Friday, November 1, 2013

Intel Is Said to Weigh Sale of Online Cable TV Venture

It is possible that Intel will forge ahead with OnCue through a partnership with Verizon, or a pact with some other company, but a purchase by Verizon is most likely, according to the people, who insisted on anonymity because the talks were supposed to be private. A deal will most likely be struck by the end of the year.

OnCue, as envisioned by Intel, would take the traditional cable television bundle and make it more consumer-friendly by transmitting it via the Internet. The company’s technology has impressed many, but channel owners have been reluctant to make the necessary licensing deals, stirring speculation that Intel might not move forward.

The other big roadblock has been an internal one. When a new chief executive, Brian M. Krzanich, took over the company earlier this year, he expressed skepticism about the television project because it was not a core part of Intel’s business, and directed the project leaders to seek partnerships for it.

Earlier this fall Intel executives privately acknowledged that they would fall short of their widely publicized goal of introducing OnCue to the public in time for the holiday season.

A takeover of OnCue could position Verizon to sell a cablelike television service across the United States through existing broadband pipes or through its Verizon Wireless business. Its current eight-year-old television subscription service, FiOS, has five million subscribers and is growing steadily, but it is available in only about 15 percent of American homes because it is delivered over a proprietary fiber-optic network. Verizon said last year that it did not plan to expand that fiber-optic network much more.

But a Verizon television service could potentially reach many more people if it were not linked to the fiber-optic network and were made available through any broadband connection. Alternatively, it could be sold as an optional mobile TV upgrade for the Verizon Wireless unit’s roughly 100 million monthly subscribers.

Verizon is in the process of gaining full ownership of the wireless unit, having announced last month a $130 billion acquisition of Vodafone’s 45 percent stake. “We don’t comment on speculation,” a Verizon spokeswoman said on Wednesday after the online technology site AllThingsD published an article on the talks with Intel. An Intel spokesman declined to comment.

No comments:

Post a Comment