My Thoughts on AT&T AirGig

PoleBy now most of you have seen AT&T’s announcement of a new wireless technology they are calling AirGig. This is a technology that can bounce millimeter wave signals along a series of inexpensive plastic antennae perched at the top of utility poles.

The press release is unclear about the speeds that might be delivered from the technology. The press release says it has the potential to deliver multi-gigabit speeds. But at the same time it talks about delivering 4G cellular as well as 5G cellular and fixed broadband. The 4G LTE cellular standard can deliver about 15 Mbps while the 5G cellular standard (which is still being developed) is expected to eventually increase cellular speeds to about 50 Mbps. So perhaps AT&T plans to use the technology to deploy micro cell sites while also being able to deliver millimeter wave wireless broadband loops. The link above includes a short video which doesn’t clarify this issue very well.

Like any new radio technology, there is bound to be a number of issues involved with moving the technology from the lab to the field. I can only speculate at this point, but I can foresee the following as potential issues with the millimeter wave part of the technology:

  • The video implies that the antennas will be used to deliver bandwidth using a broadcast hotspot. I’m not entirely sure that the FCC will even approve this spectrum to be used in this manner – this is the same spectrum used in microwave ovens. It can be dangerous to work around for linemen climbing poles and it can create all sorts of havoc by interfering with cable TV networks and TV reception.
  • Millimeter wave spectrum does not travel very far when used as a hot spot. This spectrum has high atmospheric attenuation and is absorbed by gases in the atmosphere. When focused in a point-to-point the spectrum can work well to about half a mile. But in a hot spot mode it’s good, at best, for a few hundred feet and loses bandwidth quickly with distance traveled. The bandwidth is only going to reach to homes that are close to the pole lines.
  • Millimeter wave spectrum suffers from rain fade and during a rain storm almost all of the spectrum is scattered.
  • The spectrum doesn’t penetrate foliage, or much of anything else. So there is going to have to be a clear path between the pole unit and the user. America is a land of residential trees and even in the open plains people plant trees closely around their house as a windbreak.
  • The millimeter wave spectrum won’t penetrate walls, so this will require some sort of outdoor receiver to catch millimeter wave signals.
  • I wonder how the units will handle icing. Where cables tend to shake ice off within a few days, hardware mounted on poles can be ice-covered for months.
  • The technology seems to depend on using multiple wireless hops to go from unit to unit. Wireless hops always introduce latency into the signal and it will be interesting to see how much latency is introduced along rural pole runs.
  • For any wireless network to deliver fast speeds it has to be connected somewhere to fiber backhaul. There are still many rural counties with little or no fiber.

We have always seen that every wireless technology has practical limitations that make it suitable for some situations and not others. This technology will be no different. In places where this can work it might be an incredible new broadband solution. But there are bound to be situations where the technology will have too many problems to be practical.

I’ve seen speculation that one of the major reasons for this press release is to cause a pause to anybody thinking of building fiber. After all, why should anybody build fiber if there is cheap multi-gigabit wireless coming to every utility pole? But with all of the possible limitations mentioned above (and others that are bound to pop up in the real world) this technology may only work in some places, or it might not work well at all. This could be the technology we have all been waiting for or it could be a flop. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Wall Street and Programmers

wall-streetIn an intriguing development, analyst Michael Nathanson has downgraded Discovery Networks and Scripps Networks Interactive from ‘neutral’ to ‘sell’. His reason is that he sees a poor future for programmers that don’t carry live TV events like sports or news.

Discovery Networks produces the various Discovery channels along with Animal Planet, TLC, Science, Velocity, OWN and American Heroes Channel. Scripps produces HGTV, the Food Network, DIY Network, the Cooking Channel, the Great American Country, the Travel Channel and TVN.

Nathanson believes that advertising is starting to chase live content and is abandoning other content. There is a major trend in the country for people to skip traditional broadcast ads using DVRs and video on demand. He further recognizes that all cable channels are losing viewers to OTT alternatives like Netflix. This all will add up to a significant drop in advertising revenues for traditional cable networks that stream shows paid for by advertising.

