Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile began taking pre-orders Friday for the $999 Samsung Galaxy Note9 smart phone, enticing customers with an offer of a $300 prepaid card.

The pricey device will begin shipping Aug. 24 in Ocean Blue and Lavender Purple. It will include the S Pen styles, a 4000 mAh battery, Bluetooth Low Energy support, a dual aperture lens camera and 128 GB of storage. (A 512 GB version is available for $1,245.)

Xfinity Mobile is one of six U.S. wireless carriers to sell the 128 GB version online and in stores, with Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular also carrying the device. Charter’s Spectrum Mobile has not yet announced plans to sell the Galaxy Note9.

Comcast is offering 0% APR for 24 months on the phone, with payments set at $41.67 a month. Customers can capitalize on the promotion by buying the Galaxy Note9 and opening a line.

Other operators are offering aggressive promotions, as well.

Verizon, for example, will deliver another 128 GB Galaxy Note 9, or a free Galaxy S9 or S9+, for purchasers who open an additional line of service.

AT&T is offering 30 months of zero-interest financing (reducing the monthly payment to $33.34). And customers who open an additional line can also get a free additional Galaxy Note9, or an S9 or S9+.

Sprint, meanwhile, is offering 50% off with its Sprint Flex Lease plan, rendering the monthly payment to $20.83.

For its part, Comcast reported additions of 204,000 Xfinity Mobile lines in the second quarter, bringing its total served lines 781,000

“By combining the nation’s largest and most reliable 4G LTE with 19 million Wi-Fi hotspots, Xfinity Mobile provides a network built for consumers to take full advantage of the advanced features Samsung has built into the new Galaxy Note9,” said Billy Stephens, senior VP of wireless devices and supply chain for Xfinity Mobile, in a statement. “We’re uniquely positioned to help customers save on their cellular data charges as they enjoy streaming, gaming or surfing on the Galaxy Note9’s beautiful infinity display.”

Dish Network chairman and CEO Charlie Ergen said the satellite TV service provider could begin to build out its wireless spectrum in time to meet federally-imposed deadlines, adding that with new 5G technology, Dish doesn’t necessarily need a partner to do it.

Dish has long planned to use its vast wireless holdings to create its own high-speed network. But in the past Ergen has always said Dish would likely need a partner to help shoulder the cost.  Now, with the advent of cheaper, more reliable 5G technology, his tune has changed.

On a conference call with analysts and reporters to discuss fourth quarter results, Ergen said Dish has already started preliminary work on the network build.

“We haven’t been standing still,” Ergen said, adding that Dish has been making preparations, including putting its spectrum in licensed bands, carrier aggregation and conducting some tests on the broadcast side for its 700 MHz spectrum.

“We feel pretty good about it,” Ergen said. “This is not our first rodeo.”

Most wireless companies are planning to launch 5G, which has smaller cell sites, greater capacity, less latency and better reliability, in the next few years. Already Verizon has begun trials of a service – which it plans to launch in select markets by mid-year -- and AT&T and Nokia have started testing 5G delivery of the former’s DirecTV Now OTT service. 

According to some analysts, Dish’s first FCC deadline next month would require that it complete a buildout of 50% of the country. But that is an interim deadline – the real test will be in March 2020 when Dish is required to have completed the build out to 70% of the U.S.

Ergen said that March 2020 target is what the company is focusing on, likening it to Dish’s first plans to launch a satellite TV network.

“We decided in 1992 that we were going to build satellites and by 1995 we launched our first satellite and we were able to cover the whole country and utilize our licenses,” Ergen said. “It was a complex three-year build… My experience has been those things go a lot smoother when you spend a fair amount of your time planning and not just doing things and then changing things. We’ve spent a lot of time planning and we feel like we’re in pretty good shape.”

This isn’t the first time Ergen has reassured analysts that Dish was on track for the wireless buildout. Last June he told about 80 analysts gathered in a Denver hotel that plans were moving forward, which fueled optimism about the company and boosted the stock.   

Dish hasn’t been able to work with a partner on the planning phase because of anti-collusion rules connected to the ongoing federal spectrum auction, in which Dish is among the participants. But Ergen said those restrictions are expected to be lifted in the next six-to-seven weeks.

“It’s all going to come together in the next couple of months,” Ergen said. “We will communicate to the FCC and The Street about what we are doing.”

Ergen added that while the focus has been on an organic buildout of the network, that doesn’t mean it can’t partner with other companies on certain aspects of the build.

“Even without M&A, as others build out, there are opportunities to do joint things,” Ergen said. “I am definitively saying we believe we have a plan to build out the part of the spectrum that is due in 2020. Obviously things could change, but we continue to believe we can control our own destiny. We do not need to do an M&A transaction to meet the buildout schedule.”      

In a sweeping presentation to analysts Wednesday, DirecTV parent AT&T laid out its pay TV vision for the future, focusing its efforts on mobility and encouraging customers to watch video on their tablets and smartphones.

The efforts begin with an aggressive promotion – offering DirecTV and U-Verse TV customers $500 in credits if they switch their wireless plan to AT&T – a concerted effort to bundle its wireless offering with its video product, something its current competition doesn’t do.

“I want Comcast to really regret the fact that they don’t own a wireless asset and maybe have to do something about it,” said AT&T Entertainment & Internet Services CEO John Stankey at the company’s recent Analyst Day.

AT&T completed its $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV on July 24,  making it the largest MVPD in the country with 26.3 million customers. It appears that the phone company plans to use that newfound heft to help address what it says is a shifting video market.

AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson told analysts that the phone company saw the shift even before it started to pursue DirecTV last year. He added that while cord-cutting and cord-shaving continues to cut into the pay TV subscriber base, the answer could be in offering customers more flexibility in where and when they watch programs.

“TV everywhere is what’s being consumed by a lot of millennials and our research is bearing this out,” Stephenson said, adding that even as linear TV customers decline as household growth rises, it is a “manageable decline.”
Stephenson said he does plan to see cord cutting and cord shaving accelerate, but the blow could be softer for AT&T given its additional scale and its product mix.

“What we’re seeing is a $50 package on DirecTV, there’s not much difference in absolute margin to a $90 package on U-Verse,” Stephenson said. “Cord shaving isn’t a big issue with us, as we think about the fully integrated cap TV, broadband and mobility – we’ve got the pricing right. …We’re actually convinced as linear TV subscription and ARPU might get pressured over time, the pricing is such that the mobility piece of revenue and the fixed broadband piece of revenue move up. There’s going to be a re-shifting of revenue and our expectation is that we can probably grow revenue per household for the foreseeable future.”

While Stephenson called the integration of mobility and TV a new one, the cable industry has tried it on several occasions in the past with limited success.  

In 2011, a  the SpectrumCo consortium, which included Comcast, Cox, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, sold its wireless licenses to Verizon for $3.6 billion.  As part of that deal the cable companies reached an MVNO agreement with Verizon that would allow them to resell wireless service under their own brand name, but so far no new products have come from that agreement. Last month, according to reports, Verizon and Comcast were in talks to amend that agreement.

Cable operators have a chequered past with wireless service, forming and dismantling consortiums over the years, most recently the Pivot partnership in 2008.

Cox Communications had planned to launch its own wireless service in 2009, but scrapped those plans in 2011, selling most of its spectrum to Verizon in a $315 million deal.