Jeff Baumgartner

AT&T To Bring ‘GigaPower’ To Nashville

AT&T will extend its fiber-based “GigaPower” network to parts of Nashville, where it will eventually offer speeds up to 1 Gbps. Nashville, served by incumbent cable operator Comcast, is also one of 34 potential expansion cities being sized up by Google Fiber and its 1-Gig-capable platform.

AT&T Preps Summer GigaPower Debut In Dallas/Ft. Worth

AT&T shed some light on its coming launch of fiber-fed “U-verse with GigaPower” services in pockets of Dallas and Ft. Worth, announcing that it’s on track to boot up service this summer.

AT&T, which tangles with Time Warner Cable and, to a lesser extent, with Charter Communications, in that area, didn’t pinpoint a launch date, but said the deployment will initially focus on the Dallas-area communities of Highland Park and University Park, offering “speed capability up to 1 Gbps.”

In Ft. Worth, the initial deployment will also be limited to 100 Mbps, with plans to offer up to 1-Gig by the end of 2014.

Google Talks Up Fiber Expansion Plans

Google is on track with its exploration to expand Google Fiber to as many as 34 cities as they complete “checklists” that could pave the way for future deployments, and the expectation is to announce the going-forward plan before the end of 2014, company SVP and CFO Patrick Pichette said.

AT&T Completes ‘GigaPower’ Sweep In NC

Officials for Carrboro have ratified an agreement that will clear the way for AT&T to rollout its fiber-based, 1-Gig capable U-verse With GigaPower to parts of the city.

The agreement stems from a North Carolina Next Generation Network (NCNGN) initiative comprised of six cities, four universities, and local businesses. AT&T has already received approval for GigaPower from Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Cary, Winston-Salem and Durham.

Comcast, TiVo Complete VOD Connection

Comcast confirmed that the company has completed the integration of its Xfinity On Demand service with certain retail-bought TiVo DVRs in all Comcast markets.

Completion of that integration has been expected. The integration enables TiVo devices purchased at retail by Comcast customers to access and stream the company's massive cideo-on-demand library, including its Streampix catalog.

Integration of Comcast’s VOD service is currently limited to TiVo Premiere hardware as well as its newer Roamio models. Those devices can also access Comcast’s live TV lineup, so long as they are paired with a CableCARD security module.

Study: Downstream Demands To Reach 165 Mbps By 2020

The demand on the broadband downstream will outstrip upload requirements by an 8:1 ratio by 2020, according to a new study commissioned by Cable Europe and NL Kabel.

The study, undertaken by the Technical University of Eindhoven and Dialogic, predicts that the average broadband user will demand downstream speeds of 165 Mbps, versus 20 Mbps in the upstream, by the end of the decade.

In 2013, the average sufficient provisioned speeds were about 15.3 Mbps down and about 1.6 Mbps upstream, the study noted. While back-up services will tax the upstream, video will need to carry the load in the downstream, the study noted.

Cable Europe said the industry’s current broadband technology roadmap puts MSOs in great position to support those demands. While state-of-the-art DOCSIS 3.0 technology can bond enough channels to support downstream bursts of more than 1 Gbps, the coming DOCSIS 3.1 platform is targeting capacities of up to 10 Gbps down by 2 Gbps upstream.

Raleigh Rallies for AT&T’s ‘GigaPower’

In the wake of recent deals with Winston-Salem and Durham, Raleigh is the latest North Carolina city to ratify an agreement that clears AT&T to deploy “U-verse with GigaPower,” the telecommunications company’s fiber-based, 1-Gbps-capable platform.

Like the earlier deals, the one with Raleigh comes way of AT&T’s discussions with the North Carolina Next Generation Network (NCNGN), an initiative comprised of six cities, four universities, and local business leaders, that’s aimed at stimulating deployment of next-gen broadband networks in the state.

AT&T said the plan, like those others in NC, “outlines potential fiber deployments…to parts of Raleigh,” though the telco has not yet defines which parts will get access to GigaPower.

Comcast: We Offer Top 100 Nielsen-Rated TV Shows On VOD

Comcast tooted its on-demand horn by announcing that its set-top video-on-demand platform now provides access to the top 100 cable and broadcast TV shows as measured by Nielsen.

Of that total, 64 of those Nielsen-ranked shows are also offered on Comcast’s authenticated TV Go app and Web site, said Comcast, which notably has been testing out an On Demand Credit Ratings model that could open the door to the increased offering of all episodes of a current TV season via the multiple service operator’s VOD platform.

Comcast, citing an online survey by Harris Poll commissioned by the MSO, said over half (55%) of binge-watchers would rather watch current season episodes over past season.