These networks are also feeling pressure from cable subscriptions. We know, for example, that ESPN lost millions of customers since 2015 and one has to think that the same thing is happening to all of the other networks. The ESPN losses seem to be due in part to cord cutting, but even more to cord shaving where customers are downsizing their cable packages. I listen to a lot of radio and I constantly hear ads from DirecTV and others to buy their new skinny bundles. Each time somebody picks a skinny bundle or an alternative like Sling TV, a whole lot of channels lose a monthly subscription.

This might be the first crack in the programmers’ armor. For nearly two decades they have been able to raise rates to cable companies while also enjoying ever-increasing advertising revenues. And this ever-growing revenue made the programmers a favorite of Wall Street which rewards revenues that grow quarter after quarter. But we are starting to see advertising revenues abandoning cable and moving to online venues. This year is the first year when web advertising will eclipse TV advertising.

It seems for these networks we are seeing a perfect storm. Advertising in general is leaving cable – and within that shift, if Nathanson is right, it will leave traditional cable channels much faster than those offering live programming. We are also seeing traditional cable subscriptions shifting to skinny bindles and OTT. There is no doubt that all of this is going to add up to smaller revenues for these networks. And since contracts between programmers and cable companies are for 3 -5 years the programmers don’t have the ability to raise subscription rates quickly enough to make up for these losses. Even if they tried to maintain growth through rate increases it’s likely today that they would get a lot of pushback from cable companies.

It’s hard to feel any sympathy for the programmers because it is their greed that has made cable too expensive for many homes. Programming rates in recent years have increased nearly 10% per year – many multiples faster than general inflation. Those rate increases were clearly done to please Wall Street, but it didn’t take a crystal ball to see that the increases were not sustainable.

The way that we value large companies in the US is perverse. These networks make a lot of money. And even with all of these changes they are going to continue to make a lot of money for a long time to come. But companies that fall out favor with Wall Street generally have huge problems. These companies are going to be pressured to somehow fix the situation, but there doesn’t seem to be any way for them to do that. We are likely to see them start ditching unprofitable channels. The companies might be sold or split up into smaller companies. It’s unlikely once Wall Street abandons a company for it to just sit still.

The programmers have held almost all of the power in the industry for a long time – but maybe we are starting to see a change. That can only be a good thing for the industry.

Cable Companies under Regulatory Siege?

FCC_New_LogoEarlier this year Michael Powell (the head of the National Cable Television Association) complained that the FCC has launched a regulatory assault again cable companies – and in some ways he is probably right. Some of the regulations ordered or contemplated are clearly aimed at cable companies – yet much of the new regulation was aimed at somebody else but still affects the cable companies.

Consider all of the changes affecting the cable companies right now:

  • Net neutrality has meant that cable companies and other ISPs can’t make lucrative deals with content providers to bundle content as part of broadband access.
  • But the biggest change from the net neutrality order is the advent of Title II regulation of the internet. This is resulting in a raft of new regulations for broadband. All of a sudden the FCC is looking at data caps. The agency has demanded that all ISPs disclose all of the details of their broadband connections to customers. Cable companies are suddenly covered by customer privacy regulations – the biggest being that they probably can’t use the information they gather as an ISP without a customer’s approval.
  • The cable companies have become huge sellers of broadband transport and data pipes to businesses. The FCC is about to make major changes in the special access market and that is likely going to lower prices for these products. Special access rates are incredibly high and cable companies and CLECs have made a living out of selling services to businesses at a discount from the published special access rates. The result is that businesses pay a gigantic premium for dedicated broadband connections, and everybody expects the FCC to lower rates across the market.
  • The FCC’s move to somehow eliminate settop boxes is aimed right at the cable companies. To a large extent the industry brought this on themselves as they’ve raised rates to rent a settop box from $5 to $10 or more in most markets. But the idea that there can be some sort of generic solution that can work on every type of network sounds idealistic, at best.
  • The FCC seems to want to allow anybody to carry video content on the Internet without saddling the new providers with the same rules that govern cable companies. So cable companies, for now, are stuck with rules that force them to offer certain kinds of tiers of service while OTT providers can cook up any creative package they can cobble together.

