The CEO of US cable company Cox Communications has been widely reported this week as standing up at a technology conference to give a tiny taste of just what Cox plans to do with the 700 MHz spectrum that it bought at auction in March and will switch on at the earliest next February. Cox spent $305 million for 22 licenses in California, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma.
It was always obvious that Cox saw itself offering a simple quadruple play, and that has been confirmed by the CEO, suggesting the the Cox build out will be just $200 million more, although we retain a feeling that this is going to be a lot tougher than Cox CEO Patrick Esser realizes.
Almost no network builders have already built 700 MHz wireless networks, and tuning them and getting devices right will take some considerable time. Cox may find that it is well into 2010 before it has its first taste of a wireless network.
However Esser made it very clear that it will probably be a flat price offering, or at least a very simple one, that the company would offer just one or two devices, and that all of the company’s services would go into that device ‘ with a consistent interface. There’s a lot wrong with that statement and it does give us cause for concern that Cox is the only major US cable operator to go it alone in wireless, with many of the rest pinning their hopes on an investment in Clearwire, with the exception of Cablevision and Charter.
Companies as big and as clever as Microsoft have tried to take an interface from one screen (the PC) and plonk it down on the handset unchanged, with very limited success. Also Cox offers broadband, TV and telephony, and to offer all of those on a handset, with one slice of 6MHz isn’t possible, so the chances are that it will simply offer voice and some mobile web access, and where does that leave its video strategy ‘ potentially with a streaming cellular solution, which is poor quality. Of course it would get more bandwidth usage for its money if it was to follow rival cable operators Comcast, Time Warner and Advance Newhouse and use WiMAX. But then it should have joined in with the Clearwire deal.
However Esser dropped another clue about Tru2way and mobile devices, which makes us think that the Cox strategy for video may be sideloading from a set top and harmonizing Java clients between the two, and there’s nothing wrong in that, as long as it can manage a very fast copying process.
The other thing about a limited number of devices is also worrying, since all services we have seen, such as mobile TV, always benefit from having a wide choice of devices. At least the simple, bundled calling plans could provide simple billing and a definite advantage, if Cox ever gets its services off the ground.
When a cellular operator goes into the fixed line business and creates a quad play, it tries to preserve the huge cellular margin and give the other services away. What if a fixed line operator goes into wireless for the first time and virtually gives wireless away to its existing triple play customers? ‘ that might prove a compelling strategy.
At least Cox within its own territory, will be able to provide the fiber to backhaul its own base stations, whichever technology they use.