Charter ventures into Wi-Fi

Charter Communications has joined the wireless data ranks, announcing this week that it is launching a wireless and remote access dial-up service for its cable modem customers.

Charter is partnering with Remote Pipes for access to its IP Roamer service, which has dial-up access in 150 countries and Wi-Fi access in nine. Through the agreement, Charter customers signing up for the service will be able to access any of Remote Pipe’s hotspots getting access to their accounts through Charter’s virtual private network.

Remote Pipes has 28,000 access points for roaming users though the vast majority of them are dial-up POPs provided by Sprint and Level 3 Communications. It recently signed agreements with WiFi aggregators AirPath in the U.S. and FatPort in Canada, adding more than 3500 hotspots to its initial rollout of 600 locations.

“We’ve wanted to provide our Internet customers with the same high-quality access while traveling that they enjoy with Charter’s broadband service,” Charter vice president of business development James Henderson said in a statement.

Charter isn’t the first MSO to offer WiFi to its customers. Last February Comcast formed a marketing partnership with T-Mobile to offer its nationwide hotspot service to its cable modem customers. Industry experts expect that these initial forays into wireless data could spell the beginning of larger wireless plays by the cable providers, all of which are facing increasing bundling pressure from the RBOCS. Time Warner and Sprint are currently in negotiations over a possible mobile virtual network operator service, though no official announcement has been made.