Charter is reportedly eyeing a June 30 launch date for its Spectrum Mobile wireless service.
DSLReports, citing an unnamed source familiar with the operator’s plan, also reported pricing of Charter’s mobile service will “largely mirror” Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile.
Charter CEO Tom Rutledge signaled that might be the case on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call in early February. When asked about wireless pricing, he said Comcast “did a really nice job” with its Xfinity Mobile pricing model, which launched in early 2017.
According to DSLReports, Charter, like Comcast, will offer broadband customers unlimited data for $45 per month, or users will have the option to pay $12 per gigabyte.
Charter has not commented about the report.
The reported launch date, however, falls in line with earlier company statements that targeted a mid-2018 rollout for Spectrum Mobile.
The similarity to Xfinity Mobile, which ended Q1 with 577,000 customer lines, is also unsurprising since each company’s wireless service is based on MVNO agreements with Verizon. In addition, the two have partnered previously on wireless efforts and in April announced a joint venture to develop and design unified backend systems for their respective wireless services.
On Charter’s first quarter earnings call in late April, Rutledge disclosed that the company recently launched a field trial of its mobile offering with about 5,000 employees, as well as modified retail stores and set up call centers ahead of the commercial launch. He said the ultimate goal is to use the mobile service to attract and retain cable customers through bundling options.
