Regional U.S. telecom operator, Embarq Corp., is stepping up promotion of its resale partnership with EchoStar’s DISH Network service, in hopes of preventing a surging cable industry from poaching its customers.

Encouraging its subscribers to sign-up for satellite TV service “knocks (Embarq’s) biggest competitor … plain of the field,” according to the company’s CEO, Tome Gerke. “If there’s a dish on the side of the house, then there’s no cable entertainment, no cable high speed and no cable voice service,”Gerke said at a recent Goldman Sachs & Co. investors’ forum.

In order to achieve this end, Embarq is currently offering DISH Network’s “Top 100″ video package for 12 months at no extra charge, to customers that commit to any if its triple-play bundles (starting at $59/month) for a minimum of two years.

In promoting Embarq’s services, Gerke emphasized that his company’s line-up of five different “flavors” of broadband service (with downstream rates ranging from 768-kbps to 10-Mbps) provide customers with a wide range of choices, while competing with the high-end broadband services of cable companies.

Gerke also left room for the possibility of network enhancements, noting that as Embarq sees evidence of demand for faster internet connections, it will “make sure that we’ve got the network capable of doing it.”