Ting Ponders Gigabit Network Expansion to Perhaps a Half Dozen New Locations

Ting, perhaps better known as a mobile services supplier, also sells gigabit Internet access in two U.S. communities, Winchester, Md., a community of about 18,600, and Charlottesville, Va. , a community of about 45,000, and home to a major Virginia university.

The company now is looking at entering other markets. “We are probably looking at going forward with five or six markets,” said Elliot Noss, Ting CEO.

It would not be surprising to see Ting target communities unlikely to get Google Fiber.

In many ways, the new trend of independent Internet service providers building new gigabit Internet access networks reminds me of the earlier development of competitive local exchange carriers in the wake of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

You had an explosion of providers, including many independent firms, but also firms such as AT&T and MCI (Worldcom, at some point).

In the end, most of the CLECs faltered, including AT&T and Worldcom (MCI).

But something substantial did happen: cable TV providers emerged nationwide as the long term winners in the CLEC business. At the same time, a few legacy telcos, including notably Frontier Communications and Windstream, emerged as significant CLECs.

What eventually happens with the growing number of U.S. gigabit ISPs is yet to be settled. The CLEC market initially featured lots of players--with a few name brand contestants. It might not have been expected that cable TV companies would come to dominate the business.

Other surprises are possible with the gigabit ISP market as well.

Why LTE-Advanced Matters

LTE-Advanced matters for end users because it means downlink speeds can range as high as 300 Mbps, in principle. 

Sistema Syam TeleServices Goes "Wi-Fi First"

Sistema Shyam TeleServices, commonly referred to as MTS, is  an Indian mobile service provider with about one percent market share. When you have that share in a market, you have to do something different.

So Sistema now is wiring whole towns for Wi-Fi. It appears Sistema is doing with a de facto "Wi-Fi first" model for mobile Internet services.

Bhadra, in that regard, is the first city in India to be completely covered by Wi-Fi. Bhadra has some 40,000 residents.

Sistema also plans to build public Wi-Fi networks in about a dozen towns. The others are Navrangdesar, Asalsar, Nakrasar, Dhawa Forest, Baramsar, Hodsar, Partapur, Dundara, Posaliyan, Netra and Nalbari.

There is a business model. Sistema sells mobile service, but can rely on Wi-Fi to provide an enhanced Internet experience, without relying on licensed spectrum. And it appears that Wi-Fi access coss money, just as use of mobile data would.

Wi-Fi plans start with a Rs 25 starter pack offering 150 MB over a three-day period and going all the way to a Rs 749 monthly pack, offering 10 GB of data.

source: Telecom Lead

How Many Linear Video Subs Did Dish Network Lose in Recent Quarter?

Parsing numbers sometimes is a challenge when looking at subscriber gains and losses in the consumer telecom business.

An illustration: how many subscribers did Dish Network gain or lose in its second quarter of 2015? And did HBO lose linear video subs when it launched HBO Now, the stand-alone streaming service?

Dish Network reported losing 81,000 video subs in the quarter, about double the loss of 44,000 subs in the same period of 2014.

But its actual loss of satellite TV customers may have been more like 151,000, according to MoffettNathanson.

The reason is that Dish Network included gains from the over the top Sling TV service in its basic subscriber count.

Dish Network gained 70,000 Sling accounts in the quarter.

When we launched Sling TV, Dish Network expected to get subscribers from three categories, cord-nevers (people who never have bought any subscription video product), cord-cutters (former linear video subscribers) and supplementers who buy linear video and also Sling TV.

“The vast, vast majority of the subscribersthat we take on do not currently have Pay-TV at the time they subscribe to Sling TV,” said Roger Lynch, Sling TV CEO.

That suggests most of the Sling TV net adds are not coming from the ranks of linear video subscribers. But the combined figures also obscure the extent of Dish Network linear video subscriber losses.

HBO says less than one percent of HBO NOW subscribers are former HBO linear subscribers who dropped the linear service to subscribe to HBO Now.

As with Dish Network's Sling TV service, it appears that new subscribers to the over the top subscribers are not cord cutters. 

They are, as Dish Network hoped would be the case,  “cord nevers,” those who never have purchased cable TV.

A broader shift from linear to streaming still is coming. But, at the moment, the linear providers seem to be succeeding at attracting brand new consumers to their OTT services. 

Linear to OTT Video Inflection Point Grows Nearer

By some reports and studies, ESPN lost 3.2 million customers in less than a year, and the company recently said ESPN could be sold direct to consumers in the future, all signs that a fundamental change in the linear TV subscription business is closer.

Disney says such reports are wrong, though acknowledging some slippage. That is intended to reassure investors, and others, that the ESPN business model remains intact.

Big and fundamental changes in markets rocked by changing technology tend to happen rather slowly at first, then reach an inflection point where everything changes rather quickly.

That is one reason why some believe Netflix will not be challenged, once the inflection point is reached. “Netflix is the most powerful content aggregator in the world today,” said Charlie Ergen, Dish Network CEO. “And there's nobody that's even close.”

That illustrates one element of inflection points. Contestants sometimes think “we have time” to jump in one the inflection point clearly has been reached. The problem is, by that point it is too late. The leaders will zoom and dominate the new market; late entrants will struggle and generally fail.

