COMCAST, T-MOBILE DEAL COULD SPARK TREND

The distinction of being the first cable company and wireless carrier to strike a partnership since Sprint, TCI, Comcast and Cox Communications formed their aborted wireless alliance in 1994 now belongs to Comcast and T-Mobile.

Last week's announcement that Comcast would market T-Mobile's Wi-Fi hot spot service to its 3.86 million cable modem customers is more than just a mere distribution partnership. It marks the first of what could be several agreements between MSOs and wireless carriers as the cable industry takes another stab at the wireless business.

“Right now the cable companies are being coy — they're standing to the side, but they must see the advantage of adding cellular voice services to their bundles,” said Roberta Wiggins, wireless analyst for The Yankee Group. “This may be a Wi-Fi announcement, but the bigger story would be if this relationship will extend to voice services.”

The Comcast/T-Mobile deal will initially benefit T-Mobile, giving it a lucrative and much-needed marketing channel for its hot spot service. But Comcast isn't coming up empty handed. It's making its first gestures toward the wireless community. According to industry experts, it won't be long before the MSOs start signing wireless voice deals and bundle those services with their cable offers.

“Right now, there's a lot of focus in cable on getting voice over IP into their bundling offers, but I expect they will become more interested in wireless partnerships, especially as people start going wireless only, “said Seth Morrison, senior vice president of marketing for the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.

The only thing holding the MSOs back may be their reluctance to provide a service that doesn't originate from their own coax platforms, but in this case the cable providers might make an exception, Morrison said. While the RBOCs and the IXCs are signing all kinds of deals for digital broadcast satellite, wireless voice and DSL line splitting, the MSOs would only need to establish liaisons with a single outside provider — such an arrangement would be far more manageable, Morrison said.

So far, neither T-Mobile nor Comcast are offering up any future plans. Both companies said the partnership is exactly what it claims to be: a Wi-Fi partnership.

“This is a first of its kind for the industry,” a spokeswoman for Comcast said. “It provides all of our customers with the ability to take their broadband connections outside.”