This should be very interesting and great for mobile content players: Three top U.S. cable operators are close to landing a deal with Sprint Nextel to offer wireless service, the story says, quoting sources. These three are Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications..they would be offering cell phone service using Sprint Nextel’s network as part of their bundled services, which currently include cable TV, high speed Internet and digital home telephone services. The deal could be announced as early as November 1, ahead of Q3 earnings reports for two of the three cable companies…
This should also help cable cos in competing against telcos, which are coming in with all guns blazing.
MultiChannel News, which broke the story, said that one such future service could allow a cable network to handle the handoff of a call from a network inside the home to the cellular network outside of the home, making it possible to use a home phone that uses Internet protocol to communicate to act simultaneously as a mobile phone.
FT: Discussions between the cable companies and wireless operators about some kind of a partnership have been going on for more than a year, though it is unclear whether a deal will happen. One of the issues is that it is not clear what the economic advantages would be of a deal in which the cable groups effectively lease space from Sprint and rebrand it as a Comcast or a Time Warner phone.
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