It’s November 2005. I am desperately trying to find listings of Steven Spielberg’s latest release. So I borrow my sister’s Nokia handset to call a friend. I hit the wrong speed-dial key and a message flashes on the screen asking what song would I like from the play list! Stunned by this message, I examine the phone. Did I have too much wine at lunch that I mistook my iPod for the phone? No, sir, this definitely was the cell phone.

Then, somewhere deep in the trenches of my memory, I recollect reading about Nokia being able to download songs from Microsoft’s media player. Aah! Well, so that was it. With renewed vigor, I proceed to call my pal. Alas! Hit the wrong key again. And this time, the phone starts to play a Britney Spears video. This one is a double-whammy. I knew about a camera phone, but how did it play a video?

Confused, I decide to call the network’s customer service. The Verizon operator asks me if I want the phone department, Internet help, or video services. Something is seriously wrong. Surely I am missing something. My next step is to check the listings online. I get to the Yahoo! movies page, but not before I encounter a few dozen advertisements. And no, these are not the regular ads playing at corners of the page. And then magically, my computer starts playing the latest episode of “The Apprentice.”

On the edge of irritability, I reach out for my TV remote and another horror awaits me there. Instead of the normal television screen with people or things or painful commercials, a screen pops up, “Welcome to SBC Communications. Please choose your program for downloading.” What in heaven’s name is going on? The TV wants to download, the computer is playing shows, and the phone sings songs and flashes moving pictures.

I had heard of cable companies giving phone services, like cable giant Comcast Corp., which had inherited 1 million telephone users from AT&T broadband a few years ago. So Verizon had taken over MCI Corp. in February, but video? I prayed before I checked it on the computer again.

It turns out New York’s premier cable company, Cablevision Systems, was one of the first cable firms to extend their wires beyond cable to telephony. And it plans to reduce their all-in-one package of phone, Internet, and cable services from $140 a month to $115, while competition from New York-based companies, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable, have started their own role-reversal. TWC offering phone and Verizon offering video. Wow! So there’s a party going on in Manhattan.

Across the country, SBC, whose $100 billion deal with AT&T Corp. made news, will also start its own Internet-based phone and television services. In order to beat the competition, it will offer downloading services, enabling video on demand and more space on the bandwidth. And as for the Yahoo! predicament, the $840 million profit of the past year helped in leasing most of entertainment giant MGM’s offices in Santa Monica, Calif. With a $3 billion annual advertising revenue, this company will change a lot in Hollywood. More than $11 billion will be spent on online advertising and marketing by Hollywood and Madison Avenue this year.

Ms. Parikh, a former Miss India, lives in Los Angeles. E-mail: shivangi.parikh@gmail.com