.  As traditional and IP based services continue to merge, we increasingly find phone companies offering television packages (such as Verizon’s FIOS TV and AT&T’s U-Verse) and cable TV operators offering home telephone service (e.g. Comcast Digital Voice and Time Warner’s Digital Phone).  Combined with Internet service, these companies are brutally competing to serve all three of the consumer’s telecommunications needs.

Now after years of service consolidation, it looks like we’re finally going to start seeing some benefits in the form of cross platform features that may not have been possible otherwise.  Comcast today announced the availability of its Universal Caller ID service to its Triple Play subscribers in the San Fransisco area.

When a call is received, a message appears on your TV or PC screen identifying the caller.  While the message will appear automatically on your TV, software installation is required to enable the service on a PC.  The announcement can then be closed if you choose not to answer the phone – or the service disabled entirely should you prefer a “pop-up free” viewing experience.

Comcast already allows some of its On-Demand programming to be viewed online via its Fancast service.  It will be exciting to see what other features these companies can develop given the massive transformation in our telecommunications infrastructure.