Charter Communications is aiming for a June 30 launch date for the wireless service it will dub “Spectrum Mobile,” DSLReports said today, citing an unnamed source it described as close to the product launch.
The report also said that Charter’s new mobile service will mirror the pricing of Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile, which launched in early 2017. Not only are both Spectrum Mobile and Xfinity Mobile based on very similar MVNO deals with Verizon, Comcast and Charter recently expanded on their wireless partnership, agreeing to share backend systems.
“We are not commenting on the DSL story,” Charter said in a statement emailed to FierceCable this morning. “We will announce details as we get closer to the launch of Spectrum Mobile.”
DSLReports said that, like Xfinity Mobile, Spectrum Mobile will offer users unlimited data for $45 a month, provided they also subscribe to a Charter wireline broadband service.
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Users will also be offered a service that’s capped at 20 gigabytes, as well as an option to purchase data by the gig at $12 a unit.
Speaking during Charter’s first-quarter earnings call on Friday, company Chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge put prepping Spectrum Mobile for launch on par with the last phases of Time Warner Cable integration as top company priorities.
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Rutledge said that field trials of the service had already begun with around 5,000 employees.
“And we are building our sales channels and service capabilities including modifying several hundred of our 700 retail stores and setting up the call center environment,” he said. “Ultimately the goal is to use our mobile service to attract and retain cable bundle multi-product customers.”
Meanwhile, speaking to the partnership with Comcast, Charter CFO Christopher Winfrey noted, “Comcast has been extremely helpful to Charter as we go through establishing back office systems and that JV should continue to help us do that. So is there an opportunity that the go-forward platform costs for companies are reduced by sharing in those expenses and that’s the whole idea of getting into the JV."