The deal allows Verizon to acquire a substantial amount of new spectrum to keep up with growing demand.  Comcast, the biggest cable company, holds most of the spectrum licenses that Verizon is seeking to acquire.  If the license transfer is approved, Comcast will receive $2.3 billion.

The deal could remake the boundaries of the cable and wireless industries.  Cable analyst Craig Moffett of Sanford Bernstein & Company wrote in a report that the spectrum license sales are part of a “complete reordering of the competitive universe as we know it today” and the marketing agreements between Verizon and the cable companies amount to “a partnership between formerly mortal enemies.”  He added that the deal might be “the most significant deal the industry has ever seen. And that’s a pretty amazing thing to say for a deal where less than $4 billion changes hands.”

In a separate agreement, instead of creating independent wireless services, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House, the three cable companies in the deal, will market Verizon’s service, and in return, Verizon will market the cable companies in their respective local markets.  Comcast’s president of cable, Neil Smit, said, “We’ll be marketing Verizon Wireless’s products, and they’ll be marketing our products.”

Describing the deal, a Comcast executive said, “We’ll be joined at the hip going after new customers.”  The new arrangements will be tested in four test markets first before being expanded into other markets in 2013.  The cable companies’ ability to sell a branded wireless service begins four years after the deal is formally signed.

Verizon and the cable companies will also be forming a joint venture to devise new products that integrate cable technology and wireless technology.  These new products could theoretically make it possible for home devices, like a television set, and mobile devices, like a smartphone, to talk to each other digitally.