As a telecom guy I find this all to be somewhat ironic. I remember when I first read through the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that my first reaction was that the FCC had let the cable companies completely off the hook. The big telcos were being forced to unbundle their networks to offer voice loops and DSL connections while the cable companies had no corresponding obligation to unbundle for cable modem connections. In the decade following the Act, most state Commissions also excused cable companies from most forms of voice regulation. The cable companies were able to somehow characterize the voice on their networks as VoIP and got out of most voice regulations – but from a customer perspective the cable voice product was indistinguishable from telco voice products. It’s one of the first times that the FCC made an exception for a product based upon the technology used to deliver it – a trend that has since led to some very odd regulatory rulings.

So now it seems that the wheel has turned and the cable companies are being brought back into the regulatory arena with everybody else. I think Powell is right and those in charge of a cable company must feel like they are under regulatory siege. But except for the settop box issue, which is an odd set of regulations clearly aimed at the cable companies – the other regulations can mostly be described as leveling the playing field – something that the cable companies have always said should apply to municipal broadband providers.

But from a regulatory perspective the protections provided to consumers ought to be the same across all broadband technologies. It makes a lot of sense to finally require cable companies to provide privacy protection and to disclose the details and terms of the products they are selling. I have to laugh once in a while about regulation. Five years ago a colleague of mine said he could foresee the end of telecom regulation. But I countered by saying that regulators like to regulate, and sure enough it seems like we have as many – or more! –  regulations today as ever.

Verizon Phasing Out Copper Services

fios vanVerizon has asked the FCC for permission to discontinue a number of legacy copper-based products in the Northeast. This signals the company’s ongoing plan to pull down copper wires and go to an all-digital network.

Specifically Verizon wants to eliminate their Voice Grade, WATS Access Line, Bonded Digital Link, Digital Data, and DIGIPATH Digital Service II. These are somewhat obscure services, mostly used by businesses, and which for the most part have been supplanted by better products over the years.

What this filing doesn’t specifically say is that Verizon will eventually accompany this tariff change by a request to remove their copper network. That’s what they did earlier this year in New Jersey.

I find it hard to criticize the company for wanting to move customers from copper to fiber. I have a lot of small telco clients who have done the same thing over the last decade. There are a few customers that worry about such a transition because they have some legacy function like fax machines, health monitors, burglar alarms or T1s that they are afraid won’t work with the updated technology. For the most part there are not very many such applications around that can’t be made to work on fiber. Fiber technology can emulate almost every TDM copper-based function.

There comes a point where it doesn’t make economic sense to maintain an old copper network for a tiny handful of customers using old applications. I have a hard time thinking that customers have a right to stay on copper when there is something better available.

But I also think the public unease over these transitions is because the public doesn’t trust Verizon. Verizon got a lot of bad press after hurricane Sandy hit Fire Island and the company wanted to replace the destroyed copper with cellular service.

The problem is that Verizon doesn’t have fiber everywhere –not even close to everywhere. What happens where there is no fiber availability? When Verizon built FiOS they only built fiber where the costs to do so were low, and this resulted in a patchwork fiber network – where one street or one subdivision has fiber, but the next doesn’t. The company also largely built fiber in the suburbs of the major cities and they largely ignored downtown urban neighborhoods as well as smaller towns and all rural areas.

AT&T is being open about its plans to move homes to a fixed cellular connection. But as Verizon starts pulling down more copper they are either going to have to build new fiber to people or offer the same kind of cellular connections as AT&T. And it doesn’t seem likely that Verizon is going to extend FiOS fiber networks today to neighborhoods they judged too expensive to build fifteen years ago.

Verizon’s union members have been complaining for years that the company has been neglecting the copper plant – and these technicians are right. It’s a behavior we have seen from all of the large telcos for decades. Twenty years ago Verizon started trying to find a buyer for their network in West Virginia. It took them more than a decade to finally sell it to Frontier, and during the interim they cut maintenance to the bone. But this is not a singular example and huge parts of the Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink networks are in bad shape due to many years of neglect.

The shift away from copper is inevitable. A lot of these networks were built in the post WWII decades and they have lasted longer than intended. It’s a testament to the high standards of the old Ma Bell system that these networks are still working today. Critics of Verizon want the company to maintain the copper networks for a few more decades – but that is unrealistic, and in many cases becoming technically impossible, and it’s time to shift focus to make sure Verizon doesn’t start quietly dropping homes and leaving them stranded with no communications options.

