Matt Daneman

Expect this year to bring finalization of 10G standards and the first field tests by cable ISPs of 10G network technology, industry executives said in recent interviews. Modem companies are awaiting those DOCSIS 4.0 standards and those field trials so they know what to build. CableLabs Chief Research and Development Officer Mariam Sorond said the DOCSIS 4.0 specs being created by a consortium of CableLabs members with working groups and vendors should be finalized early this year. It's a process similar to how DOCSIS 3.1 was hammered out.

Video remains a valuable service, but Comcast is "not chasing this segment of the market" and expects increased video subscriber losses this year due to rate hikes and ongoing cord cutting, Chief Financial Officer Michael Cavanagh said on the company's Q4 call Thursday. The company ended 2019 with 20.29 million residential video customers, down 671,000 year over year. It ended the year with 26.4 million residential broadband customers, up 1.3 million, 9.9 million residential voice customers, down 220,000, and with 2 million wireless lines, up 816,000. Cavanaugh anticipates wireless subscriber growth rates to continue this year. CEO Brian Roberts said it was the best year for broadband net additions in 12 years. He said the company ran out of its Flex set-top boxes for its Flex streaming platform (see 1903210038) in its first month. Comcast said revenue was $28.4 billion, flat on a pro forma basis. Comcast bought Sky in Q4 2018.

Don't expect big, transformative mergers and acquisitions in entertainment and media this year, experts said in recent interviews. Companies are focused on direct-to-consumer offerings and on integrating and rationalizing their properties. Big takeover targets already "are gobbled up," said wireline and wireless lawyer Laura Phillips of Drinker Biddle. Entertainment industry lawyer Paul Bernstein of Venable said there's interest in opportunistic deals like buying content libraries, and 2020 and 2021 will be a "war of attrition" in streaming service competition after having bulked up content holdings. "Now, people are going to start firing their rockets," with casualties being money burned through, he said. Echoed TVRev analyst Alan Wolk, "Everybody is kind of waiting to see how 'flixopocalypse' plays out." The "next decade will be the stage for a clash of titans," LionTree CEO Aryeh Bourkoff wrote investors. The scale of incumbents will limit some startups and the number of potential buyers, meaning more M&A among smaller or mid-sized companies, he predicted. New Street Research's Blair Levin noted questions remain if Comcast might buy T-Mobile regardless of whether T-Mobile/Sprint happens. There's an increased bipartisan sense antitrust enforcement hasn't been sufficiently aggressive, creating urgency to complete deals before DOJ gets more active, perhaps under a Democratic administration, Levin said. A question is whether anyone -- particularly a tech company like Apple or Google or Facebook -- might want to buy Netflix, Levin said: The current antitrust focus on Facebook and Google might make such a deal difficult, though. Vernable's Bernstein said it's unlikely Apple will buy Netflix since Apple seems to be dipping its toe into streaming video as an ancillary service. TVRev's Wolk said major streaming service M&A and consolidation is at least three to five years off. He said there's an outside chance ViacomCBS might buy Discovery for increased size to compete with Disney or AT&T. There could be more activity in partnering and bundling media services, such as offering another company's streaming music service alongside a streaming video product.

If Huawei equipment is enough of a threat to warrant barring USF funds to networks using it, the FCC should look further into having that hardware removed even from networks where carriers aren't getting USF funds, Commissioner Brendan Carr told the Practising Law Institute. Legal issues could arise with that approach, but the topic should at least "be on the table," he said Tuesday. He said the FCC is working "with other three-letter agencies" on such issues. Huawei didn't comment. The draft NPRM on segmenting the 5.9 GHz band for use by unlicensed devices and intelligent transportation systems shows a shift from the agency's original approach that stems from discussions with the Transportation Department, said Matthew Berry, chief of staff to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. The agency “meaningfully” changed its approach, Berry said. The commission will “certainly want to have an order next year,” Berry said. Commissioners vote Thursday on the item to free up some of the band for Wi-Fi.

