A lot has been written today about Sprint Nextel’s joint venture with Comcast, Time Warner, Cox and Advanced/Newhouse, but I thought I’d follow up with more details from today’s press conference. First, everybody involved in the deal is proud of what they see more as a great technological step forward rather than simply an unusual alliance between a wireless company and the cable industry.
“This is the next frontier in our industry,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said. “We’re not just adding a plain old cell phone to cable services. It’s the ability to tie the two platforms together,” Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said. “What’s going on today is a baby step for what might be coming in the future,” outgoing Cox Cable CEO Jim Robbins said.
“This is indeed a convergence of great magnitude, both technically and practically,” Advanced/Newhouse CEO Bob Miron said. “Clearly this more than about stapling wireless onto the triple-play,” Sprint CEO Gary Foresee added. “You will see the ability for the device [the cable-branded broadband phone] to remote program the DVR, integrate voice mail and email, content from the cable TV platform integrated on the device.”
Secondly, the partners all seem to have worked out their slices of the pie in advance, with some clear demarcations among the various players. Blurred customer ownership lines and fights over revenue share can easily doom a complicated venture such as this.
“Each cable company has its own direct relationship with Sprint,” Roberts explained. “We’re not attempting to have one company in the middle that we each own a piece of, where there is a tension.” Moreover, the content offered by each company will vary from location to location, although the goal is to have a “national” cable-wireless broadband service, and some of the other top operators are encouraged to join in. “Cablevision, Mediacom and Charter are certainly welcome to join,” Foresee said.
What’s a little fuzzy is how Sprint plans to market this service, which will function over a device that will work off Powervision, Sprint’s broadband EV-DO network, alongside some other content initiatives it has, including those with mobile content provider Mobi and other programmers, such as Nascar.
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:38 PM|Comments(0)
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