Cox To Enter The Mobile Phone Business... For Real
from the didn't-expect-that dept
It's no secret that the various cable companies have been interested in offering some sort of mobile phone service. A few years ago, the biggest cable companies (Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox) teamed up with Sprint to offer mobile phone service under their own brands, building on Sprint's experience in allowing others to offer their own branded mobile phone service (known in the business as being a mobile virtual network operator -- or MVNO). Of course, since then, a ton of MVNO efforts have failed (remember ESPN's own mobile phone service?) and the cable companies never actually moved forward with offering service on Sprint's network. There was some thought that the cable companies were still interested in something in the mobile space, and Comcast and Time Warner are a part of Sprint's WiMax offering, but clearly Cox had decided to go its own way by that point.Even so, it's quite surprising to find out that Cox is entering the mobile phone business for real -- as in building its own network. The company has apparently been acquiring spectrum to serve its market, and negotiating with handset providers. The article is a little unclear, but it sounds like there may still be a roaming agreement with Sprint, since the article claims the phones will work on both Cox's network and Sprint's -- suggesting Cox is working on an EVDO network. However, the company also claims that it's looking at using LTE as its "4G" technology. LTE is the technology chosen by pretty much everyone else in the US but Sprint, which is betting on WiMax.
Cox claims that its mobile service will be highly integrated with the other aspects of its business, including letting people watch TV on their handsets, control their DVRs from the handsets and automatically synchronize phone address books with home computer address books. It's good to see them thinking about real integration between services, because that's still pretty rare, but those services are all going to need to work pretty well together to make it really convincing for most people. Either way, you could see this as the epilogue to the death of MVNOs. While we've already seen that most MVNO plans went nowhere, it's quite a statement when a company is now choosing to build its own damn network rather than just piggybacking on someone else's.
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Maybe It's Not about the 'Phone' Service
Cox is in a position to leapfrog ahead of the other cellco's if they aggressively build a 4G network using Sprint's 2G as a filler network in the process.
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Cox
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MVNOs
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A Differnt Spin?
Hmm it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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Re: A Differnt Spin?
A lot of your arguments sound just like one's used 10 years ago when Cox was the first cable company to go into the phone business. Hmmm, now look at things, just about every cable company offers phone and phone companies have realized being a one stop shop is the way to go and are now investing in the video business.
Sounds to me like they are just being ahead of the curve again, go them.
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Re: A Differnt Spin?
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MVNOs Not A Dead Concept
Virgin Mobile, Kajeet, Boost, Palm.net, Blackberry.net, and about a hundred more around the world. The list is actually quite long.
It seems that an MVNOs success depends on the success of their business model. Those with particularly high costs (those failed ones above) can't survive the initial years, but those who focus on low costs do much better. One thing seems consistent, certainly in the US market: it has proven far harder than anyone thought to "win" a subscriber, or to pry them away from their existing carrier.
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Re: MVNOs Not A Dead Concept
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Cox And MSOs Make Sense In Wireless
AS for the speculation as to their technology choices, the path is clear. The ABSOLUTE KEY to technology decisions for new entrants is: what kind of equipment is available at the frequencies you need. For small players like Cox (or telus, bell mobility, US cellular, etc.) this means you can only get the same gear as some larger carrier, or a global standard.
I would expect Cox to do LTE at 700MHz, because that's what VZW and ATT are doing, so equipment will be available and affordable. Expect mobile broadband (laptops, other CE devices) to be part of the service offering.
Since Cox is building its own network, it will need to roam to an existing network to have acceptable coverage footprint - expect their phones to be dual-mode, roaming on EV-DO. This hardware will be available because VZW will need that dual modality (LTE/EVDO).
Cox will probably partner with Sprint for roaming, because Sprint is their partner and because Sprint is the leading wholesale roaming vendor. However, they could just as easily roam on Verizon.
Cox enters the market with the ability to bundle, retail locations, brand awareness, reputation as communication service provider, trucks, warehouses, dispatch yards, core networks, NOCs, billing experience, and other distinct advantages over other new entrants.
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Never Under-Estimate
Deep Pockets and Conventional Wisdom only get your company so far.
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Good Article
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