The FCC is "solidly on track" for a 2020 C-band auction, said Commissioner Brendan Carr in an interview with The Communicators, posted online Friday and to have aired on C-SPAN over the weekend. Noting concerns that such an auction might be three or more years out, he said "that's not going to happen" due to the auction's being such an agency priority. “A lot of regulators right now are struggling with a lack of vision” on 5G, and he said it will be more consequential than the transition from analog to digital. He said that lack of vision is reflected in opposition to T-Mobile buying Sprint. Support of deals like it shows "you understand where technology is going," he said: "A lot of consumers aren't happy with the status quo," and want to see new competition. He has "significant concerns" about China Unicom and Chinese Telecom being licensed to operate in the U.S., and favors an investigation of whether existing Communications Act Section 214 licenses should be pulled. He said there's unanimity among U.S. allies on the issue. Carr doesn’t think there's a need for a new agency like the FCC to regulate just edge providers; instead, antitrust authorities need to have "forward-looking vision" to see where the tech industry is going.

Whether Dish Network can keep going its Q3 video subscriber-loss rebound remains to be seen. CEO Erik Carlson called the 66,000 decline in direct broadcast satellite subscribers "notable progress." Wall Street was less bullish but saw Dish as increasingly confident in its wireless strategy.

Comcast's Peacock streaming service launching in April won't try to replicate Netflix and other subscription VOD services, but instead will focus on advertising support and a mix of nonexclusive content, originals and acquired exclusives like The Office, NBCUniversal CEO Stephen Burke said Thursday on a Q3 call. He said Universal will continue to sell its motion pictures to premium networks like HBO. Q3 revenue was $26.8 billion, flat year over year on pro forma basis, with Comcast having added Sky in Q4 2018. Comcast ended the quarter with 26 million residential broadband subscribers, up 1.2 million; 20.4 million residential video customers, down 560,000; and 9.95 million residential voice customers, down 220,000. Mobile subscribers numbered 1.8 million, up 800,000. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said monthly data usage of its broadband subscribers has more than doubled over the past three years. He said NBC topped prime time ratings for adults ages 18 to 49 for the sixth consecutive 52-week season. He said its NBCUniversal and Sky are starting work on joint production of content and are creating a global news channel. Asked about Comcast interest in the citizens band radio service auction or C-band or millimeter-wave spectrum for its mobile business, Roberts said it "will always be opportunistic" when looking at means of offloading wireless traffic from its Verizon mobile virtual network operator to its own network. Asked when cord-cutting trends might level off, analysts were told the operator's focus is on video profitability and that might mean customers receiving lower-end or promotional video packages could be moved to broadband-only packages instead.

The accelerating rate of cord cutting as vMVPD uptake stumbled shows those over-the-top services aren't a big driver of the trend, said analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson in an interview on C-SPAN's The Communicators set to run this weekend. He said "the new normal" for traditional pay TV is subscriber declines of 5 percent or so per year. He said there's an ongoing bifurcation between sports watchers and entertainment viewers, with the latter leaving cable and direct broadcast satellite as sports programming's fixed costs keep driving up pay-TV subscription costs. Moffett said the state attorneys general challenge of T-Mobile/Sprint has "reasonably good odds" of derailing the deal since the takeover isn't meaningfully different from the first iteration of the transaction that DOJ rejected. He said it's unlikely any tech giants will be broken up under the current antitrust scrutiny because antitrust laws aren't well suited for that and Congress isn't likely to undertake an overhaul soon. He said net neutrality is a hot-button issue largely because the debate was cast in terms of "bad guy" ISPs and "good guy" companies like Netflix. But net neutrality no longer energizes the base and thus is absent from discussion by the Democratic presidential candidates. Moffett said the U.S. is "still a few years out" from having wide blocks of midband spectrum needed to enable the transformational services 5G promises, so in the near term, it will rely on narrow midband blocks. On vMVPDs, they're struggling because they have "fallen into the same trap" as traditional MVPDs by having to offer increasingly fat and expensive programming bundles, the analyst said. Eventually, live TV will be the home only of sports and news, with all other content moving to on-demand, he said. Cable system operators don't necessarily care about sustaining the bundle and can focus on their broadband offerings, but DBS operators "are in a much tougher position," he said, programmers even more so.

