Charter said last year that it was going to create its own wireless network – as an MVNO, using Verizon’s network – and that it would launch in 2018. So far, there has been very little information about the service, but BGR managed to get quite a bit of information on the upcoming service, including the name. It’ll be called “Spectrum Mobile” and the pricing appears to be very similar to Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile that it launched last year.
Similar to Xfinity Mobile, Spectrum Mobile will be running off of its existing WiFi hotspots and then fill in the gaps with Verizon’s network. This means that if you are ever outside of 50-feet from a Spectrum household, then you’ll be using Verizon’s network. That is actually going to happen more times than not in certain areas of the country – like the midwest, where Charter doesn’t serve. That should make your data usage smaller than on a typical carrier. But Charter is still allowing you to either pay per gigabit or for unlimited data. It’s $12 per gigabit, or $45 for unlimited data. And you’ll only pay for the data that you use. This is all per line, and there are no other fees hidden here, like line access fees. So you can get two lines of unlimited data for just $90 per month. Which works out pretty well.
Charter will likely start out Spectrum Mobile as being only available to its existing users of its Internet service. This is what Comcast did when it launched Xfinity Mobile, as a way to keep the number of users small while it worked out the kinks. But now anyone can join Xfinity Mobile. Spectrum Mobile will likely work the same way. Currently, we don’t know what devices will work with Spectrum Mobile, but in theory, it should be any unlocked smartphone that would work on Verizon. Which is actually a pretty big chunk of smartphones, including the Galaxy S9, Galaxy Note 8, LG G7 ThinQ and many others. We should know more about Spectrum Mobile in the coming weeks, as soon as Charger makes more information public.
