Comcast, Charter Team Up on Mobile Back-End System Development

Comcast and Charter Communications formed a 50/50 operating platform partnership back-end development and design system supporting their mobile services, they said Friday. They will collaborate on developing "an efficient and scalable software platform and related backend systems" for their mobile customer sales and support platforms, device logistics and warehousing, and billing. They said the operating platform will be the systems interface for current "and any future mobile virtual network operator ... partners." Charter Chief Mobile Officer Danny Bowman said the work will result in "faster and more cost-effective mobile product and service enhancements." The cable providers said the partnership will use parts of the operating platform Comcast developed for Xfinity Mobile that Charter subsequently modified for its forthcoming mobile service. They said Charter initially will fund the joint venture in reflection of development costs Comcast bore, though the two eventually will equally fund the partnership. The companies said they individually will keep their own relationships with device manufacturers, and all customer-facing activities like market, sales and pricing will be handled individually. The deal demonstrates Comcast and Charter "are serious about mobile," New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin wrote investors. He said the platform could be an interface with future MVNOs that could point to the cable companies contemplating a deeper MVNO with a different wireless provider than Verizon.