Gigabit to Every Customer, Everywhere, is AT&T's Goal

There are continuing signs that concern about the pace of U.S. internet access upgrades and investment are likely unfounded. Nor is the pace of mobile bandwidth expansion slowing, either.

Comcast has pledged to upgrade its whole network to gigabit access, as have other bigger cable operators other than Charter Communications.

Verizon recently announced symmetrical gigabit service for eight million FiOS passings, while AT&T continues to add more metro areas for its own gigabit services.

Google Fiber, meanwhile, seems to be preparing for a big new test of its fixed wireless strategy.

If fixed wireless assaults mount, and as fiber-based gigabit offerings expand, the pace of investment pace of investment is going to remain high, for competitive reasons.

Mobile bandwidth also has grown substantially, with T-Mobile US and Dish Network gains in the 600-MHz auction, new activity to add millimeter wave spectrum on the part of AT&T and Verizon, and more coming as shared spectrum in the 3.5-GHz band becomes available, and the Federal Communications Commission moving to release huge amounts of new millimeter wave spectrum as well.

“What the return of unlimited really highlights, and that is the industry's position in terms of network capacity, because if the industry is going to stay with unlimited, we're prepared and can probably sustain it better than anyone else because of our spectrum position,” said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson.

“We now have more than 60 megahertz of fallow spectrum that we're ready to light up, and we'll be deploying all the bands simultaneously starting this fall,” said Stephenson. “Our goal is to put one gig speeds in our customers' hands no matter where they are on our network.”

Ironically, prospects for better market share gains in fixed network internet access might be more important, not less important, for the likes of Verizon and AT&T, now feeling the pressure of mobile segment losses.

“Broadband had a very strong quarter, with 115,000 subscribers added,” said AT&T CFO John Stephens. Also, “our fiber deployment is making inroads.”

That is important for a few reasons. Account gains might be easier to get in the fixed realm than the mobile segment of the business. Also, to the extent that fixed internet access is the foundation service in the consumer fixed networks business, more scale, and more market share, helps.

Lots of bandwidth also helps support video operations, the new lead application on the fixed and mobile networks.

AT&T fiber is now in 52 metro areas and marketed to 4.6 million customer locations, Stephens said. “ We expect to add two million fiber locations this year, to reach six million by the end of the year, and to meet our 12.5 million merger commitment goal by 2019.”

AT&T executives now speak of a “new world, where capacity, networks, and entertainment intersect.”

“A year from now, we may look back on the return to unlimited plans as the moment when the battle for network reach and capacity began,” said AT&T CFO John Stephens.

If Using Roads is Free, Then Your Business has to Use Roads, Not "Be the Road"

Mobile video has been a problem for operators because competitive pressure prevents them from usage pricing in a way that would realize much incremental revenue from the shift, Tom Nolle, Cimi Corp. principal, notes.  “They’re stuck with another reason for revenue per bit  to decline, sinking into the realm of dumb, cheap, plumbing,” Nolle says.

“And, of course, if the road is becoming free, then you have to make money on what’s traveling the road, which is video content,” Nolle adds. That is a fundamental insight into present and future business models for many access providers who once earned most of their revenue from voice or messaging.

Across the full range of applications and services, “telcos” (including even cable TV companies, which are a segment of the telecom industry using a different access platform), the value and revenue from traditional apps has fallen. That is starting to be true even for the “newer” legacy services, such as internet access or entertainment video.

There are clear analogies in the internet era, when virtually any app or service can be created and delivered over any public IP network, with no participation by the access provider. With the rise of substitute products, that often means severely disrupted legacy revenue streams.

Voice services on U.S. fixed networks pose a huge stranded asset problem, as fewer than half of locations reached actually generate revenue.

Also, voice is a severely-limited revenue generator. A recent survey of mobile industry executives found that half now view voice as a low value service useful mostly in a multi-product bundle.

source: CDC

The key strategic insight is that since access has become a function that is largely commoditized, with value having shifted higher in the stack, or elsewhere in the ecosystem, at least some service providers must recreate application roles with higher value, higher profit margins and higher revenue, as application or service providers.

In other words, “you have to own at least some of the content and apps that flow across your access network.”

Verizon "Goes Gig" for 8 Million Locations

Verizon has launched “Fios Gigabit Connection,” said to be “the nation’s largest deployment of gigabit Internet connection service.” to eight million U.S. homes. Comcast has pledged to upgrade all of its customers on all its networks, to gigabit levels of service in the near future, but Verizon is the only operator that now has done so across its entire footprint of fiber-to-home connections, and has done so using a symmetrical bandwidth approach.

AT&T has been adding gigabit access across its footprint of metro areas, but on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.

Fios Gigabit Connection provides downloads as fast as 940 Mbps and uploads as fast as 880 Mbps.

Priced at $69.99 a month standalone and starting at $79.99 a month for a triple play bundle when ordered online, Fios Gigabit Connection for the first time in some years allows Verizon to argue that “no cable provider comes close to offering the speeds and power of Fios Gigabit connection on this kind of scale.” In addition to scale, Verizon is offering symmetrical bandwidth, something Comcast will not be able to do.

