Time Warner teams with Sprint

Will offer Web access, video on cell phones

Time Warner Cable's Raleigh division is adding a missing piece in its marketing battle with phone companies -- mobile phone service.

The region's dominant provider of cable television announced Monday that it has teamed up with Sprint to sell wireless service to its 500,000 customers.

The cable companies and phone companies increasingly are encroaching on each other's turf, with both using their networks to offer Internet and phone service. The phone companies market satellite TV service and are gearing up to use new technology to provide TV service over their networks.

"This is simply one more example of the convergence of technology," said AT&T spokesman Clifton Metcalf. "At AT&T, we have known for a long time that customers want the opportunity to purchase [wired] and wireless service from the same company."

Time Warner, which has prospered by persuading its cable TV customers to add services, is following that strategy with its newest offering. To subscribe to the new cell service, dubbed Mobile Access, a customer must subscribe to at least one of Time Warner's other offerings.

Mobile Access, now available, features services that tie into other Time Warner products -- including video content and Internet access. Customers who subscribe to Time Warner's digital phone service also get free mobile-to-home and home-to-mobile minutes and integrated voicemail. Customers who subscribe to Time Warner's Internet service, Road Runner, get access to their e-mail from their cell phone.

Pricing starts at $15 a month and goes up to $25 a month, depending on the level of mobile video service that customers choose. That's a charge on top of Sprint's basic phone service, which starts at $29.99 a month. A multimedia phone also is needed.

The $15 package includes live video streams from News 14 Carolina, Time Warner's 24-hour local news channel, and ABC News. Four music channels and trailers from four movie studios are included.

Mobile Access is debuting in Raleigh and Austin, Texas, before Time Warner rolls it out in all of its markets later this year. The service is the result of a joint venture formed about a year ago by Sprint and three cable companies: Time Warner, Cox and Bright House.

The cable industry is starting to get into wireless service to match up better with phone companies, said Bruce Leichtman of Leichtman Research Group in New Hampshire. "The phone companies have wireless service," he said. "That's the one thing that cable companies didn't have."

Leichtman said phone companies haven't done a good job integrating wireless service into their offerings, but he expects that to change. He noted that AT&T, which recently took over BellSouth and Cingular Wireless, has made wireless service a priority.

AT&T is mounting its own assault on the market. The new president of AT&T's North Carolina operations said last month that she wants the company to start selling its own television service -- rather than marketing satellite service -- in North Carolina this year.