Regulatory Shorts for September 2016

Wi-FiToday’s blog contains a few items that are cautionary tales of things not to do.

FCC Funding for Broadband. The FCC recently rejected three petitions for reconsideration filed by companies that had been awarded the experimental broadband grants last year, but then failed to meet the grant criteria. Two of the companies were start-ups and did not have audited financial statements. Another had an audit but filed it after the grant-specified deadline. The FCC refused to give the three companies the grants since they didn’t meet all of the requirements.

The cautionary tale here is that anybody filing for a grant should make certain ahead of time that they meet all of the requirements. There were a lot of applicants who received broadband grants out of the stimulus funding a few years ago that did not qualify, but for whom the government accepted waivers. However, that was an extraordinary circumstance due to the huge size of the grants and the desire of the government to use the funding. In more normal circumstances it’s exceedingly hard to get a waiver for a company that doesn’t meet all of the qualifications.

Fines for Unauthorized Wireless Connections. The FCC recently fined AT&T $450,000 for using licensed wireless connections that were made without FCC authorization or that had not been properly licensed. These were mostly fixed microwave connections, something that is relatively easy to get licensed.

The cautionary tale is to be sure to take care of the paperwork when deploying wireless systems. It’s becoming fairly routine for companies to deploy microwaves to provide wireless backhaul for point-to-multipoint wireless networks or for serving cellular sites. There are also now licensing requirements for anybody deploying subscriber radios that use the 3.65 GHz spectrum. Failure to obtain the microwave licenses could end up with fines like AT&T just paid. But since there are places in the country where it’s not legal to deploy the 3.65 GHz radios, failure to clear it first with the FCC could even end up in having your systems shut down.

Blocking WiFi. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel has asked the agency to investigate a seeming restriction of WiFi for those attending the first presidential debate. Apparently, Hofstra University had blocked people from establishing WiFi hotspots from their cellphones and instead wanted journalists to buy a $200 connection for the evening. The FCC in the past has come down hard on this kind of blocking against Marriott hotels and others. The FCC has levied large fines in almost every such case brought to their attention.

The cautionary tale here is not to block WiFi. Companies and cities are often tempted to do this as a security measure and the technology to block WiFi is readily available. But WiFi is a public spectrum and it’s always against the law to block somebody from establishing their own hotspot.

Using E-Rate Broadband Off-Campus. Two school districts have petitioned the FCC to allow them to extend broadband that is subsidized by the E-Rate program to students and others living close to the campus. Under current rules, if an E-Rate network is used for applications other than the school, then the cost of the system has to be allocated between the school and other uses. These petitions ask that the FCC allow them to use the school broadband to serve students and other parties that can benefit from the broadband, without having to allocate the costs.

There is both a caution here as well as an opportunity. The caution is to beware if an E-Rate broadband connection is used by more than the school. For example, it’s not unusual (particularly with private schools) to have other organizations or entities collocated with the school. In such a case the E-Rate applicant needs to make sure to allocate the costs between the school and the other entities. Failure to do so could end up with a loss of the E-Rate subsidy. But the opportunity also exists with wireless networks to provide home broadband to students who live close to the school. If these petitions are successful it could open up many possibilities for schools to benefit nearby residents.

Two Approaches to Low-Income Broadband

slow-downLarge ISPs are taking different approaches to bringing broadband to low-income households. Consider recent news about Comcast and AT&T:

Comcast has a program called Internet Essentials that provides broadband to low-income households. Comcast delivers 10 Mbps download speeds to qualifying households for $10 per month. The program was created as a condition by the FCC for the purchase of NBC Universal in 2011. For a long time the program was very low key and the company barely advertised it to customers. But over the years the company added 600,000 to the program.

Now that the FCC has created a federal Lifeline subsidy for broadband the company has become more vigorous in seeking customers and reported recently that it now has over 3 million customers in the program. The qualifying requirement for Internet Essentials has been to have at least one child in a household eligible for free or reduced price lunches. But recently Comcast has allowed households without children to apply for the program.

