Regional wireless operator C Spire continues to make waves, today announcing a partnership with Dish Networks to promote Dish’s TV Everywhere products and DVR technologies at C Spire’s retail locations.
The partnership includes showing the place-shifting capabilities of Dish’s offering using assets from its 2007 Sling Media acquisition. The deal brought on board Sling Media’s hardware and software platform that allows users to watch their television content on devices embedded with a wireless broadband connection. The offering has had a controversial relationship with the mobile space as the service would seem to goad users into streaming video content through a cellular broadband connection that would leave carriers out of the value loop beyond the customers’ wireless data plan, or overage charges.
C Spire noted that customers that subscribe to Dish programming can access their television programming “anywhere, anytime on their smartphones and tablets” using the Dish offering. This would seem to indicate a willingness for C Spire to allow its customers to use the service over its mobile broadband network, or at least 30 minutes of video streaming per day as part of its current unlimited data offering running across its CDMA-based network.
C Spire announced in March plans to invest $60 million to begin rolling out LTE services across portions of Mississippi later this year. Those network plans include covering 2,700 square miles with 360 LTE-enabled cell sites and the carrier’s 700 MHz spectrum assets.
The carrier spent $191.5 million on A- and B-Block licenses during the 700 MHz spectrum auction in 2008. Verizon Wireless recently noted that it would be looking to sell off some of its A- and B-Block 700 MHz licenses if the Federal Communications Commission were to approve its pending acquisition of 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum assets. However, some critics downplayed the real value of those 700 MHz licenses, though regional players could see more benefit.
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