Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications have ended their joint venture, branded Pivot, with beleaguered mobile carrier Sprint Nextel. Current Pivot subscribers will have the option of switching over to Sprint's regular services with comparable minutes and pricing. Comcast told MultiChannel News that it stopped selling Pivot services as of Tuesday. Cox and Time Warner both plan to start notifying subscribers about their options post haste.

Recent rumors, however, suggested the cable companies might be looking to work with Sprint in a different capacity: Comcast and Time Warner are reportedly mulling a $1.5 billion investment in a WiMAX wireless venture along with Sprint, Clearwire, Google, Intel and possibly others. Several analysts have discounted this deal, saying that there are a lot of hurdles to overcome and that they don't see this deal being any more viable than Pivot, which, apparently, has proven to not be viable at all.

Take a stroll down memory lane with these Pivot-related stories from years passed:

Nov. 1, 2005 - Four cable companies team with Sprint in $200M JV [1]
Nov. 13, 2006 - More details on the Sprint-Cable JV finally emerge [2]
Feb. 22, 2007 - Sprint-Cable JV quietly making strides toward quad-play [3]
April 3, 2007 - FCC privacy rules could block Sprint's Pivot [4]
April 15, 2007 - Comcast CEO on killer apps for Pivot [5]
April 30, 2007 - Time Warner announces Pivot details [6]
Nov. 2, 2007 - Sprint's about-face on Pivot [7]
Nov. 8, 2007 - Time Warner says Pivot demand "tepid" [8]
Nov. 15, 2007 - Report: Pivot's cable companies to go it alone [9]
Mar. 28, 2008 - Editorial: Cable's love affair with wireless [10]

For the full backstory:
- check out the entire timeline of Sprint's ill-fated Pivot [11]
- read this report [12] from MultiChannel News