In December Verizon, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Bright House announced a massive deal that not only involved the sale of $3.6 billion in cable industry spectrum to Verizon, but also gave the telco the right to bundle their wireless service with the cable triple play. Comcast is wasting no time moving ahead with the offers, last month bundling Verizon LTE service with cable TV, broadband and VoIP service in Seattle and Portland. They've now extended the quadruple play offer to the San Francisco area, where customers who sign up for wireless bundles can get prepaid Visa cards:
Bay Area consumers who sign up for a bundled service plan from Comcast and for new service from Verizon Wireless are eligible to receive a prepaid Visa card worth up to $300 under a marketing plan the companies plan to launch Wednesday. The amount of the discount depends on the number of Comcast services consumers subscribe to.
Right now the gift card offer isn't particularly thrilling, but Verizon and the cable companies say the deal will expand in time to offer new video and other services that work across both cable landline and the Verizon wireless network.Competitors and consumer advocates continue to worry the new deal could spell competitive trouble, given that it brings the budgets and power of two of the nation's largest telecom companies to bear on smaller competitors. The deal must be particularly unnerving to a company like Frontier Communications, who gobbled up billions in Verizon debt and old landline networks, only to have Verizon return to their territory arm-in-arm with Comcast offering LTE services that are faster than many Frontier DSL offerings.
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