Understand that Time Warner is most certainly not unaware of the great things happening in the mobile services industry. They have even gone so far as to admit that they’re going to be getting serious about mobile offerings.

When will they get into the mobile services game? It depends on where they want to take things I suppose. I believe that we will see something from them in the very near future. After all, the mobile industry waits for no one.

Time Warner has hinted for some time that it’s interested in offering mobile phone service. Articles suggesting just such a move appeared in March and June of this year, so it’s really not a huge surprise to hear Time Warner executives sounding a little more serious about the idea.

While this really might just be about turning the triple play into a “four play” of services, it might be about much more. The indications from the beginning have been that Time Warner would simply take the obvious route and do an MVNO. It would slap its brand on someone else’s network and bundle it with cable service, getting a bit more revenue per user, while dropping churn a bit further (since bundled customers are less likely to switch).

However, it’s also possible that the company has bigger goals. While Time Warner execs later made it clear they hoped to create an MVNO-style partnership, the original statement suggested that an acquisition was not out of the question. Perhaps the MVNO offering is really just a way for Time Warner to get its feet wet in the wireless world before going a bit further. Wireless isn’t necessarily a “fourth” service. The three parts of the triple play are voice, video and data over a single pipe. Wireless isn’t a fourth service — it’s a way of getting rid of the pipe entirely. In other words, rather than offering voice, video and data in the home, it’s about voice, video and data anywhere at any time on any device.