* Sprint’s mutually advantageous relationships with cable companies
mutualism. noun. advantageous relationship between species: a relationship between two organisms of different species that benefits both and harms neither. (from http://encarta.msn.com/)
mutualism. noun. advantageous relationship between species: a relationship between two organisms of different species that benefits both and harms neither.https://encarta.msn.com/)
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We recently had a chance to hear from Mark Chall, Sprint’s director of cable services, about Sprint’s mutualism with cable companies. Sprint, with about 8 million access lines providing local telephone service, has about 5% of the available local access market in the U. S., according to Chall. He notes that by working with the cable companies, “95% of the U.S. becomes our playground; as we provide services to cable we gain tremendous partnerships.”
Time Warner has awarded 17 of its local markets to Sprint; Chall says other markets are also being served by Sprint through cable companies, but he can’t mention them by name just yet. Under these arrangements, Sprint provides the “heavy lifting,” like operator services, directory services, and carrier-to-carrier billing – services may that take a new entrant into telephony years to develop.
Under these arrangements, Sprint provides back-office support, acting as a wholesaler, while the cable companies provide the customer-facing operations, like service orders, installation and customer bills.
Sprint believes that by adding cellular services into the cable TV bundle, a cable company could introduce the “quadruple play” by providing wireline voice, video, Internet data connectivity and wireless. Adding wireless is especially attractive to cable companies that, unlike an incumbent carrier, don’t have to worry that adding a wireless service could eliminate the need for a wireline service. Sprint is poised to include its PCS-based wireless service through or with a cable company’s current “triple play.”
Next time, we’ll delve into how Sprint and the cable companies solve some of the technical issues and how they are working together to serve the business market.
