More Fixed Network ISP Competition Seems to be Coming

The fixed network internet access duopoly possibly is going to be challenged in new ways over the coming decade. New forms of mobile competition are going to develop, including both direct mobile substitution and mobile-enabled fixed wireless. Also, some new fixed network competitors are likely to enter the markets as well.

At least in principle, more than 100 Colorado communities could see some form of

municipal broadband network created, as voters in those communities have approved such moves. That clears a legal hurdle, but now means each community will grapple with the business model.

Longmont, Colo. already has built out a portion of its planned gigabit internet access network, aided by that city’s ownership of a municipal power utility, meaning Longmont owns rights of way, distribution facilities, rolling stock and other assets helpful to creating a city-wide internet access network.

In Centennial, Colo., private internet service provider Ting Internet will piggyback on a new government network to be built by the city of Centennial itself.    

In a few cases, state funds could play a role, as subsidies for middle-mile trunking can change the business model. Magellan Advisors, for example, identifies several roles cities can take, including streamlining of processing necessary for private ISPs to build or upgrade infrastructure; providing access to city-owned dark fiber; city-owned wholesale capacity services or actual provisioning of municipal services for businesses or consumers.

Risk and capital investment grows assume more active roles, including that of actual service  provider. One point worth making is that adoption rates vary based on the number of services offered, and by the ways adoption is measured.

These days, in competitive consumer markets, penetration is measured in terms of revenue-generating units, not “locations” or “households.” Each unit sold (voice, video or internet access) is counted against the base of locations. So a single location buying three services results counts as much as three other homes buying just one service.

So it is that a number of retail service providers such as Morristown, Tenn.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Bristol, Va. or Cedar Falls, Iowa seem to have far higher penetration rates than Longmont, Colo.

That is partly because the Longmont network still is being built out, but also reflects the fact that Longmont’s network sells only internet access and voice, but not video entertainment services. The other networks have been in operation and marketing for three times as many years as Longmont.

source: Magellan Advisors

Customer “penetration” by household therefore is different from penetration measured as a function of units sold. The difference is that determining the magnitude of stranded assets hinges on how many locations passed generate revenue.

Assume that, on average, a typical household buys 66 percent of the total suite of services (two of three triple play services or  three of five services, for example).

The difference is significant. Measuring “penetration” by units sold, penetration appears to be as high as 76 percent to 87 percent. Measured as a function of homes generating revenue, penetration could be as low as nine percent, or as high as 44 percent, with a “typical” value being something between 20 percent to 25 percent of homes passed.

Penetration: Units Sold or Homes Buying Service?
	Morristown	Chattanooga	Bristol	Cedar Falls	Longmont
homes passed	14500	140000	16800	15000	4000
subscribers	5600	70000	12700	13000	500
units sold	39%	50%	76%	87%	13%
services sold	3	3	5	3	2
HH buys .66 =	2	2	3	2	1
Homes served	2828	35354	3848	6566	379
penetration	20%	25%	23%	44%	9%

It might be worth pointing out that all these communities (Morristown, Chattanooga, Bristol, Cedar Falls and Longmont) have municipally-owned utility companies, and might therefore represent a sort of best case for retail operations serving consumers.

That seems consistent with other evidence. In markets where a telco and a cable operator are competent, as is the attacking ISP (municipal or private), market share might take a structure of 40-40-20 or so, possibly 50-30-20 in areas where the telco does not have the ability to invest in faster broadband and the cable operator has the largest share.

Beyond the actual cost of the network, and the business role chosen by the municipality, details of revenue generation (homes that generate revenue as a percentage of total; number of services offered) are fundamental.

Beyond that are the other operating and marketing costs, overhead and need for repaying borrowed funds and making interest payments, on the part of the retail service provider.

One might argue that most other communities, without the advantages ownership of an electric utility provides, will often find the lower risk of a shared public-private approach more appealing.

