March 26, 2008

Comcast, Time Warner's Latest Wireless Venture

Top two cable operators may be planning to sink $1.5 billion in WiMAX-powered network, and more news.

By Steve Goldstein

News briefing for Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Cable360 newsroom staffers have barricaded the doors and windows to fend off swarming, laid-off print journalists. Good day.

Today's Must Read
Comcast and Time Warner Cable are working on a new wireless partnership, the Wall Street Journal reports. The two cable operators would invest about $1.5 billion in the wireless venture, which would be run by Sprint Nextel and Clearwire Corp. Bright House Networks would also invest in the WiMAX-based wireless network. The three cable operators, along with Sprint, had previously developed a wireless joint venture called Pivot, which the operators stopped marketing last year, citing “lack of control over pricing and marketing.” [Wall Street Journal]

Dish Network purchased E-Block spectrum during the FCC’s recent auction presumably to give it the same two-way capability that cable operators and the telcos have. But the wireless block is not strong enough for two-way networking, which would leave Dish still unable to offer its customers on-demand programming. The Wall Street Journal wonders why the satellite distributor made the bid in the first place. [Wall Street Street]

Motorola is being split into two publicly traded entities. [Reuters]

Google is hoping Wall Street will get excited about its mobile Web plans and stop worrying about the decline in ad clicks on its search pages. [Bloomberg]

Briefly Noted
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger booted Clint Eastwood off the state parks board because, Eastwood suspects, he refused to back construction of a six-lane toll road that would run through San Onofre State Beach, the Los Angeles Times reports. [Los Angeles Times]

TV producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason have been sending critics DVDs of their would-be HBO series 12 Miles of Bad Road, Times blog TV Decoder reports. [New York Times]

More HBO-related news: The premium cable network has finally gotten around to greenlighting a pilot for a domestic version of the U.K. series Suburban Shootout. [C21]

In CableFAX Daily: Subscribers still aren't hungry for CableCARDs.

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