Cox Communications Emerges as a Wireless Provider

We were wondering what Cox was up to when it bought a pretty large block of the 700MHz spectrum this year. Their promise of a “differentiated product” was a little too vague to demonstrate what they truly meant by the purchase. Well, they’ve clarified things a bit, and it looks pretty intriguing.

Hoping to revive its stint as a mobile carrier in the 90s, Cox is integrating a cellular network into its host of services, including Internet, cable, television, radio and print media. Cox is planning on incorporating a slew of features to differentiate its network from other providers including automatic address book synchronization (without the need for an Exchange server), remote DVR programming, email/voicemail access as well as, possibly, the ability to watch your own cable TV straight from your handset.

Cox’s 6 million subscribers may not be enough to give the cable provider a substantial market position; however, this is definitely a movement that we’d like to see with other carrier/television providers. AT&T’s already got a complete suite with U-Verse, it would be nice to have a solution like this incorporated into its handsets. It seems like they’re pretty chummy with DirecTV as well, which couldn’t hurt things. Industry heavyweights, such as Comcast and AOL/Time Warner, could also have a pretty substantial impact in this area if they start throwing their weight around, too.

Of course, we’re always up for new capabilities and services for our phones, but how about seeing some basic features come back to our phones? All of these companies provide landline phone services, so how about adding some Caller ID features to our cell phones while they’re at it?