Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Pull Plug on Sprint's Pivot: What Can We Learn? The Shelly Palmer Report

This week three of the nation39s largest cable companies quietly pulled the plug on a joint cellphone venture with Sprint Nextel Corp called Pivot The goal of this service offering was to help the cablers compete with the Telco Triple Play Video Voice ampamp Data In theory a Quadruple Play Video Voice Data plus a mobile phone would seal the deal and make the cable offer irresistible to consumers In practice it just didn39t workA few years ago MVNOs Mobile Virtual Network Operators were all the rage Everybody wanted one The problem no one was willing to discuss at the time was the fact that controlling a consumer experience at retail is one of the hardest things any business can attempt to do Cell phones are a high touch business and that quotfact of lifequot was true then and it isn39t like to change any time soonThe MVNO death roll includes The ESPN Phone Disney Mobile Voce Sonopia Dot and many many more In fact the only two healthy MVNOs I can think of are Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile As interesting as historical this footnote may be you may be wondering why I would care about an obscure service offering dying a quiet death Well it39s a quarter to the digital transition and there39s a bunch of bandwidth that has been bought at auction specifically for the purpose of wireless offerings What lessons can we learn from the abject failure of the MVNO model as we enter the age of quotall digital everythingquotquotWe remain committed to bringing a wireless component to our portfolio of services but we don39t believe Pivot was the best optionquot said Cox spokeswoman Jill Ullman OK let39s say that39s true What would you do better next time Would you invest in store fronts to create a better retail experience or would you partner with an existing retail chain Could you imagine a sales clerk at one of the Big Box stores trying to explain a service offering from a brand that is not ATampampT or Verizon Even Sprint is struggling to position their brandWhat about the actual service Would it just be a multimedia phone on an existing network with quotalso ranquot capabilities or would it be a fully integrated 4G wireless deviceA couple of weeks ago David K Rehr president of the NAB National Association of Broadcasters gave a speech that seriously touted the advent of mobile television on handsets Last week I wrote a piece that challenged the idea but the death of Pivot puts an exclamation point on my thesis Retail is hard and Mobile Retail is really hardOur industry is having a challenging year The economy is tough We are likely to see gas prices so high this summer that they directly impact the advertising business Automotive advertising or the lack thereof on broadcast television has its own set of challenges and with all of it we must look to the future and think about what kind of handheld wireless devices consumers will want to consume our content on Who will create the networks and service offerings Is there a probable future where cable companies really offer a compelling and competitive wireless product Should theyPeople schooledintheart knew that Pivot was doomed from the start MVNOs made very little business sense even for the cable companies People will argue that quotthat was then and this is nowquot True enough but the underlying business principals of running a successful mobile communications company are not likely to change With Verizon and ATampampT having just acquired billions of dollars of digital spectrum everyone seems to think that there will be lots of opportunities to create a new class of quotmust havequot communications and multimedia products I agree The big question is who will get to bring them to market We should take a long hard look at the demise of Pivot There may be several good reasons that this organization did not succeed but one is truly conspicuous consumers voted with their wallets PivotRIPShelly Palmer is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted The Transition from Network to Networked TV 2006 Focal Press Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts ampamp Sciences NY the organization that bestows the coveted Emmyamp174 Awards He is the ViceChairman of the National Academy of Media Arts ampamp Sciences an organization dedicated to education and leadership in the areas of technology media and entertainment Palmer also oversees the Advanced Media Technology Emmyamp174 Awards which honors outstanding achievements in the science and technology of advanced media You can read Shellyamp8217s blog here Shelly can be reached at shellypalmernetCheck out the Shelly Palmer Report archive

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Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Pull Plug on Sprint's Pivot: What Can We Learn? The Shelly Palmer Report

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