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Comcast.net's online communications center called SmartZone will have applications provided by a number of companies for email, voicemail, and instant messaging. Several firms are part of today's announcement aimed at Comcast's customers. The SmartZone service will be rolled out later in 2007. Zimbra and Plaxo will provide messaging and address book services, respectively.

Users of SmartZone will be able to manage email and voicemail messages, IM with others (including video), and track contacts with a smart address book. A Comcast spokesperson said people will be able to customize their SmartZone portals with news, weather, and video clips.

GigaOM's Om Malik likened the SmartZone announcement to an attempt to boost Comcast's page views and opportunities to display richly-profitable advertising to its subscribers:

The sizzling broadband subscriber growth hasn’t really translated into huge page view growth for Comcast. According to BusinessWeek, over the past 12 months, its traffic actually went down 5 percent. It needed to do something to reverse the trend, and email is a good place to start. While many consumers choose to ignore the Comcast.net portal, the take-up rate for Comcast email is fairly high. By offering an enhanced email experience, Comcast is betting that it can attract these same consumers to Comcast.net website and keep the page views growing.

Comcast and Yahoo recently announced a multi-year deal that places Yahoo's ads on Comcast's Internet properties. It could prove a dramatic boost for video advertising delivered by Yahoo due to Comcast's ability to deliver those ads as very clear ones to viewers.