Comcast Ties ‘Instant’ VOD To World Cup Coverage

Comcast said it will offer all 64 2014 FIFA World Cup matches in Spanish through Instant On Demand, an emerging new service from the multiple service operator that lets customers restart TV shows already in progress.

Comcast said it’s the only operator enabling this feature with Univision’s Spanish coverage of the soccer-fest, noting that it’s the first time it’s using the new technology to make such a broad selection of time-shifted content available in a language other than English.

TWC Biz Unit Opens Up Wi-Fi

Time Warner Cable Business Class said it will offer its TWC WiFi Hotspot solution at no additional charge to commercial Internet customers across the multiple service operator’s footprint.

The feature, which includes a free Wi-fi point installed and managed by the operator and a self-service management portal that lets business owners configure the service, will enable those customers to offer their customers Wi-fi access on devices such as smart phones, tablets and laptops.

The configuration portal allows business customers to provide free access to customers and visitors or set daily time allotments for free access, ranging from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. Those same access points are also accessible to credentialed TWC broadband subscribers.

Comcast Business Rolls Private/Public Wi-Fi Gateways

Comcast Business said it has introduced a wireless gateway tailored for commercial environments that enables its customers to assign one private signal for its own day-to-day needs and a separate, public signal for customers or visitors.

The new device is entering view as Comcast Business develops a new “amenity” Wi-Fi offering for small business customers that could, for example, provide access to a separate, company-branded SSID with usage rules, security components and other terms of service set by the business owner. The device being rolled out now delivers a second "Xfinity WiFi" SSID.

Comcast said the new Business Wireless Gateway, developed by Cisco Systems, is now included in most of its business Internet plans.

Set-Top Box Market ‘Ripe For Further Consolidation’: Analyst

As the proposed marriages of Comcast and Time Warner and AT&T and DirecTV move forward, this latest wave of consolidation is poised to have an effect on the telecommunications supplier market, creating a fresh batch of winners and losers.

That, of course, will extend to the realm of video gateways and set-top boxes, with at least one analyst believing that this new round of mergers and acquisitions will cause a shift in a market that is largely made up of Pace, Arris (thanks to its acquisition of Motorola Home in 2013), Cisco Systems, Technicolor and EchoStar.

“This mature, yet fragmented market, in which the top five vendors account for about 37% of the revenues, is ripe for further consolidation,” Sam Rosen, practice director at ABI Research, predicted, pointing out that Arris, with its focus on cable and IPTV, stayed ahead of Pace, which, in his estimation, is “over-weighted on satellite.”

Most Cord-Cutters Are Happy They Did It: Study

Although the cord-cutting trend remains small, consumers who have wielded the video shears are apparently happy with their decision.

About 84% of cord-cutters are “at least somewhat happy with their decision,” while 37% said they’re so happy that they have no plans to ever return to a traditional pay-TV service, nScreenMedia found in a new study that surveyed 1,000 US adults with broadband access. Of that same group, 8% said they were “pretty unhappy” with their cord-cutting decision, and 9% said they hated the decision and wished they had service again.

The report -- View My Video: Consumer Digital Media Consumption -- also found that 17% of US broadband subscribers surveyed say they once took a pay-TV service but have since left their provider, while 10% say they have never subscribed to pay-TV (the so-called “cord-nevers”), and 74% said they currently take a pay-TV service.

How Big Can Netflix Get?

As Netflix prepares to invade six more countries in Europe, Bernstein Research analyst Carlos Kirjner attempted to size up the streaming giant’s global opportunities in a report.

The “opportunity is more limited than many realize,” the analyst wrote, noting that infrastructure and affordability issues will limit Netflix in markets such as Latin America. But the forecast still seems to present some pretty big numbers.

“Assuming generously that Netflix deploys aggressively in 17 new countries over the next 2-3 years, we believe that by 2023 the number of broadband households in these markets with fixed connections capable of supporting SVOD will reach 243 [million],” Kirjner suggested. He also sees Netflix reaching about 65 million international subs, or roughly a 50% share of the research firm’s estimated international SVOD market, but only “if it deploys service very aggressively across all 17 incremental countries in our assumptions.”

That’s a sizable jump from where Netflix is today internationally, with 10.9 million subs. While 14% of that total comes from the UK and Ireland, and 25% from Canada, Netflix, to Kirjner’s earlier point, has only been able to scratch together about 1.5 million customers in Latin America (1% of total households), despite having launched there more than two and a half years ago.

Comcast Has No Plans To Announce New Usage Policies

Clarifying comments made at the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit in New York that some misinterpreted as a firm commitment that Comcast would implement usage-based policies across the board in five years, Comcast executive VP and chief diversity officer David Cohen said that’s not the case.

