Competition/Antitrust

Altice USA isn’t afraid to march to the beat of its own drum and actually thinks it’s going about network upgrades the smart way by jumping straight to fiber rather than following other cable incumbents in pursuing DOCSIS 4.0. The operator recently laid out a plan to overbuild its hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network to blanket 6.5 million locations with fiber by 2025.

The US Census Bureau released new data showing how the population changed on a county-by-county basis between July 2020 and July 2021,  and information analysts say it offers interesting insights for cable companies, fiber players and policymakers alike. The Bureau's report shows Los Angeles (CA) and New York (NY) counties lost the greatest number of residents to migration, while Maricopa County (AZ), Riverside County (CA) and Collin County (TX) gained the most.

For the last twenty years, the industry has talked about broadband in cities as a duopoly, meaning there was competition between cable and telecom companies – competition between cable modem broadband and DSL broadband. Whether coordinated by backroom deals or by listening to smart advisors, both industries have given up trying to compete on price. By the time cable modem speeds hit 30 Mbps speeds, the market competition was over, and cable clearly won the price war.

Although fixed wireless is getting a lot of attention these days, the technology is not in Frontier’s plans “in a material way,” said Frontier Chief Network Officer Veronica Bloodworth, adding “we’re a fiber-first company.” Bloodworth is part of a new Frontier management team put in place as the company emerged from bankruptcy.

Verizon’s deployment of mid-band spectrum for 5G is delivering boosts to download speeds for users connected to C-band, according to new analysis from Opensignal –  getting the carrier closer as it works to catch up to speed leader T-Mobile. Verizon and AT&T both started activating C-band spectrum in the 3.7 GHz range on January 19.

There’s a lot of money flowing to 5G network buildouts right now as US wireless operators race to expand their 5G coverage. In fact, it’s likely that 2022 to be the peak year for 5G spending by US wireless operators. Stefan Pongratz, vice president at Dell’Oro Group, said that the company expects US wireless capital expenditures to grow at a double-digit rate in 2022 and then taper off in 2023 and 2024. One reason behind this is that both AT&T and Verizon are ramping up their mid-band 5G deployments in the C-band and the 3.45 GHz spectrum bands.

There has always been a valuation gap between public cable and private communication operators that offer internet, cable and phone services. In this report, we attempt to quantify the valuation gap and the factors driving it, and why it’s important to rural operators. We also weigh in on where we think valuations are headed. Key findings include:

A Google affiliate wants to offer its fiber broadband service in Colorado Springs (CO) in 2023 if the company can reach an agreement with Colorado Springs Utilities to lease its planned network. Google Fiber, owned by Google parent Alphabet, would become the second tenant on Utilities' planned 2,000-mile network, which is expected to get underway in summer 2022 and be available to its first residential customers early 2023.

President Biden's Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson hinted she may be open to a more expansive reading of antitrust laws during her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 23.