First Verizon, TWC 'Quad-Play' Packages Launch in Ohio

Customers in Southwest Ohio, including Springfield, can now purchase packages of Time Warner Cable video, Internet and voice services, as then as Verizon Wireless smartphones and tablets from both companies. Columbus, Ohio; Toledo, Ohio; Kansas City, Kan.; and Raleigh, N.C. will as well be served by the partnership.

New and existing clients who sign up for the agreement will be eligible for up to $200 in gift cards, the companies said. Time Warner Cable's Ultimate Internet and SignatureHome are as well available to be packaged with a Verizon Wireless offer, they said.

The combination appears to be the first to take advantage of the $3.6 billion spectrum purchase Verizon agreed to in Dec. 2011. As part of that deal, Verizon Wireless agreed to purchase 122 Advanced Wireless Systems spectrum licenses from SpectrumCo, LLC, a joint effort from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks.

The deal as well called for the cable companies

The deal as well called for the cable companies and Verizon to resell each other's services. Some expected Comcast and Verizon to negotiate the first partnership, especially afterwards Comcast executives talked up the advantages the partnership would bring. Typically, a cable provider like TWC or Comcast has only been able to launch "triple play" packages of landline voice calls, broadband Internet, and television services.

But some analysts wonder if the once divergent worlds of wired and wireless communication are to tell the truth colliding, enough that normal competitive tensions will serve in place of regulation. Jim Barthold, an analyst at NPD, noted that Comcast has talked about enabling SMS text messaging on various devices without charging customer fees. In the same fashion, Verizon Wireless has talked up video services.

"When all is said and done, in spite of the regulatory eyebrows that the Comcast-Verizon Wireless joint venture would be expected to raise, the realities of competition and consumer expectations would provide anyway some level of powerful checks," Barthold wrote. "During there continues to be fundamental differences between the economics of wireline and wireless businesses, the multimedia capabilities of IP have forever bridged the safe distance companies just as Verizon and Comcast."