Cable companies have always had their grip on the telecom infrastructure grid and in the past year, have parlayed that stance into exploiting the unquenchable wireless-provider landscape. Comcast and Charter Communications with Spectrum, just this past June, launched their own wireless services, becoming a potential competitor to the carriers. T-Mobile CEO John Legere recently told a Senate subcommittee that Comcast’s service, Xfinity Mobile, added more subscribers than AT&T in 2017. Legere said Sprint and T-Mobile now have “seven or eight potential competitors.”
Sprint has been paying attention, hiring their new CEO Michel Combes from the cable industry in May. Combes was previously CEO of Netherlands-based Altice and now Altice USA (NYSE: ATUS) will enter the wireless market in September, beginning tests in the soon-to-be-opened 3.5 GHz band. The arrangement between Combes’ old company and his new one is: Sprint will have access to Altice’s cable network, while Sprint provides the airwaves for Altice. The arrangement is already paying off for the carrier.
During Sprint’s Q2 earnings call on August 1, CTO John Saw said, “We have said in the past that working with cable companies like Altice, would actually accelerate the zoning and permitting timeframes and that’s absolutely true,” Saw said. “We are able to install small cells a lot faster with Altice than we have with more traditional wireless means.”
August 17, 2018
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