The wireless market soon will be inhabited by another cable operator. WideOpenWest (WOW!) intends to jump into the wireless market by the end of May through its previously announced partnership with Reach Mobile.
WOW! CEO Teresa Elder said during the company’s earnings call on Monday that they’re quickly moving forward with their entry into the mobile market, with WOW! Mobile powered by Reach.
“We are on target to officially launch the offering in one of our southern markets later this month, followed by an enterprise-wide launch earlier in the third quarter,” Elder said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “We're excited to provide our customers additional flexibility to stay connected on a reliable, no contract cellphone plan with unlimited talk and text.”
The deal with Reach enables WOW! to enter the mobile market with minimal operational or developmental work on its part. “We believe this additional service offering will further enhance customer acquisition and retention, while providing a great service that our customers have been looking for,” Elder added.
WOW! CFO John Rego said that for a “modest amount of money,” they set up the program with Reach. “There are no ongoing costs. It's a rev share. So, as we start to see this come in in Q2, when we launch in the end of this month, we'll be just booking our rev share into the other revenue line items,” he said. “There's no specific cost that's associated with that.”
WOW! VP of Product Management Michelle MacFee told Fierce earlier this year that the move comes in response to strong consumer demand. The operator’s mobile plan will be available to anyone, though its internet customers will be eligible for a discount of up to $10 on their wireless service.
The service will use T-Mobile’s 5G network.
More than MVNE
Reach Mobile runs a consumer business where it offers services as an MVNO; it has agreements with all the national U.S. carriers. The company also runs Reach Next, which is the platform business and where the majority of the company’s resources are focused.
If somebody wants to set up and launch an MVNO service, they can get all the technology they need from Reach, minus the marketing and distribution. “We bring everything else,” Reach CEO Harjot Saluja told Fierce in an interview last month. “We basically provide kind of an end-to-end system, so anybody can launch a new service on any network in a rapid time, without investing a huge amount of money.”
The pandemic didn’t slow things down for Reach, he said. Founded in 2018, the company is experiencing a lot of growth. Reach employs about 80 people and its goal is to hire about 100 people this year, ranging from engineering to marketing and customer service roles.
Reach can be considered an MVNE, or mobile virtual network enabler, but that’s not all it does, he said. “We basically give them a turnkey experience,” as opposed to a traditional MVNE.
The company’s biggest challenge in 2021 was probably not being known, he said. In the U.S. today, it’s the only platform company offering fixed wireless, from soup to nuts. If anyone in the U.S. or European market wanted to launch a fixed wireless service today, “we are probably the fastest time to market for them,” he said.