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Pivot Wireless in Trouble?
02 Nov, 2007
Recent news does not bode well for the wireless joint venture between Sprint and several cable MSOs, branded as Pivot Wireless. Sprint announced during their quarterly analyst call that they are freezing the rollout of Pivot to any further markets due to “provisioning complexities.” In other words, they can’t get it to work, at least not without too much trouble. Both Sprint and its cable partners have publicly said they are disappointed with Pivot’s performance so far. Is this recent news a precursor to scrapping the joint venture?
Interim Sprint CEO Paul Saleh announced on their earnings call, “As our focus is on simplifying the business and particularly focusing on the customer experience, we have made a decision not to expand that service in other markets or other stores.” Pivot is currently offered in 33 markets, with Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, and Advance/Newhouse as its cable MSO partners. The news may be more troubling for the cable MSO partners than for Sprint (although Sprint has no shortage of troubles right now). Wireless is increasingly becoming an important addition to the triple play bundle. As telecom carriers continue their ramp up of triple play solutions, they are exploring ways to leverage their wireless lead. Both Verizon and AT&T are marketing bundles that tie wireless, wireline, and video together. Many analysts suspect that mobile wireless will be the wild card in the competitive battle between cable and telecom. The Pivot Wireless concept bridged the wireless gap for Cablecos, at least temporarily. It’s long been rumored that Pivot was not perceived by Cablecos as their long term wireless solution, but it did get them in the business much more quickly than if they built something from scratch. It appears that strategy may now be in jeopardy.
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googleTelecom's chance
The telecom industry needs to seize on this misstep by cable. Wireless is the trump card. They should be moving aggressively.
T-Mobile is better partner
Cablecos should have partnered with T-Mobile. They would have been better suited to make this thing work. It's doomed with Sprint.
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Clearwire Outlines 4G World Domination Plans
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Clearwire is feeling quite confident these days. The emerging WiMAX provider held an investor conference and outlined their plan for 4G domination. We're "building the communications company of the future, today," says Clearwire CEO Ben Wolf. Clearwire chief strategy officer Scott Richardson calls it "the second coming of the Internet." It was quite the WiMAX pep rally. Clearwire executives say they intend to build a seamless nationwide 4G network way ahead of their competitors, namely Verizon and AT&T.
From a powerpointware perspective, the strategy looks real impressive. Clearwire intends to offer a five product suite of services which will include residential voice and broadband, mobile voice and broadband, and mobile entertainment. They intend to leverage their investor partners considerably, gaining access to tens of millions of existing subscriber relationships immediately. With their cable company partners, they intend to extend the cable entertainment experience "into the palms of consumer's hands." They intend to utilize Google's Android platform for a suite of "compelling" mobile applications. Intel will contribute by powering millions of end user devices and do for WiMAX what it did for Wi-Fi, in effect bringing it to the mainstream. Wolf says that the average consumer's total household spend on communications, ranging from $109-$258, is up for grabs, and they intend to capture as much of it as possible.
Tough road
Partnerships of this scale are tough. Personally, I think the cable companies should just resell Sprint service instead of trying to create a new company/brand. Integrating various processes and cultures together on a scale like this rarely work. Cable should either go to a straight resale model, launch their own wireless effort (they do own spectrum), or buy a wireless company. This JV stuff isn't going to work.