AT&T was also required to provide low-cost broadband as the result of its purchase of DirecTV. AT&T uses a different requirement for eligibility and will provide assistance to customers who take part in the SNAP (food stamp) program. Since there are about 21 million households in the country in the SNAP program there are a lot of eligible households in the AT&T footprint.

The FCC conditions from the DirecTV merger required that AT&T would provide broadband at different prices according to the technology they have available in different neighborhoods. The program has several tiers: 10 Mbps download for $10 per month, 5 Mbps download for $10 per month and 3 Mbps download for $5 per month. The company is supposed to provide the fastest of these speeds available in a given area.

But AT&T is now in hot water at the FCC because they are denying the program to a lot of households by using the argument that they have many neighborhoods where they can’t deliver the 3 Mbps speed required for the lowest tier. In such neighborhoods they are not offering the program.

Ironically, in neighborhoods where the fastest speed is 1.5 Mbps they will still sell that broadband for more than $50 per month, but they won’t offer the same product for the reduced price. AT&T is basing the refusal to offer low-income prices on language in the merger agreement that said they would only have to offer subsidized broadband ‘where technically feasible’ – and they are arguing that they are technically unable to deliver the lowest 3 Mbps speeds required by the program.

This is not an isolated problem. For example, the FCC’s broadband mapping system shows that 21% of the census blocks in Detroit can’t get broadband speeds greater than 1.5 Mbps. These large swaths of old and slow DSL are a result of the company’s decision over the years to not invest in faster DSL in poor neighborhoods.

It’s easy to think of very slow broadband as a rural issue. But the FCC’s records make it clear that there are a lot of neighborhoods in urban areas that have been bypassed by ISPs. These are families that connect with old first generation DSL equipment and who live in homes or apartments that are not connected to the cable TV networks.

For many years Comcast fought against the agreement they had made with the FCC to offer low-income broadband. It’s good to see them finally embrace the plan, and I’m sure that has a lot to do with the federal Lifeline program that will provide $9.25 per month to Comcast for every qualifying customer. Added to what they are getting from customers the product should be profitable. This would be even better if the company would offer real broadband at 25 Mbps for the same low price.

It’s hard to understand why AT&T is weaseling out of their obligation. One would think that this program would generate a lot of revenue from copper that has been paid for generations ago. It can’t cost the company very much to provide a broadband connection at any of the speeds they offer in these neighborhoods, particularly those with the 1.5 Mbps speeds. AT&T freely agreed to offer low-income broadband when they bought DirecTV and it’s hard to think of a valid reason for them to renege. The only reason I can think of for their position is that perhaps they have plans to start tearing down copper in these neighborhoods and don’t want a lot of customers using the networks.

Looking Closer at 5G

SONY DSCCisco recently released a white paper titled Cisco 5G Vision Series: Laying the Foundation for New Technologies, Use Cases, and Business Models that lays out their vision of how the cellular industry can migrate from 4G to 5G. It’s a highly technical read and provides insight on how 5G might work and when we might see it in use.

As the white paper points out, the specific goals of 5G are still in the process of being developed. Both 4G and 5G are basically a set of detailed standards used to make sure devices can work on any network meeting the standards. Something that very few people realize is that almost none of the supposed 4G networks in this country actually meet the 4G standards. We are just now seeing the deployment around the world of the first technologies – LTE-Advanced and WIMAX 16m – that meet the original 4G standards. It’s been typical for cellular providers to claim to have 4G when they’ve only met some tiny portion of the standard.

And so, long before we see an actual 5G deployment we are first going to see the deployment of LTE-Advanced followed by generations of improvements that are best described as pre-5G (just as most of what we have today is pre-4G). This evolution means that we should expect incremental improvements in the cellular networks, not a big swooping overhaul.

The paper makes a very clear distinction between indoor 5G and outdoor 5G (which is cellular service). Cisco says that already today that 80% of cellphone usage is done indoors, mostly using WiFi. They envision that in places with a lot of people, like stadiums, shopping centers or large business buildings, that there will be a migration from WiFi to millimeter wave spectrum using the 5G standard. This very well could ultimately result in gigabit speeds on devices with the right antennas to receive that signal.