“To be clear, we have no plans to announce a new data usage policy,” Cohen wrote, pointing out that Comcast suspended its previous 250-Gigabyte-per-month excessive use policy in 2012. “Since then, we’ve had no data caps for any of our customers anywhere in the country.”

Comcast, however, is testing usage-based policies that link soft monthly caps with overage fees in a handful of markets, including Atlanta. In those tests, customers are fitted with a monthly limit of 300 GB per month before they are faced with a $10 charge for each additional bucket of 50 GB. Comcast is also testing a “Flexible-Data Option” that’s tailored to light Internet users.

TiVo: Undecided On Comcast-TWC Deal

TiVo has not yet expressed a position on the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, but the company gave Comcast high marks for its support for the CableCARD.

Among operators, “Comcast has been particularly cooperative in making CableCARD work for TiVo,” TiVo noted in an ex parte describing a meeting on May 8 between Tom Rogers, TiVo’s CEO and president, and Matthew Zinn, TiVo’s SVP, general counsel secretary and chief privacy officer, and Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler, Chairman Wheeler’s special counsel for external affairs Gigi Sohn, and Maria Kirby, the chairman’s legal advisor.

The purpose of the meeting was to urge the Commission to grant TiVo’s July 2013 petition that seeks to reinstate the CableCARD rules that, TiVo claims, were “inadvertently vacated” by a DC court decision in which EchoStar won its challenge to FCC rules on the ability to record TV programming. During that same meeting, Rogers “noted that TiVo has not yet stated a position on the proposed Comcast-Time Warner merger,” according to the ex parte.

CableCARD Deployments Push Past 47M

The nation’s top nine incumbent cable operators have deployed more than 47 million operator-supplied set-tops with CableCARDs, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association told the Federal Communications Commission in a report filed on May 9.

That’s up from about 45 million when the NCTA filed its FCC report in late January. The number of CableCARDs deployed in leased devices continues to dwarf the number of modules used in devices with CableCARD slots sold at retail, including TiVo DVRs and a limited number of HDTV models.

In its latest report, the NCTA said the nine largest US MSOs have deployed over 616,000 CableCARDs for use in retail devices, just 10,000 more than the 606,000 reported in January.

The proposed bill or CableCARD provision in the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA) action would clear cable operators to deploy devices with integrated security, though the cable industry has pledged to continue supporting retail CableCARD devices.

Comcast Going Big With Wi-Fi

Using a mix of quasi-public hotspots deployed in outdoor locations, businesses and on customer-side DOCSIS gateways, Comcast said its Wi-Fi network will span 8 million hotspots by the end of 2014.

Comcast, which announced it had surpassed the 1 million mark in early April, said it will be boosting that number throughout the year by deploying hotspots in several markets, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Hartford, Houston, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.

Usage is also on the rise. Comcast said nearly 200 million out-of-home sessions have been initiated on its Wi-Fi network so far in 2014, a 700% increase versus the same period in 2013.

Cable Operators Prepared To Enter Gigabit Era

In a wide-ranging discussion at The Cable Show, a handful of the cable’s top tech and engineering executives said technologies such as DOCSIS 3.1 position them well to offer Gigabit-level broadband services as they increasingly find themselves matched up with competitors such as Google Fiber and AT&T and the potential expansion of the telecommunication’s fiber-based “U-verse with GigaPower” platform.

Time Warner Cable, which is pairing off with Google Fiber in Kansas City, is wary of that competition, but has found that the new entrant has had limited success and that some customers are coming back because they like TWC’s video service better.

Google Fiber “is certainly a worthy competitor, if they’re going to overbuild us,” but that they offer “nothing dramatically different” than what TWC can bring to bear, Mike LaJoie, TWC’s executive vice president and chief technology and network operations officer, said. “Their product works. Our product works just as well.”

Cable’s incremental economics are generally better than someone who is entering the market in a greenfield situation and looking to cherry pick, Tony Werner, Comcast’s EVP and CTO, said, noting that Comcast has raised its speeds 13 times in the last 12 years and has begun to make 100 Mbps (downstream) its main flagship product in the Northeast and will look to continue that trend.

Survey: Cord Cutters Clamor for TV/OTT Combos

If cable operators are eager to keep the budding cord-cutting trend in check, they’d be well served to offer an integrated, aggregated one-stop-shop that combines traditional TV services with fare delivered over-the-top, according to a new study from Amdocs.

