Charter says it's launching fifth generation (5G) wireless trials, while company CEO Tom Rutledge defended the company's MVNO plan from criticism by T-Mobile. Charter said it will launch a WiFi centric MVNO wireless service sometime in 2018, with backup cellular connectivity provided by Verizon Wireless. T-Mobile CEO John Legere had mocked Charter's MVNO efforts, predicting that the cable industry's initial foray into wireless would be a failure. Legere predicted cable ops would be in "full retreat" from their plans in short order.
Unsurprisingly, Charter executives disagree.
"We don’t think the T-Mobile comments were correct,” Rutledge said during Charter’s fourth-quarter earnings call. "I don’t want to discuss the details of our plan other than to say T-Mobile doesn’t understand it."
But in addition to the company's MVNO, Charter also confirmed that it has launched 5G trials to better understand the technologies that will eventually make up the as-yet-unfinished 5G standard.
"We intend to use these field trials as learning opportunities to provide us with better insight into the capabilities of our wireline network when attaching radios with high frequency licensed and unlicensed spectrum," said Rutledge, adding that "we believe that our MVNO with Verizon is well suited for the short- and medium-term wireless goals we have. Over the long term, our goals in wireless and mobility, our wireless business plan will broaden, so our approach is flexible."
Details were virtually non-existent for both efforts, but Rutledge said he believed the rise in virtual and augmented reality would drive a thirst for greater wired and wireless capacity.
"When you look at these high-capacity networks of the future, and they're a way out, there are new products that we think will be developed with those low-latency, high-capacity networks including virtual reality products, augmented reality products," said the CEO.
"My sense is many of those products will be not mobile products, they'll be fixed products in the dwelling or the office," he added. "They'll be how you learn and how you play. And so they're less about mobility than they are about capacity and low latency. And I think our network, our WiFi network and our distribution network sets up really well from a total capital cost perspective of creating those kind of products."
Of course with Charter rumored as a potential buyer for T-Mobile in what's expected to be a new telecom sector consolidation rush, the two companies could find themselves under the same roof before long.