Large cable companies, Time Warner Cable and Comcast among them, have partnered with Sprint Nextel to offer four play bundles to customers.
Four play bundle constitutes of wireless, broadband, voice and cable services. These bundles are supposed to frustrate the phone companies and steal their customers. Nevertheless, how that drama plays out, we think it could be a net win for Emeryville, Calif.-based MobiTV.
Our sources close to the company tell us that MobiTV is powering the “mobile television” part of the recently announced Comcast wireless service in Portland and Boston. The company is now delivering wireless television, and Comcast listings on Sprint-Nextel phones that are supposed to work with Comcast four-play offering. The company, declined to comment, when asked them for further details. It is still not clear if they are behing TWC’s wireless TV offering. (Since I was stuck for much of the day flying back from NYC, I plan to pester them later this morning.)
MobiTV which has raised an upwards of $125 million in venture funding, has become the wireless television delivery mechanism for most major carriers – Sprint Nextel, Cingular, and AT&T. Adding Comcast to the mix is a coup for the company. They have also expanded into delivering television over WiFi. There is a school of thought that when DVB and MediaFlo come to market, MobiTV will be toast. On the other hand, if they sign-up most major carriers, then it would be hard to replace their offering. Of course, there is the other option: Qualcomm buys them. (Just like Flarion.)
Only natural, MobiTV has powered Sprint’s TV offerings for some time now.
Blah. Isn’t what people really want something more like Orb or Slingbox that allows you to watch exactly the same content regardless of location. Wasn’t that the real point of 3G. Yes, more work has to be done on the mobile device end before this is ready for primetime, but it seems to me a task well worth undertaking. I wish the telemonopolists would move beyond the free phone + expensive limited services model to a more expensive phone + flexible services.