About 76% of purported cord-cutters or consumers who had reduced the size of their video subscription -- sometimes referred to as “cord-shaving” -- said they would reconsider if they were offered a service that aggregates all video content, according to a survey of 750 consumers in North America commissioned by the customer care and billing specialist. Roughly 66% of all respondents said they would prefer this TV/OTT mix, while 40% said they would pay more for that kind of combination, Amdocs found.

Although cable operators have fared poorly in recent consumer studies, Amdocs said its survey found that multiple service operators (MSOs) outperformed OTT players in terms of customer service (92%), content (89%), and video quality (83%).

Can ‘Wi-Fi First’ Work?

Cable’s history with mobile services is full of stops, starts and outright disasters.

Now, many of the nation’s top cable operators have hitched their wagons to Wi-Fi, deploying hundreds of thousands of hotspots out on the HFC network coupled with roaming agreements, and an increasing use of in-home gateways as neighborhood hotspots.

Although Wi-Fi has traditionally been a fixed wireless technology, we’re already seeing evidence of next-gen Wi-Fi networks that can enable seamless handoffs between those hotspots, with Time Warner Cable taking the lead with its announced widespread deployment of Hotspot 2.0 technology.

As evidenced by Comcast’s TWC merger filing, Comcast has also been considering a so-called “Wi-Fi First” approach that would favor Wi-Fi over other connectivity options, namely cellular. But despite that important multiple service operator roaming partnership that remains limited to four card-carrying members (albeit large ones), Wi-Fi isn’t everywhere (yet), and there's still some doubt that it can offer mobility that is on par with cellular networks, so any notion of ubiquitous coverage still requires access to the cellular network. Cable doesn’t have one that it can call its own.

Comcast Bumps Broadband Speeds In Northeast

Timed with the Senate hearing on the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal, Comcast announced that it has boosted broadband speeds for two tiers in its Northeast division, and had deployed more than 1 million WiFi hotspots.

On the wireline side in the Northeast, a division made up of systems stretching across 14 states from Maine to Virginia that serve approximately one-third of Comcast's subscriber base, the cable operator bumped the max downstream capabilities of its “Xfinity Internet Blast” tier from 50 Mbps to 105 Mbps, and its “Xfinity Extreme” tier from 105 Mbps to 150 Mbps, without raising the price of those offerings.

On the WiFi side, Comcast said it has deployed more than 1 million hotspots, a number that factors in quasi-public hotspots (deployed in outdoor and in business locations) available to other MSOs that are part of the “CableWiFi” roaming consortium (Cox Communications, Bright House Networks, Cablevision Systems and Time Warner Cable) and home-side “neighborhood” wireless DOCSIS gateways that emit a separate “XfinityWiFi” signal that is accessible to Comcast cable modem subs.

Comcast said it marks the 13th time in the past years that the multiple services operator (MSO) had increased its broadband speeds. Comcast did not announce when it would expand those speed increases to other areas, but a spokesman said the plan is to do so on a market-to-market basis.

Top US Pay-TV Providers Lost 105,000 Subs In 2013

The saturated US pay TV industry achieved an unfortunate first when the top 13 multichannel video programming distributors, representing about 94% of the market, lost a collective 105,000 subscribers in 2013, Leichtman Research Group revealed in report.

While that’s not good news for the pay-TV industry as a whole, it’s not seriously damaging, either.

“2013 was the first year for multi-channel video industry losses, but the modest losses represent only about 0.1% of all subscribers,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, in a statement. “While the overall market remains fairly flat, further share-shifting has taken place. Cable providers now have a 52% share of the top multi-channel video subscribers in the US, compared to a 58% share three years ago.”

TiVo In Europe: 2.5 Million Served

TiVo has surpassed 2.5 million subscribers in Europe, thanks in large part to rollouts by Virgin Media in the UK, Com Hem in Sweden, and Ono in Spain.

Broken down further, TiVo said its now covers nearly half of all subscribers at Virgin Media, which is now part of Liberty Global, and a third of ONO subscribers. While that number provides another indicator that TiVo’s seeing solid momentum across the pond with tier one multiple service operators (MSOs), it also spotlights the challenges it continues to face in the US, where it’s primarily working with tier 2/3 cable operators.

TiVo ended its fiscal fourth quarter with 4.2 million total subscribers after adding a record 313,000 subs via pay-TV partnerships during the period. TiVo’s last reported grand total comprised 966,000 TiVo-owned subs and 3.2 million coming from partners. Given the subscriber numbers, that means fewer than 700,000 TiVo subs are coming way of partnerships with US-based cable operators such as Suddenlink Communications, Mediacom Communications, and Atlantic Broadband, among others. TiVo also sells service in Canada, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, and Taiwan.