Just how close we are to the inflection point still is not clear, but Netflix continued growth, subscriber losses in the linear business and what is happening to the fabled ESPN franchise are indicators the inflection point is coming closer.

To be sure, in its third quarter of 2015 report, ESPN owner Disney reported stronger revenue and earnings per share, net income and cash flow.

In fact, the number of subscribers for ESPN overall actually grew, but apparently not at the flagship ESPN network itself.

“ESPN has experienced some modest sub losses, although those have been less than reported by one of the prominent research firms and the vast majority of them, 80 percent, were due to decreases in multichannel households with only a small percentage due to skinny packages,” said Bob Iger, Disney CEO.

It is true that 83 percent of all U.S. households watched ESPN in the first quarter. But that’s the thing about inflection points. Once reached, everything changes, fast. In other words, 80 can become 20 in a rather quick period of time, compared to all the slow, grinding shifts that happened before the inflection point.

New IP Networks Must Offer Equivalent of Legacy Special Access and Rates, FCC Says

Former incumbent telcos have regulatory burdens not faced by other contestants in their markets. One example: The Federal Communications Commission has imposed new rules on former incumbents that want to replace their legacy networks with new IP networks.

Specifically, the FCC said former incumbents are free to replace legacy copper networks with fiber-based  IP networks, so long as no current service is discontinued, reduced, or impaired.

At least on an interim basis, the Commission also voted to require the offering of replacement services to competitive providers (wholesale customers) at rates, terms and conditions that are reasonably comparable to those of the legacy services.

The FCC is looking at special access rules more generally in a current proceeding, and could make such rules permanent, or establish other rules offering former incumbent carriers more flexibility.

The special access rules matter for wholesale customers as their business models often are built on special access rates that are perceived as advantageous by the buyers. Infrastructure providers, of course, would prefer the freedom to create new tariffs for IP-based fiber network services, while retiring the legacy networks and services.

Incumbent carriers still need approval from the FCC before shutting off copper networks in cases where they intend to reduce or discontinue service.

One new rule requires providers to directly notify retail customers—including consumers and businesses—of plans to retire copper networks at least three months in advance," the FCC said.
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H Sama Nwana, Executive Director, Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, United Kingdom; Jeffrey Yan, Director, Technology Policy, Microsoft Corporation, Singapore; Rajan Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India, India; Peter Stanforth, CTO and Co-founder, Spectrum Bridge, Inc., USA; and Apurva Mody, Chairman, WhiteSpace Alliance, USA, will speak about TV white spaces at the Spectrum Futures conference, Sept. 10 and 11, 2015, in Singapore.

Other confirmed speakers will discuss spectrum sharing between LTE operators, spectrum sharing between Wi-Fi and LTE, new access platforms and the critical role spectrum plays for coming 5G networks. At the same time, the intimate relationship between applications (Internet of Things), core networks (SDN. NFV, cloud computing, fog computing) and all access networks will be examined. In the coming next generation network, clearly separating spectrum and mobile networks from Wi-Fi and fixed network access, core networks and cloud infrastructure, will be nearly impossible.

FCC Clarifies TV White Spaces Rules, Keeps 30-MHz Spectrum Reserve for 600-MHz Auction

The Federal Communications Commission has modified its existing Part 15 rules related to use of license-exempt spectrum, allowing TV white spaces devices (fixed and portable), as well as wireless microphones, to use channels in the 600 MHz and television broadcast bands.

Separately, the Commission also declined to increase the “spectrum reserve” beyond 30 MHz for the upcoming auction.

The Commission’s Part 15 rules permit devices to operate on unused TV channels, generally known as “TV white space” spectrum.

Following the upcoming 600-MHz incentive auction, there may be fewer white space frequencies in the television band for use by such devices.

The new rules--largely technical--allow for more robust unlicensed use and promote spectral efficiency in the 600 MHz band.

The rules allow use of the duplex gap and guard bands, and channel 37, on a shared non-interference basis with medical telemetry and radio astronomy.  

The rules permit sharing of spectrum between white space devices and unlicensed microphones in the 600 MHz band, and expand the location and frequency information in the white space databases and update database procedures.

The Commission also set new transition periods for the certification, manufacturing and marketing of white space devices and wireless microphones that comply with new rules.

The Federal Communications Commission reaffirmed its decision to set aside a spectrum reserve of up to 30 megahertz of spectrum in next year’s 600-MHz incentive auction, though some including T-Mobile US had requested a larger set-aside.

Non-nationwide providers as well as nationwide providers who currently hold less than one-third of available high-quality low-band spectrum in a given license area will be eligible to bid for the reserve spectrum.

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H Sama Nwana, Executive Director, Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, United Kingdom; Jeffrey Yan, Director, Technology Policy, Microsoft Corporation, Singapore; Rajan Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India, India; Peter Stanforth, CTO and Co-founder, Spectrum Bridge, Inc., USA; and Apurva Mody, Chairman, WhiteSpace Alliance, USA, will speak about TV white spaces at the Spectrum Futures conference, Sept. 10 and 11, 2015, in Singapore.

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