But these very fast indoor speeds are going to be limited to those places where it’s economically feasible to deploy multiple small cells – and places that have good fiber backhaul. That’s going to mean places with lots of demand and the willingness to pay for such deployments. So you might see fast speeds inside wireless in hospitals, but you are not going to see gigabit speeds while waiting for your car to be repaired or while sitting in the dentist waiting room. And most importantly, you are not going to see gigabit speeds using millimeter wave spectrum outside. All of the early news articles talking about having outdoor gigabit cellular speeds were way off base. This misunderstanding is easy to understand since the press releases from cellular companies have been nebulous and misleading.

So what can be expected outdoors on our cell phones? Cisco says that the ultimate goal of 5G is to be able to deliver 50 Mbps speeds everywhere. At the same time, the 5G standards have the goal of being able to handle a lot more connections at a given cell site. That goal will mean better reception at football games, but it also means a lot more connections will be available to connect to smart cars or Internet of Things devices.

But don’t expect much faster cellular speeds for quite some time. Remember that the goal of 4G was to deliver about 15 Mbps speeds everywhere. And yet today, the average LTE connection in the US is at about half of that speed. The relatively slow speeds of today’s LTE are due to a number of different reasons. First, is the fact that most cell sites are still running pre-4G technology. The willingness of the cellular companies to buy sufficient bandwidth backhaul at cell sites is also a big contributor. I’ve seen in the press that both Verizon and AT&T are looking for ways to reduce backhaul costs – that’s thought to be the major motivation for Verizon to buy XO Communications. Another major issue is that existing cell sites are too far apart to deliver fast data speeds, and it will require a massive deployment of small cell sites (and the accompanying fiber backhaul) to fix the spacing problem.

So long before we see 50 Mbps cellular speeds we will migrate through several generations of incremental improvements in the cellular networks. We are just now seeing the deployment of LTE-Advanced which will finally bring 4G speeds. After that, Cisco has identified what looks to be at least three or four steps of improvements that we will see before we achieve actual 5G cellular.

How long might all of this take? The industry is scheduled to finalize the 5G standards by 2020, and perhaps a little sooner. It looks like there will be a faster push to find millimeter wave solutions for indoor 5G, so we might see those technologies coming first. But it has taken us a decade since the large cellular companies announced deployment of 4G cellular until we are finally starting to see networks that meet that standard. I can’t imagine that the 5G migration will go any faster. And even when 5G gets here, it’s going to hit urban areas long before it hits rural areas. One doesn’t have to drive too far into the country today to find places that are still operating at 3G.

Upgrading to 5G in steps will be expensive for the cellular providers and they are not likely to implement changes too quickly. We will likely see a series of incremental improvements, like they have been doing for many years. So it would not be surprising to be at least until 2030 until there is a cellular system in place that fully meets the 5G standard. Of course, long before then the marketing departments of the wireless providers will tell us that 5G is here – and when they do, everybody looking for blazingly fast cellphone speeds are going to be disappointed.

The Downside to Bundling

bundleIt’s so common for triple play providers to bundle their services that it’s become the standard product of the industry. There aren’t any great stats on the percentages of bundles sold at the big cable companies, but I’ve seen speculation that it’s north of 70% of all residential customers. Certainly, with that kind of success it’s not hard to see why triple-play providers like bundles.

Back when bundles were first created all of the talk in the industry was that bundles would make customers ‘stickier’ – meaning that customers with a bundle were less likely to churn to another provider. The original lure of the bundles for customers was that they saved money over buying each product a la carte – and customers saw savings when they bought bundles.

But in much of the country the cable companies have won the competition battle. They now offer data speeds in most markets that are faster than their competition, and so customers no longer have an equal choice between two providers. We can see this by watching the huge ongoing shift of DSL customers to cable modems in the cities – just last year Comcast added almost 2 million new customers, most formerly from DSL.

I suspect that customers don’t look at the bundle in the same way they did years ago. If customers don’t have a real competitive alternative then the bundles are no longer saving them anything. When you consider the impact of a decade of high rate increases, one has to think that most homes are finding the bundle to become more of a burden than a boon. I just saw a statistic yesterday that showed that the average price of just the cable TV portion of the bundle has increased from $70 to $103 since 2011.

