US cable giants Comcast and Charter Communications have indicated their intentions to take part in the FCC’s upcoming spectrum auction, in a further sign of their push into wireless. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has said the company plans to “take a paddle in the auction” in search of something of strategic value, adding that this has proved a worthwhile tactic in the past.
US cable giants Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) and Charter Communications (NASDAQ:CHRTR) have indicated their intentions to take part in the FCC’s upcoming spectrum auction, in a further sign of their push into wireless.
Comcast CFO Mike Cavanagh said during the company’s Q4 2015 earnings call that it will be filing to participate in the broadcast incentive auction, stressing that the US$5bn of share buybacks planned for this year will not be reduced if it acquires airwaves.
CEO Brian Roberts (pictured) said the company will “take a paddle in the auction” to see if it can find something of strategic value.
“In the past, that has proved to be not only a money-maker, but given us more strategic flexibility and we want to know if that’s the case this time.”
However, he added that it is not yet clear exactly what spectrum will be up for grabs.
Meanwhile, Charter has filed an ex parte with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) asking to expedite its review of the planned merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House, partly because doing so “could make it possible for New Charter to participate in the forthcoming FCC spectrum auction”.
Charter said the FCC and other regulators are expected to complete their reviews of the merger “well in advance” of the CPUC decision, arguing that this would delay New Charter’s ability to make new investments and roll out new services. As such, Charter has asked CPUC to bring its review forward to 21 April.
Both Comcast and Charter have remained tight-lipped about plans to delve further into the wireless space. CEO Brian Roberts said at a conference in New York last December that the company was looking at expanding its relationships with mobile operators Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and Sprint (NYSE:S) to develop its own wireless offerings. He said Comcast would “experiment in that area”, drawing on the mobile carriers’ networks and its own broadband infrastructure.
On yesterday’s earnings call, Neil Smit, president and CEO of Comcast Cable, said the company is seeing “consistent usage” of its more than 13 million WiFi hotspots, with users connecting about five times a day and average sessions lasting 25 minutes.
“We build out the public spots based on the usage trends we see and I think concerning the handoff between WiFi and cellular, there is some technology out there. The question is whether you’d need to do the handoff or not and how seamless it would be, but we are looking at technology in that space as well.”
Roberts added that he thinks the investment in WiFi, which the company describes as a “wireless gateway”, was “one of the things we did really well over the last few years”, adding “I think that goes back into whether we can do something creative in the future, whether that’s involving spectrum or WiFi or some of the existing relationships we’ve got”.
At the same New York conference in December, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said that “ultimately the mobile platform is something we’re going to want to reach to”, without elaborating.
Last October, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said that Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Cox Communications were preparing to exercise options under a 2012 deal to use its wireless network.