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Verizon to offer cable services following SpectrumCo deal

Verizon to offer cable services following SpectrumCo deal

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Verizon has announced plans to offer rebadged home cable services to its customers, following its $3.6 billion deal with SpectrumCo.

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We've already heard from Comcast that it plans to offer Verizon Wireless service as part of its packages in the New Year. Now, Verizon's CEO and President Lowell McAdam has told the UBS Global Media and Communications conference that it will reciprocate, and begin offering cable services to its customers in January. These partnerships follow the $3.6 billion deal between Verizon and SpectrumCo (a coalition between Comcast, Time Warner, and Bright House) to license currently unused spectrum.

If you'd rather have a fiber-optic connection than rely on cable and cellular, you're out of luck: McAdam also reiterated that the company's FiOS fiber optic rollout will not be extended to any more markets than currently planned — a decision made back in March 2010 — though he emphasised that in fiber-enabled areas it will still continue to compete. The Washington Post also reports that the trial with DirecTV to use LTE in home broadband has also come to an end, with Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett calling it "the first direct fall-out from Verizon’s ground-breaking deal" with cable companies.

These partnerships give Verizon the ability to better compete with AT&T in offering quad-play (cellular, TV, broadband, and home phone) services without the enormous investment required to grow its FiOS infrastructure. This could signpost a future for Verizon's services that depend upon cable and LTE, and could possibly even indicate that Verizon plans to spin off its fiber network sometime in the future.