Christine A. Varney heads up antitrust at the Department of Justice, and she's going hunting. She is the point person for a group consisting of the presidential administration and some Congressional Democrats that is looking to put the breaks on large companies in several industries.

Already, airlines have run into roadblocks when requesting relief from antitrust regulations. Varney & Co. are digging into complaints by AT&T (NYSE: ATT) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) that cable competitors – e.g., Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) – have locked them out of the market for cable company-produced programming.

(Imagine that, a phone company complaining! Usually, they're the objects of derision.)

Cox Communications, the privately-held cable television and high-speed internet powerhouse headquartered in Atlanta, made a bold move this morning by announcing that it plans to launch nationwide wireless service in the second half of 2009. Like many of us, you may be asking "do we really need another national wireless carrier?" Cox apparently thinks so. It's into almost all telecom fields these days: home television, video on demand, high speed internet and home/business telephone service. Why not wireless? The company recently bid $500 million at FCC auctions to buy wireless spectrum in many of its markets. Now is a good of a time as any.

It's no surprise. Competitors AT&T, Inc. (NYSE: T) and Verizon Communications, Inc. (NYSE: VZ) are increasingly intruding into Cox's turf by offering television service and high-speed internet using their own nationwide telecom infrastructure. Cox has competed for quite a long time on those offerings, but the willingness of the old Bell companies to get into digital television delivery must have sent Cox over the edge. Add satellite television into the mix and Cox thinks it needs to be a player on every possible platform it can. It's right.

Cox Communications Inc., the largest private cable television provider in the U.S., said Monday that it plans on participating in the FCC's radio spectrum auctions in January.

So far, it looks like Cox may be the only major cable operator to participate in the auction, which will attract bidders for the 700-MHz radio spectrum that will soon be opened up when analog television signals cease in early 2009.

What will Cox plan on if it does win some radio bandwidth next month? Wireless service? Nah, the market is exceedingly crowded already, and it may get worse if Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) enters the picture. Fixed-wireless internet service? Cox already operates one of the largest high-speed internet consumer and business networks in the country, so that is an odd choice for increasing that market share.

With Cox competitors Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) electing to sit this auction out completely, it's unclear what Cox's strategy is -- and perhaps the company wants it that way. Cox's push towards mobility is under the radar at the moment, as the company looks like it is stockpiling wireless bandwidth for some future purpose -- but it's just saying "convergence purposes." Mightly slick there, Cox.

After reading this rant over at InfoWorld, I could not help but write a post on the what this customer went through in the consumer broadband Internet arena recently. Why did I choose this to post on? Because the same thing happened to me, and with the same company. What company? Cox Communications. The problem? Almost exactly as this article author describes, except my issues happened in 2001, or over five years ago.

At that time, Cox bought a smaller provider of cable television/Internet services in the town I was living in at the time. I had measured my broadband choices carefully and had chosen another providers based on value for the money. When Cox bought the company, not only did prices go up after about 90 days, but the customer service and especially communications from the new Cox provider were, well, absolutely horrid.

Giving newly acquired customers less than a few weeks to change email addresses and re-configure a bunch of technical settings in their PCs with pretty lame assistance was just the start.

So, the lesson this author learned -- same lesson I did -- was that competition in all industries is the key component. If you don't like the way a company treats you, you have the choice to move to a different provider. Take many things into consideration here -- prices, service levels, responsiveness, professionalism and customer service. Make a fair and balanced decision on who to give your money to.

In 2006, I am lucky in that there are three broadband service providers in my area to choose from. My current main provider is a company I have been with for over five years now -- because the service is excellent, the price is right and the customer service is great. Need I say more? By the way, it's not Cox, and probably never will be.