Wireless Still a Sideshow at Comcast

Sharon Armbrust | March 08, 2007, 09:25 AM

Comcast ceo Brian Roberts held fast to his wait and see attitude towards the value of mobile to the cable MSO during an interview at Bear Stearns Media Conference in Palm Beach 3/1. “We don’t see the need to make a wireless acquisition to be competitive,” said Roberts. In case the world goes in a direction “that we don’t see today” he added, the company has its dry powder of 20 MHz of spectrum from the AWS auction. And Roberts figures those licenses are probably appreciating and making money for Comcast while management watches the business intersections evolve. Meanwhile, Comcast is content to continue its experimentation in the space using Sprint’s network.

In explaining the disconnect which he still sees between video and wireless, Roberts noted that wireless video uses 100x as much spectrum as voice which makes the economics of the service on the tiny screen a challenge, and at the same time over 50% of the TV sets to be sold in 2007 are going to be 50” screen size or larger. The stats speak to the immaturity of mobile video and the still tenuous connection between mainstream television and the mobile screen.

Meanwhile, Comcast is charging into landline telephony and aiming to sell 2.6 mil. subscriptions for that service in 2007. It figures having a mobile add-on might net it a fractional gain in that sales goal, but it is fully occupied with its current mandate to sell video, broadband and telephony packages, where the current appetite is enormous. Take-away: no hurry.

Because Comcast and the other cable cos. are very interested in enhancing personalization options for their customers, and pushing the use of video on demand as a platform to support that effort, we think that it is likely that mobile video could come into focus on Comcast’s radar from that direction first.