Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
So, cable giant Cox Communications finally threw in the towel on its half-hearted attempt to become a mobile operator on its own terms. The company, which prior to its launch bragged it would be able to garner 20% of the market, this week stopped selling its own branded service and said it would completely shut down operations early next year.
(The company was also nice enough to waive early-termination fees for those customers it might have once they stop offering service. How sweet.)
This was not really much of a surprise as the cable company seemed to never really have its heart in wireless. Sure, it spent hundreds of millions of dollars on wireless spectrum, and I suppose hundreds of millions more attempting to build out a network, but from following that progress for years it never seemed like the company’s heart was truly behind the effort.
While I am reveling a bit in Cox pulling the plug, I must also admit some admiration that the company even attempted to enter the mobile space. Most of its cable brothers have merely sat on the sidelines in the battle, having spent hundreds of millions of dollars on spectrum and questionable partnerships, but forgoing actually putting their own necks on the line.
While it touted plans to push out a CDMA network through a partnership with Huawei as well as supposedly trialing LTE services, the company ended up launching its own network in only a handful of markets, relying instead on a roaming agreement with Sprint Nextel to serve an unknown customer base.
Those network plans seemed to really begin to unravel earlier this year when Stephen Bye left the company to work for Sprint Nextel. Bye had been the rudder attempting to steer Cox’s wireless hopes, and with his departure that ship simply stalled.
Now, you must admit that one of the tenants that Cox put forth for getting out of the market – the inability to get its hands on the most iconic of devices – is a legitimate barrier. While not naming the iPhone, Cox’s inability to offer that device to customers definitely made it more difficult to compete.
However, there are any number of players in the space that only recently have had access or still don’t have access to that device that have found ways to differentiate themselves in the market. Cox, for its part, appeared to do little beyond its “Simple” tagline that outside of cute commercials has little resonance on consumers. I am guessing the nation’s largest wireless operators spend more in one year on marketing their services than Cox has spent on its entire wireless venture.
What now for Cox? Well the company continues to hold onto some precious spectrum assets that are sure to garner some interest from those carriers it was unable to unseat. I would not be surprised to see that spectrum change hands in the coming years as established wireless players continue to fight mobile-data infused spectrum shortages.
To me, this event only reinforced the notion that despite the best efforts of those in the government or those who develop technology, becoming a major player in the mobile space is a tough nut to crack and not something that is likely to happen anytime soon. I know there will always be those looking for ways to get beyond the current carrier domination, but I think we all must admit that those players, along with their cohorts in the device space, will be dominate for the foreseeable future in one form or another.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
— An interesting story came out this week that Apple’s Steve Jobs showed serious interest in bypassing wireless carriers prior to the 2007 launch of the iPhone and putting together some sort of wireless network using Wi-Fi technology. That insight came from industry pioneer John Stanton, who talked about conversations he had with Jobs at a technology event this week.
Of course, the thought of patching together a viable wireless communications network using Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrum would appear to fool-hearty in light of previously failed attempts to do just that. And with no real insight into why Apply decided to not move forward with those plans it’s hard to know what the stumbling block was.
But, you would think that if anyone could have pulled it off it would have been Apple, and that they pulled away from such a plan only reinforces the dangers inherent in relying too heavily on unlicensed spectrum. I know everyone like to talk about how most people in the unlicensed space play nice with each other, but all it takes is one bad neighbor to wreck the party.
–Wireless carriers continued to add pops to their “4G” coverage this week, with Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile USA all expanded their respective high-speed data services. And just in time for the holidays. Sure, consumers have no clue what 4G really means beyond it must be better than 3G, and as with anything else, more is always better this time of year.
–Google’s launch of its music service and accompanying Android component was the sort of move that made me go “awwww, how cute.” I am all for someone, anyone, coming up with a competitor to Apple’s dominate iTunes service if just to see some competition. But, am I the only one that sees little chance of this making a serious dent?
Amazon has had its MP3 store available for years now, and from all indications it’s still just a blip on the scene. Sure, Google has a lot of clout in the tech space, but it still seems like the integration of the music offering, like many things Google does, falls just short of the level consumers now expect.
But, the cutest part was in having T-Mobile USA at the launch event as the “carrier” component. Nothing shows the lost potential of this offering than by having the smallest nationwide operator, and one that is in the midst of potentially being bought, as your carrier backer for an offering. What, was LightSquared not available?
–As reported by Popular Science, researchers at Northwestern University have come up with some super-science that can extend the life of lithium-ion batteries by up to 10 times current levels as well as provide charging times that are 10 times faster.
All I can say is: “finally!” It’s about time these exceedingly smart people put their minds to some important issues like my ability to post non-stop Twitter updates without having to search in vain for an electrical outlet instead of racing around in circles chugging beer.
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