Comcast breaks into mobile with mPortal app

Comcast (NASDAQ:CMSCA) is stepping into wireless territory to give its customers a new way to interact with their triple play bundles. The cable company teamed up with mobile content and application firm mPortal to develop Comcast mobile for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The app will provide one-stop access to key features of Comcast Digital Voice, Digital Cable and high-speed Internet services.

This is Comcast’s first foray into mobile application development and what mPortal says is the first true converged mobile app for any cable company. The mPortal-managed app draws on voice, data, email and video to let consumers read and compose emails from Comcast.net and listen to home voice mail from one mailbox, manage landline voicemail through a visual interface and forward home calls to the iPhone. On the video front, consumers can check TV listings and watch on-demand movie trailers. The app will also let users synch all their universal address book contacts to their iPhone and add pictures to their favorite contacts.

While many of these services have been available on the iPhone through different applications in the past, this is the first time a cable company has tied it all together in a one-stop shop, according to mPortal CEO DP Venkatesh. He believes that cable companies entering wireless will be the next big thing. Telecom competitors AT&T and Verizon have both already made mobile apps for some of their services, but theirs have been limited to specific services and their own networks and devices.
“On the left-end side is the cable folks, and they say ‘I have content, video, a broadband connection and voice; I don’t have not wireless,’ so they are looking at over-the-top from a wireless perspective,” Venkatesh said. “Then mobile operators are saying, I have wireless, I have all this stuff, but I don’t have content. But Verizon has FiOS and AT&T has U-Verse, so there is the battle going on both sides. They are looking at applications like this as adding value to the service on top of existing platforms or other platforms.”

Comcast – like many companies – opted to start its service on the iPhone. Venkatesh said the cableco’s next step will likely be to look at other devices and other networks, potentially including Clearwire’s 4G WiMax network, which Comcast is an investor in. The cableco introduced the app to Apple’s App Store in mid-July and quickly achieved 200,000 downloads, which is way more than it thought it would get, Venkatesh said. As its first foray into mobile, Comcast approached the market conservatively. Venkatesh said that many companies are still taking this cautious approach to building a mobile presence, but it’s no longer the case that they have to be convinced of the value.

“The Apple effect is interesting – a lot of executives and CEOs have the latest shiny object, and the latest shiny object now is the iPhone,” Venkatesh said. “Therefore, independent of what industry you are in, you have a senior member of your company saying ‘I love my iPhone; I have apps I can download; what are we doing about mobility?”

mPortal is managing the service for Comcast, as well as envisioning future releases of the app. Venkatesh said the next and most-requested feature it will add is one-click access to subscriber’s digital video recorder to schedule recordings remotely. He also said that although the service is now just a value play for Comcast, mPortal has ideas to monetize it in the pipeline.

mPortal targets service providers, content providers and enterprises looking to create and monetize mobile content. In addition to its Springboard product suite of software infrastructure, the nine-year old company launched a New Business Initiatives unit to focus on solutions rather than just product and platform sales. The company already powers apps for mobile operators Verizon Wireless and Reliance Infocomm, content providers including AOL, Disney Mobile, Mobile ESPN, Xerox and TV Guide, and MVNOs through a partnership with Telcordia.