Forbes: Sirius Should Strike A Deal With Verizon

Sirius Should Be Listening to XM
Matthew Kirdahy, 11.06.06, 8:01 PM ET, Forbes

It's time for Sirius to get on the horn with Verizon Wireless and make a pitch.
Last week, XM Satellite Radio struck a deal with Cingular Wireless to bring 25 of its commercial-free music stations to the cell service provider's handsets. It's the second such move by XM in just two months as it makes its smaller rival seem even smaller.
XM already has a deal with Alltel, while Sirius Satellite Radio has had a similar deal in place with Sprint Nextel for more than a year. Granted, XM was late to react, but now they're up.
Cingular, which opened the satellite radio service to its 58 million customers on Nov. 6, is charging $8.99 for 25 channels. Alltel has been charging customers $7.99 per month for 20 satellite channels while Sprint taps its customers for $6.95 for 20 Sirius channels. Cingular is a joint venture between AT&T and BellSouth.
It's not that XM and Sirius want to pollute your cell phone with their predominately home and auto-based service, in fact, they don't even care if you own a cell phone. But if you do, they're going to try and hook your business.
Ross Rubin, a tech analyst at NPD Group, a consumer and retail market research firm, said that although the carriers are the ones collecting the additional fees for the tunes, the satellite radio companies will benefit the most.
"Neither XM or Sirius care very much about the particular device on which you listen," Rubin said. "They want to reach the customer in the context in which they enjoy programming, much like TV broadcasters are experimenting on the Web right now."...read more: here

11/06/2006 09:55:00 PM

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