Both Cablevision and Time Warner are reportedly in discussions with LightSquared to use the company's network to offer LTE wireless broadband services to their cable companies.
Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the situation, said no deal had been reach with Cablevision, whose wireless strategy so far has consisted of a vast Wi-Fi footprint. Cablevision could use the network to offer expanded wireless capability to its Internet, television and telephone customers.
Earlier, Bloomberg had also reported that Cablevision rival Time Warner Cable was in talks with LightSquared, which is building a wholesale-only network using terrestrial and satellite spectrum. Time Warner is an investor in Clearwire and has been wholesaling the company's WiMAX service. Time Warner said in late January that its WiMAX offering has produced "not very impressive and pretty inconclusive" results. The company, which has been reselling Clearwire's service since December 2009, said it has 15,000 WiMAX subscribers.
"The cable industry's primary interest is preserving an independent wireless option and to try to do it in a very low- cost way," Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. told Bloomberg. "It's one more ripple in the pond in the wake of the T-Mobile-AT&T announcement. The cable operators are looking at an increasingly concentrated wireless industry, and they want to ensure they keep their options open."
AT&T plans to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom AG for about $39 billion in cash and stock.
Last week, LightSquared announced deals with retailer Best Buy and Leap Wireless.
For more:
- read this Bloomberg article
- see this other Bloomberg article
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