My guess is that bundles have lost their appeal for most customers. The stickiness that the cable companies crowed about can feel like a trap to somebody who wants to downsize. The industry has been abuzz for several years about the big movement towards cord cutting. But none of the articles I have read on the issue mention how hard it is for somebody to drop cable TV while keeping a data connection.

I’ve written in this blog a number of times about how Comcast forces me into buying basic cable TV in order to get a fast broadband product. I didn’t want that cable product on day one and I have tried over the years to ditch it. But I’ve always been told that I would have to drop my data speeds to a really slow product in order to buy standalone data. So what I have is a forced bundle – one with no options for breaking the bundle into the components and only buying what I want.

There are bundles in the industry that are not as rigid as mine, but which instead impose a harsh monetary penalty for breaking the bundle. Customers don’t know what they pay for any given piece of the bundle. But if you try to break a bundle, you find out that there was very little value assigned to whatever product you want to ditch and, thus, the savings when breaking a bundle are never as large as expected.

This phenomenon certainly has to be a contributing factor for homes not buying data from Google Fiber. It’s been widely reported that many people really like the cable products the big companies put out these days. The products are much improved over past years with cloud DVR, slick remotes and the ability to watch programming from anywhere on any device. But breaking a bundle to keep cable TV and then buy data from somebody else comes with such a significant financial penalty that it’s hard to justify.

Where bundles were once used to attract customers in a somewhat competitive environment, they have turned into anchors around customers’ necks. I have to think that a lot of the low rankings that the cable companies get on customer satisfaction surveys comes from the resentment over bundles. Nobody likes feeling of being forced to buy something they don’t want. From time to time I see articles ruing that we don’t have a la carte cable programming so that we can buy the channels that we want. But the fact is, that for most of us, we no longer even have many options for a la carte products that are not in a bundle.

Cable TV Rates

eyeballTrying to get your arms around industry trends for cable TV isn’t easy. There are a number of different entities that track various cable statistics and they are often not in synch. This week I saw a new press release from Leichtman Research that said that the average rate increase in cable rates this year has been around 4%.

I keep an eye on these kinds of statistics because most of my clients compete against the bigger cable companies. Leichtman says that the average monthly spending on pay-cable TV is now $103.10, which is 4% higher than 2015. This is an eye opener because household spending on cable increased from $73.63 in 2011, or an average increase since then of 7.7% per year. For the increases to finally drop to 4% is big news.

But like anything in the cable industry, there are a lot of moving parts in trying to see the future trend of cable rates. Consider all of the following, which have some bearing on current average nationwide cable spending:

  • There was a press release in January where Comcast said that their average cable bills would go up by 3.9% this year, right in line with this latest report. But in addition to raising cable rates the company also had a $2 increase in its ‘broadcast TV fee’ of $2 which affected every cable customer. All of the big cable companies now have these fees, which are just another piece of the cable rate, but which are not often counted as such. These fees let companies like Comcast hold down their advertised rates which increases overall cable rates.
  • Charter and Time Warner seem to have had a much lower annual increase than average due to the merger that was pending during the normal January rate-increase period. But one would have to think that now that the merger is over that these companies will make up lost ground. I’ve seen predictions that Time Warner customers could see a jump in their 2017 bills as large as $10.
  • Both satellite companies had one of the largest rate increases we’ve seen from them in years. DirecTV raised package rates from $1 – $9 and DISH Networks raised rates from $2 – $8.
  • Cablevision didn’t raise their rates at all at the beginning of the year due to their expected merger with Altice.
  • We know that there is a lot of cord-shaving going on, which would have a downward pressure on average cable bills. The large cable companies don’t report customers by size of package, but we have a lot of evidence of cord shaving due to networks like ESPN losing millions of customers since 2015. If the industry is not losing as many customers as ESPN then only cord shaving – people moving to a smaller package – can explain their customer losses. If lots of people buy smaller cable packages the average bill will drop.
  • Finally, with the big cable companies it’s getting really hard to distinguish cable increases from other price increases. I’ve seen estimates that most of the large cable companies have around 70% of customers in some kind of a bundle. Most people with bundles don’t know what they pay for any specific component of the bundle. But this also means that the cable companies can be arbitrary when separating the bundles into the component cable, data and telephone revenues. This means the reported ‘cable’ revenues from the big cable companies can be fudged to meet reporting goals or any other purpose.
  • In this last year we are starting to see increases in broadband rates from many of the cable companies. For example, Cox just recently increased various data rates from $2 to $7 per month. But for customers in a bundle these revenues fall into the same muddy bundled price along with the cable rates. Do customer in a bundle really care which piece of their bundle increased?

