14% Telco IPTV Share by 2013

Telco IPTV will grow from three percent overall share of the multi-channel TV business to 14 perent share in 2013 at the expense of cable TV, which will decline from 76 percent penetration to 61 percent between 2008 and 2013, say researchers at Pyramid Research. 

If that seems unremarkable, consider that virtually all of that gain will come from just two telcos, AT&T and Verizon. There are, of course, many small and independent telcos offering IPTV services. But their subscriber gains will be a small percentage of overall U.S. IPTV subscriber counts. 

“Pyramid Research estimates that IPTV will drive a global total of nine million net subscriber additions in 2008, 40 percent of which will come from markets in the Asia-Pacific region," says  Özgür Aytar, Pyramid Research senior research manager.

18 Mbps for New U-verse Access Service

AT&T has launched a new U-verse offer, boosting downstream speeds up to 18 Mbps. The new service can be purchased as part of an AT&T U-verse TV bundle. The new service replaces AT&T's 10 Mbps offer, and costs $65 a month as part of a TV bundle. The new service includes free Wi-Fi hot spot access. 

Professional installation is included for new U-verse TV customers, and existing U-verse Internet customers can upgrade their package at any time without additional installation costs or appointments, AT&T says. 

Time Warner Cable Lowers Forecast

Cable is generally considered to be recession-proof, but Time Warner Cable President and CEO Glenn Britt says its "naïve" to think that way now, and Time Warner Cable is reducing its 2008 earnings outlook. Still, the pattern of loss suggests nothing out of the ordinary. For the most part, it is service upgrades that are slowing, with a single exception.

"As we moved into the fourth quarter, we saw a significant slowdown in subscriber growth compared to last year, particularly for our video and voice services," Britt notes. The operator signed on 124,000 new digital video subs, just under the 128,000 it added a year ago. 

Time Warner Cable also warned that it has seen orders for premium video services, including pay-per-view, video on demand, and digital video recorders slow down. The MSO added 150,000 DVR subs in the period, off from a year-ago gain of 211,000. One would expect to see that, in a downturn. 

On the voice front, the MSO signed on 207,000 subs, 25 percent less than a year ago and about 15 percent lower than analyst expectations. It isn't clear whether this reflects economic conditions or a natural slowing of voice segment growth for an operator with fairly high voice penetration already. 

The MSO lost 31,000 basic video subs, better than the 83,000 basics it lost in the year-ago quarter, ending the quarter with 13.3 million total. Most of the video losses, though, come from the "antenna basic" tier, not the mainstay of a cable operator's video revenue. About 70 percent of the video subscription losses came from the antenna basic package, which runs about $13 per month. 

So far, video behavior is as one would predict for a downturn: less demand for premium services, but stability for basic subscriptions. The sharp increase in antenna basic disconnects, though, is noteworthy. 

Cable voice services are new enough that there isn't a baseline for behavior. Still, slower net addtions would not be unexpected. Had Time Warner reported negative voice growth, that would have been more worrisome. 

Comcast Corp also has reported a sharp fall in basic video subscribers. Comcast's basic video subscribers fell by 147,000 to 24.4 million in the third quarter, a sharper decline than the year-ago period's 56,000 drop. 

CEO Brian Roberts says the issue is not churn or disconnects but a slowing rate of new additions, caused by the weak economy, competition with phone companies and hurricane impact, which reduced new home construction as well as usability of existing housing. 

The hurricane impact accounted for 15,000 of the basic video losses in the quarter.

U.K. Broadband Growth Slips 20%

For those of you looking for signs of how a possibly-significant recession will affect sales of consumer broadband, the United Kingdom might offer a glimpse of what can happen.

The growth rate for U.K. broadband access subscriptions fell 20 percent in the third quarter, say analysts at Point Topic. To keep pace with net additions earlier in the year, the United Kingdom needed to add 390,000 broadband lines in the third quarter. Point Topic estimates that the actual number was only 313,000.

Local loop unbundling is the main driver of continuing growth in broadband, and represented gross 323,000 lines added in the quarter. Point Topic estimates that Virgin Media may have added another 60,000 cable modem customers while BT and smaller players actually lost about 70,000 net subscribers.

As a result, Point Topic is now forecasting that only 620,000 broadband lines will be added in the second half of 2008. The forecast for 2009 as a whole is 1.1 million, 200,000 down on the earlier forecast. By the end of 2009 there should be about 18.4 million broadband lines in Britain, 300,000 short of what was expected six months ago.

T-Mobile Wants to Jump From HSPA Straight to LTE

Reflecting the sort of thinking that parallels discussions of whether to upgrade from 10-Gbps Ethernet to 40-Gbps, or simply go straight to 100-Gbps, T-Mobile International AG indicates it now wants to upgrade directly from high-speed packet access (HSPA) to the 4G Long-Term Evolution standard.

Basically, T-Mobile says it will do what it can to wring all the efficiency it can out of HSPA and then move directly to LTE, rather than migrate in two stages to LTE, as some other mobile carriers propose to do.

The decision basically means T-Mobile will attempt to move directly from peak downlink speeds of 14.4 Mbps to LTE supporting 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps.

New Federalized EC Telecom Rules?

The European Union might on Nov. 5, 2008 get a new proposal from European Commission Telecom Commissioner Viviane Reding for creation of a pan-European telecom regulatory body that would have some measure of control over telecom rules in the EU's 27 member states, each of which is currently regulated by its own national organizations.

Those plans would create a single European regulator, along the lines of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The new body would not have the right to dictate regulation, but could block plans proposed by any member nation. In essence, the proposal aims to further the aim of creating a unified telecoms market thoroughout the EU, much as U.S. competitors have in the past preferred a single federal set of rules to 50 possibly-different sets of rules set by States.

Clearwire-Sprint, Verizon-Alltel Deals Approved

The Federal Communications Commission has approved the merger of Sprint-Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp. WiMAX assets.  The Commission also approved the Verizon Wireless merger with Alltel, on the same day it approved the unlicensed use of TV "white spaces" for broadband access and services. 

The decisions collectively mean even more competition in the broadband access space, especially in rural areas, as "white spaces"--spectrum typically used to support terrestrial broadcast television--are ideal for long-distance transmission and penetration of solid objects such as walls.  

Some work still needs to be done on the network design front, as lower-power broadband devices used by consumers and businesses will not be able to transmit as far as a TV transmitter can. That suggests network designs typically used by "cellular" operators will be needed. 

So use of the spectrum will be "free." The networks will not be.