The deal announced at the end of last week from Cablevision, Comcast and Time Warner on wi-fi roaming is part of a far bigger picture about the collective efforts of the US cablecos, keeping up with their senior telco rivals AT&T and Verizon.
This deal looks a ways off into the future though, and you would think that it really helps Cablevision, which already has a massive investment in wi-fi in the New York area, but only in that area, to compete head on with Verizon and customers of its FiOS TV system.
The deal is across the Tri-state area, so at every wi-fi access point offered by each of the three cablecos will be offered to all existing cable TV customers. Now we’re not quite sure if that’s ALL Comcast customers who can use Cablevision wi-fi when they are in New York or all Comcast customers from the Tri-state area? But we suspect the latter.
Cablevision is so often treated as the odd one out in cable, and often goes its own way more often than any of the other cablecos, but here it owns the best wi-fi network, those in and around New York, and so it has something to tempt the other major cable players. But on the other hand it operates in the heartland of Verizon where it has provided the sharpest thorn in the side for the major Telco, especially as Cablevision delivered the earliest full blown, low priced, triple play offering. Which is perhaps why it feels that it needs all the help it can get, by including roaming with the Connecticut and New Jersey wi-fi installations of Time Warner Cable and Comcast. Comcast in particular has installed wi-fi at around 120 train stations in New Jersey.
But all three were perhaps drawn to thinking about wi-fi by the continued success of the iPhone for AT&T and the arrival of the iPad. In particular the wi-fi only version of the iPad, the first of the two models delivered. This deal perhaps gives the cablecos the first opportunity to appeal to owners of a major Apple platform, which is perhaps why the timing of the deal coincides with iPad availability.
Over time the cable operators will extend their cellular reach, based initially on Sprint’s network and then subsequently based on the reach of Clearwire. And then the full range of a five points service ‘ full mobility, the reach of a fall back, offload network, based on wi-fi, plus the fixed triple play of TV, broadband and home phone connection, to go with their TV Everywhere services ‘ which will see cable TV class video extend to the internet.
In fact the use of wi-fi to deliver fully on a TV Everywhere dream, makes a wider roaming deal almost a certainty, with Comcast and Time Warner Cable cross roaming right the way across their wi-fi networks nationally, along with other cable partners such as Charter and Cox, which may add further roaming opportunities. Whether Cablevision’s New York wi-fi holdings will represent enough of a temptation to include it in a full national cable only, wi-fi roaming collective, is yet to be seen. Perhaps some money will need to change hands for that to happen.
Finally the cable operators could extend their deals to home based wi-fi routers, in the style of FON, where spare capacity is sold back to the operator that provides the broadband line, in order to resell this capacity on to passing wi-fi users. That step, with full roaming capacity with other cable operators, and additionally using femtocell capability to see their WiMAX network extend in the same manner, would bring the US cable offerings up to a par with US telcos, and present a viable multi-protocol alternative to the reach of the two major US RBOC based telcos.