The press conference with all four cable CEOs and Sprint Nextel president and CEO Gary Forsee probably was more fun in person since the folks in New York got to demo the new Sprint Power Vision Network with Samsung A940 handsets. Still, some interesting comments and a little more enlightenment. (Check out the MP3 if you want to hear it all.) One tidbit: the joint venture is in talks with Charter Communications. When I checked with Charter, spokesman Dave Anderson wrote back: “I can confirm dialogue but will decline specific comment on our evaluation process and where we are in our discussions. We’ll continually monitor the progress of the partnership.”
Getting the JV to this stage in roughly a year — especially one that included a merger for the wireless carrier — says something about how important the business is for each partner.
– Outgoing Cox Communications Chairman Jim Robbins called it “the one thing i ewanted to get done before i headed off into the sunset” and said it was just “the baby steps of what might be coming in the future.”
– TW Cable’s Glenn Britt talked about how well positioned the cable companies, already finished with its expensive infrastructure upgrades for the most part, are compared to the TV-telecos. “Unlike our competitors, we’re there today.” He said they explored other alternatives including assembling spectrum, but this was the best for everyone involved and the one with the lowest capital risk.
– Comcast CEO Brian Roberts: “The elegance of this model, in my opinion, is that Sprint has the wireless customer, the cable companies have the three products that we have.” Ultimately, the money from the wireless will flow to Sprint; the money from cable, voice and data flows to the cable partners.
You can download the audio of the press conference here. (8.5 Megs, 48:22)
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