Sprint Nextel’s Cable Convergence Deal Generates Industry Chatter

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Sprint Nextel’s Cable Convergence Deal Generates Industry Chatter

6:00 am on April 11, 2006 | Category: Telecom Services, Mobile Devices

Sprint Nextel’s recent joint venture with several of American’s biggest cable giants is generating a lot of interest at this week’s National Show, a communication convergence conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

Sprint has agreed to let Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, and Advance/Newhouse Communications resell its wireless services, along with their bundled cable TV and broadband services. The combined service will ultimately lead to more convergence, allowing customers to remotely program their digital video recorders from their mobile phones.

This deal is a big step in the road to quadruple-play convergence of telecom, internet, video, and wireless services, but it will be interesting to see whether the cable giants keep reselling Sprint’s services, or ultimately create their own wireless offerings.

Time Warner’s CEO, for example, has already said that he would like to see the company delivering wireless service over its own network. This will be a costly and difficult endeavor, but could ultimately increase the cable giant’s revenue, tempt competitors to follow the same path.