One thing I see external to these big industry statistics is that my smaller clients are not seeing any drop-off in increasing programming and other cable expenses. If anything, because of the continuing big increases in retransmission costs they are seeing as large or larger increases in underlying cable costs as ever. Smaller cable providers will really feel the squeeze if they compete with somebody like Time Warner that barely raised rates in 2015.

While it’s not really good news, it appears that it’s likely that the ‘smaller’ rate increases from the bigger cables for 2015 are probably an anomaly and that these companies will be back to larger increases in 2016. But it’s anybody’s guess going forward if the annual increases are going to be in cable rates, broadband rates or something else. Like everything in our industry it’s getting a little muddier to predict.

The Plight of Pinetops, North Carolina

pinetopsnc-640x125Most of my readers are probably aware that last year the FCC voted to overturn the restrictions on municipal competition in Tennessee and North Carolina. Specifically, the FCC gave permission to the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga and to the City of Wilson, North Carolina to extend their fiber networks to provide broadband to nearby communities.

But both states appealed the FCC decision and this past August the courts overturned the FCC order in favor of the states. The FCC has decided to not appeal that court decision.

During the time when the FCC order was in effect, the City of Wilson extended their Greenlight fiber network and brought fiber to the tiny town of Pinetops, NC. This is a small town that had a population of 1,374 in the 2010 US Census. When the Courts overturned the FCC rules, Wilson’s City Attorney interpreted the reversal of the FCC ruling to mean that Wilson had no authority to serve broadband in Pinetops.

The local governments of both Wilson and Pinetops have appealed to Governor Pat McCrory to allow the broadband service to continue. The mayor of Pinetops reports that 31% of the households in his community are below the poverty line and that the network had brought the opportunity for the town to do better economically. The town has been hoping to grow by attracting new residents.

In the telecom world we are often faced with similar situations, where the industry will react to a regulatory ruling that might eventually be overturned. We just saw this recently as the FCC took actions related to net neutrality in 2016 at the same time that the net neutrality rules were under appeal. The large incumbent telcos and cable companies routinely appeal decisions they don’t like from the FCC, and it has become somewhat common practice for parties to act as if the new rules are in effect, even during the appeal process.

It seems that Chattanooga took a conservative approach and did not expand their network, waiting for a resolution of the Court appeal. But Wilson expanded their network when the FCC said they had the right to do so, with the uncomfortable result that we now have a  small town that has lost access to fast broadband. Customers have been disconnected as Wilson turned off the network.

One would hope that the powers-to-be can find a way to keep the broadband going in Pinetops. It’s very easy for lawmakers and regulators who live in urban areas with good broadband to fail to understand how hard it is for rural households to live without broadband. It’s particularly cruel to provide broadband to a small town like Pinetops and then withdraw it.

Wilson constructed the network using regulations that were in place at the time of the construction. It’s also true that today, after the appeal the same fiber construction would no longer be allowed.  But common sense would say to grandfather the broadband in Pinetops while restricting Wilson from constructing fiber to any additional communities.

Unfortunately, common sense often doesn’t prevail in these situations. I’m sure that AT&T and Comcast have put pressure on the state to rollback the broadband, even if those companies are not providing a decent alternative in Pinetops. But these big companies have taken the position that all competition is bad and they take extraordinary measures to stop competition when they can. I just hope that somebody in North Carolina uses some common sense and compassion to let the folks in Pinetops keep the broadband they were recently given. To not do so would be inhumane. It would be surreal if the people in Pinetops are denied broadband when the fiber is already on their streets or connected to their homes.