Cable Companies Think This Is Interesting?
Last week at the US mobile industry’s big trade show in Las Vegas, Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt said that cable companies had to do more than just add cell phone service to the bundle of services they offer, and that doing so was “not all that interesting”. Now, the cable companies involved in a joint venture with Sprint Nextel have released a few details about its launch, scheduled for the second half of the year, and it sounds like their initial ideas, well, are not all that interesting. Users will be able to access TV listings on their mobile phone, and if they also subscribe to home phone service from their cable company, will have one integrated voice mailbox for both fixed and wireless service. They’ll also be able to — wait for it — check their email from their cell phone, a service offered by, oh, thousands of companies already. Most of these services only offer benefits to people who use other services from the cable company, like its home phone service, or, in the case of email, its email system. So with that in mind, what’s the idea here — innovative services, or simply drawing people into the bundle?