The upgrade is important as it puts FiOS in the lead, as far as fixed network internet access provided at scale, a lead Verizon had lost as cable operators such as Comcast pushed speeds to match Verizon’s FiOS service, in the downstream direction.

Verizon had upgraded speeds 750 Mbps symmetrical service for about seven million homes in early 2017.  Standalone internet access at such speeds were priced at $150 a month.

The gigabit service is priced at $70 a month on a standalone basis, showing continued improvement not only in speed but also in price, for a leading U.S. internet service provider.

The larger point is that, despite some skepticism, U.S internet access speeds are not somehow lagging world averages, though that might once have been the case. Rather, speeds are growing--at least for some major suppliers-- at rates nearly what one would expect if Moore’s Law applied.

source: Technology Futures

Threat and Reality of Common Carrier Regulation Reduced U.S. telecom investment $150 Billion to $200 Billion

Between 2011 and 2015 (the last year data are available), the threat of reclassification reduced telecommunications investment by about 20 percent to 30 percent, or about $30 to $40 billion annually, according to George Ford, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies chief economist.

In other words, over the interval 2011 to 2015, another $150-$200 billion in additional investment would have been made “but for” Title II reclassification, he argues.

Actual investment averaged $126 billion annually. But the average investment over the five-year window would have been about $160 billion (or more) annually, in the absence of concern over the rules, Ford argues.

“Notably, I find no decline in investment following the release of the FCC’s “Four Principles” to promote an Open Internet in 2005, suggesting it is reclassification—and not neutrality principles—that is reducing investment,” says Ford.

In other words, rules that ensure that consumers have access to all lawful apps, without blocking or hinderance, did not seem to reduce investment. Common carrier regulation did, Ford argues.

Internet of Things Tops Mobile Executive LIst of "Most Important" Apps for 2017

With the caveat that we might all turn out to be very wrong, a survey of executives conducted by GSMA suggests that internet of things is, far and away, the area of greatest mobile operator interest for 2017.

Conversely, 50 percent  of respondents said that voice is a “low value, bundled service.” About  16 percent of respondents said voice “has no future and revenues will dwindle” as users turn to other communications formats.

Asked which new business areas will be the most attractive in 2017, 48 percent of respondents said internet of things would be most important, not only for access account potential, but also for additional roles in the value chain.

No other category ranks that high. The next largest opportunity, for example, was mobile payments, chosen by 14.5 percent of respondents as important in 2017.

Will Customer Service Ever Cease Being an Issue for Access Providers?

Comcast customer service scores are improving--apparently by substantial amounts-- in Oregon, where Comcast has been testing new procedures and processes to improve customer service, the company says.  Comcast says complaints have dropped 25 percent in two years.

Oddly enough, one of the changes involves a new use for an old trouble-detecting mechanism. Decades ago, a cable operator would learn it has a problem because trouble calls started to pour in. Now, in a new way, Comcast monitors one specific behavior--customers using speed test apps--as an indicator it might have a problem in a neighborhood.

It really is not easy being a network-based service provider of any type, whether the service is electricity, mobile or fixed phone service, internet access or linear subscription video.

For years, customer satisfaction scores for internet access service and linear TV have been at the bottom of industry rankings, though there are signs of improvement, recently. That seems to always be the case.

Other “recurring services,” such as electrical utilities, fixed network voice or mobile phone service, also score relatively worse than many other types of products.

It never is so clear to me why that is the case, though any number of possibilities exist. Given the number of hours a television is used (often on in the background, and perhaps not being actively and intently watched), any network outage is going to have a higher chance of being noticed than if a fixed phone line drops. People do not actively use fixed line phones that many minutes per day, and an outage can occur without user awareness that has happened.

Others might suggest the “problem” is the recurring bill, a monthly reminder that a customer is paying for a product where there is some unhappiness with the value proposition.

Poor customer service can be an issue in any business where billing errors are likely to be common, as is any communications service with usage charges. Mobile service providers a decade or two ago had somewhat more common failures in that regard, though most of us would agree that customer service has gotten quite a lot better.

Internet access provider might suffer from the instability of IP connections generally, as well as the somewhat disparate experiences across the day. Wi-Fi channel performance also tends to vary significantly, all of which can lead to a user experience that seems--and is--unstable or disparate.

That does not help.

Base- line	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
Verizon Fios	72	74	73	68	71	70
AT&T U-verse	68	68	71	69	69	69
DIRECTV (AT&T)	69	68	72	69	68	68
DISH Network	67	69	70	67	67	67
Bright House Networks	NM	NM	NM	NM	65	66
Cablevision Systems	NM	NM	NM	NM	67	66
Subscription Television Service	66	66	68	65	63	65
All Others	69	68	69	66	66	64
Comcast	59	61	63	60	54	62
Suddenlink	NM	NM	NM	NM	57	62
Charter Communications	59	59	64	60	63	60
Cox Communications	67	63	65	63	62	59
Time Warner Cable	59	63	60	56	51	59
Mediacom	NM	NM	NM	NM	51	54
AT&T Corp.

source: ACSI