Addressing better emergency alert origination and possible security risks 5G networks might inherit from previous communications networks, the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council will issue reports next year and into early 2021, said CSRIC working group chairmen Tuesday. The 2018 false emergency alert in Hawaii (see 1801160054) shows there's no good emergency alert system differentiation between tests and actual alerts, said Craig Fugate, former Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator. Broadcasters voluntarily carry alerts, and without a strong working relationship between them and originators, there's a risk of fatigue, especially for amber and silver alerts, he said. Fugate said focus also is needed on cybersecurity and spoofing, to be sure alert originators are authenticated. He said the working group plans to produce recommendations by September 2020. Broadcasters increasingly use social media to communicate when they lose power to transmitters, newsrooms or towers due to disasters or major weather events, and social media will be a focus of reports on improving broadcast resiliency, said Florida Association of Broadcasters President Pat Roberts. It will look at updated best practices for prepping for natural disasters, he said. Its draft is due in January and final report in March, he said. Two working groups are looking at 5G security. Nsight Chief Technical Officer Lee Thibaudeau said network architectures sometimes incorporate security risks from other networks, and in 5G's case that could lead to confidentiality and network availability issues. He said the group looking at 5G vulnerabilities possibly carried forward from other wireless networks expects to have a report in June on those risks, followed by December 2020 recommendations on updates to 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards. Qualcomm Director-Engineering Farrokh Khatibi said his group's related reports on risks potentially introduced by 3GPP standards will come in September 2020, and on ways of mitigating those in March 2021. The 911 move from legacy to IP networks carries potential security risks, especially when those networks are blended, said Mary Boyd, West Safety Services vice president-government and regulatory affairs. A working group report identifying the security risks in legacy, transition and next-generation 911 networks is expected in June, she said, followed by a December report measuring the risk magnitude and remediation costs. Verisign Chief Security Officer Danny McPherson said a report on session initiation protocol security vulnerabilities that could affect communication service provision is expected by March 2021.

Eight Democratic senators asked the FCC to issue a public notice and seek comment on T-Mobile buying Sprint as laid out in the DOJ consent decree (see 1907260071), though the FCC doesn't seem so inclined. Louisiana, meanwhile, joined states supporting the deal. In a letter Friday to Chairman Ajit Pai, the senators said they have significant competition concerns about the deal and the consent decree terms "may prove insufficient to protect competition, innovation, and the public interest." They noted the decree then had Dish Network asking the FCC for construction deadline extensions. They said the FCC's merger review process wasn't transparent, with Pai voicing support for the deal weeks before knowing of the consent decree terms. The senators said Dish's planned 5G deployment as part of its Boost acquisition is a major part of T-Mobile/Sprint that the public hasn't had a chance to address. Presidential candidates Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York signed, along with fellow Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Tom Udall of New Mexico and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. The FCC doesn't seem so inclined. It emailed us that T-Mobile/Sprint "has been pending in front of the Commission for more than a year, and there have been multiple public comment cycles. Moreover, the commitments offered by T-Mobile and Sprint to the Commission have been public since May, and many parties have submitted comments about them. The time has come for Commissioners to vote and for this proceeding to be brought to a close.” Announcing Louisiana's support for the deal, state Attorney General Jeff Landry noted T-Mobile's aims of providing coverage to 90 percent of rural America and offering residential broadband to more than 5.5 million rural Americans. “Louisiana citizens living in rural communities deserve meaningful competition and reliable service,” he said. Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota backed the consent decree, while about a dozen states are suing to block T-Mobile/Sprint.