By | May 20, 2024
Mediacom’s long-anticipated launch of mobile service is coming to fruition, with the operator recently debuting the service for employees and kicking off marketing. Trucks have begun to hit the streets in its 22-state footprint, with one side of vehicles wrapped to taut the “incredible savings” of Mediacom Mobile and the other side highlighting its Xtream Internet offering.
The company said it doesn’t have permission yet to reveal its MVNO partner, but it’s using Reach as its MVNE partner. NCTC, Astound Broadband and WOW! also are working with Reach for mobile, which can work with any of the major wireless carriers. Mediacom Mobile will be sold to residential and business internet customers as its own separate entity with separate billing from other Mediacom products.
For pricing, Mediacom’s formula is similar to its cable peers, debuting at $40 for unlimited data or $15 by the gig, taxes and fees included. “For the $40 unlimited, I think it will be $40 for the first line and as many lines. I think that’s what we’ll start with and we’ll see how it goes,” said Tapan Dandnaik, Mediacom’s SVP of Operations, Product Strategy, and Consumer Experience. “Comcast and Charter, if you remember they started with that $45 line, and now they’re a long way ahead in terms of what they offer. I think there’s a lot of efficiencies they’ve developed. Once we develop those efficiencies, we will look to change that, but going out we wanted to keep it simple.”
It’s been well known for more than a year that Mediacom was working on launching mobile. In fact, it joined with Charter, Comcast and Cox, which all have launched mobile, in February to push the NTIA to open the 37 GHz spectrum band. Dandnaik said it took some time because there were more hurdles than imagined. “I think the biggest thing was when we just didn’t understand the economics of the business itself as well as we thought,” he said, noting how Charter did a deal with Comcast for back office support. Last year, Mediacom arrived on working with Reach, which had a lot of the necessary integrations to solve back office pain points.
“The last big piece was the economics. We wanted to make sure that it was accretive, and obviously bundling it with our data and our legacy services, wanted to provide value to our customers,” Dandnaik said. “Every time Charter and Comcast announced their results and then we looked at analyst reports, we got comfortable with the actual sort of understanding of what people use, what is the data that is being consumed, what is the benefit of offloading with our networks… We got to a point where we felt good with the economics and what we wanted to do.”
At commercial launch, Mediacom expects to have a variety of devices and a device store with financing available through a partner. But it’s still working on OEM deals. “We will have a partner that will have a majority of the devices. I think we may not have some of the latest devices, like an Apple iPhone 14 or 15, but I think outside of that, the iPhone 12 or 13 and below and Android, Google—we will have all those devices, at least that’s the hope,” Dandnaik said. “If we don’t have it at launch, we’ll have it shortly thereafter.”
Unlike Cox, Comcast and Charter, Mediacom Mobile will not have a heavy retail presence, using sales channels primarily for intake. “Our agents are really good at letting people know what sort of service we have and the fact that our pricing is simple and we can save money by bundling. I think that’s going to drive conversions,” Dandnaik said. “Every time our tech goes out to someone’s house, they see a product and they say, ‘oh, you have a mobile product. What’s is that about?’ and our techs are really good at communicating. That’s why we wanted to get employees engaged and give them first dibs of the product… If the reviews come out the way I expect them to, I think our employees will be the first to go out there and communicate that every time they go out on a truck roll or a trouble call.”
