Sprint, cable partners pull plug on joint venture

Sprint Nextel Corp. and its cable company partners are discontinuing Pivot, a service offered in a joint venture among the companies.

The enterprise was announced in late 2005, and the companies began Cable With Plug  marketing early last year.

The partners include Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S), Time Warner Cable, Comcast Corp., Cox Communications and Advance/Newhouse Communications.

Pivot enables customers to link their mobile phone services with their home digital phone and certain high-speed Internet and digital cable services.

The companies decided in December not to move forward with more markets, Sprint spokeswoman Melinda Tiemeyer said. The service ended 2007 with 33 markets.

Sprint stopped offering Pivot in its retail stores in February. The company wanted to simplify its retail processes, and Pivot services required a lengthy sign-up process, Tiemeyer said.

Sprint will not release information about the financial effect of the change and does not release subscriber numbers, she said.

However, when announcing the joint venture in November 2005, the companies said they would invest $200 million in the project, with half from Sprint and half from the cable companies. The joint venture was mutually exclusive for three years and had a 20-year term.

Time Warner Cable also has stopped marketing Pivot, spokesman Alex Dudley said. The company plans to begin informing customers about the change in the next couple of weeks and to start migrating them to "more traditional Sprint products" shortly thereafter.