It's a four-way fight

Comcast, Qwest, AT&T, Verizon offer video-phone-Web-wireless packages

Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News

Monday, February 5, 2007

Quadruple play is on the way.

Last year, Comcast rolled out phone service in Colorado and the rest of the nation, giving it a "triple play" bundle of discounted phone, Internet and video service that lured new customers in droves.

Now the nation's largest cable operator is moving into the world of cell phones, testing a wireless service with Sprint in Portland, Ore., and Boston. The company plans to introduce the service into more markets within the year, said spokeswoman Cindy Parsons, but hasn't given further details.

Comcast - which is calling the service Mobile Access from Comcast and Sprint - wants its wireless offering to be more than just another cell-phone provider in an already fiercely competitive market.

In its test markets, subscribers can use their phones to tie together their three other Comcast services in new and convenient ways: sending and receiving e-mail from their Comcast account, switching between home and wireless voicemail, and viewing program guides for their local TV lineup. Subscribers get one bill for all four services.

"Nobody connects to as many televisions as we do," Brian Roberts, Comcast's chief executive, said on a conference call last week. "We think that's a great asset in bringing that back to your PC, back to wireless devices, back throughout your home network, and that's part of what we're working on."

For an additional fee, subscribers can download snippets of news, sports and TV shows. Comcast eventually wants to let customers program their digital video recorder from their mobile phone.

"There are a lot of innovations coming our way," said Jeff Kagan, a telecommunications analyst. "Our kids and grandkids are going to think we were living in the old days when they hear about our mobile phones today."

Comcast is one of three cable companies that formed the $100 million venture with Sprint in 2005. Time Warner has a trial run under way in Raleigh, N.C., and Austin, Texas, while Cox and Advance Newhouse haven't said where they're conducting tests.

Comcast's cell-phone service starts at $33 a month in its pilot markets, about the same as what other mobile providers charge. But customers must subscribe to Comcast's digital cable service, which costs about $47 a month.

Traditional phone companies have taken a beating from cable companies' triple-play packages, losing 2.5 million customers last year, according to research firm Telegeography. They aren't sitting idly by while cable companies move further into their turf.

In the past month, both AT&T and Verizon - which are ramping up their own pay-TV services - announced quadruple plays of their own that include cell-phone service. The AT&T plan lets subscribers make unlimited calls between residential and wireless phones, which Comcast's pilot program also does, but that's currently the extent of the crossover among the four services.

Qwest has its own quadruple play that lets customers bundle DirecTV, wireless service it resells through Sprint, and high-speed Internet and phone service for $120 a month.

Qwest's plan also offers several of the links between the home and wireless phones that Comcast does, such as free calls between the two and the ability to check all messages from one mailbox. Qwest customers also can pick a single number for both their home and wireless phones.

Because Qwest uses DirecTV, the company can't integrate its video and wireless services like Comcast. But Qwest is eager to get into the pay-TV market itself, and once it does a more comprehensive quadruple play might not be that far behind, Kagan said.

davisj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2514