Also, some ISPs might find the availability of some amount of wholesale or shared infrastructure makes a meaningful difference in a business model.

One might suggest there are a couple of potential practical implications. Efforts by incumbent ISPs to raise retail prices in the same way that video entertainment prices have grown (far higher than the rate of overall inflation) will increase the odds new competitors enter a market.

Higher prices, in fact, will increase the likelihood of new entrants entering a market, as the higher prices increase the attractiveness of doing so.

In at least some cases, the new competitors will be firms such as Verizon, which now has announced it will essentially overbuild an AT&T and Comcast markets in Sacramento, Calif.

Though it is not easy, more competitive ISPs are likely to enter more markets, as lower-cost access platforms evolve, helped in some cases by municipal facilities support.

Where that happens, it is conceivable that the incumbents will see a new limitation on their market share, dipping from possibly 50-percent share to a maximum of perhaps 40 percent each, on a long-term basis, assuming the new competitor is not eventually bought out by one of the incumbents.

Some Want Faster Next Generation Network Investment, But Also Keeping Legacy Copper

source: Technology Futures

As much as most people would agree that robust supply of new next generation networks is a good thing for industry, consumers, government and education, as a practical matter many of those same constituencies oppose retiring legacy copper networks in favor of optical or other next-generation platforms.

It is not a new problem. Most consumers would say they want faster, more robust mobile networks with better coverage. But owners of real estate also frequently and normally oppose placement of the new tower sites that would bring such better coverage and performance.

Somewhat paradoxically, the same entities that can be expected to criticize too slow deployment of optical fiber and other advanced platforms also often argue against those investments, arguing that it is better to keep copper in place.

Telcos argue they need to--and just “want to”--replace high maintenance copper lines with lower-maintenance optical fiber connections (increasingly, they will argue that higher-cost fixed lines need to be replaced by lower-cost wireless access).

None of those are immaterial issues, as revenue fixed network providers can generate from those networks (whatever the access platform) are declining, as customer demand changes and as competitors on facilities-based alternative networks take half the available market share.

How Much Demand for Live TV Streaming?

source: GlobalWedIndex

Some 11 percent  of all streamers pay for live streaming television, a study by Cogent Reports has found. That might be viewed as a data point suggesting there is relatively little interest in live video streaming. That might not be the case.

Potential demand for live video streaming is getting to be a tale of multiple markets. There is the traditional TV content market, but there also is a faster-growing live video content “in the context of social media use” segment of the market. It is easier to measure “demand” in the former segment, than in the latter segment.

In the traditional video content business, there are further nuances. There arguably is less demand for live news programming; much more demand for live sports programming and high demand for live streaming of blockbuster events (sports and entertainment events).

But much of the growth in live streaming has to do with social media usage, not traditional linear TV viewing.

In 2017, most live streaming arguably is in the context of social media, not paid streaming video.

These days, live video streaming is more often something that happens in the context of a person using social media, not a paid video streaming service.

So one danger when conducting market research is self-fulfilling hypotheses. If an existing market is quite large and established, while another is quite small and new, any survey of buying behavior is going to show that there is relatively low buying of products in the small market. Conversely, studies of buying behavior will show high activity in big market  products.

Also, if most of the activity in a market is not consumed on a for-fee, subscription basis, any measurement of “for fee” subscriptions is going to miss the total amount of activity.

“With the exception of sports and news, our research shows that viewing live content is not in high demand as it is currently offered,” say researchers at Cogent Reports.

App Store Blocks Use of Templates

New rules for Apple’s App Store state that “apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected.” That, some argue, is going to affect many small business apps that use lawful templates to create features from app assembly suites or app-creation tools.

Apple has the right to create its own rules. The point is simply that, increasingly, we see new examples of app, device or commerce providers acting as content gatekeepers. That is not a particular issue of somehow restricting “internet freedom,” but simply business decisions those firms are free to make.

Bits are not “treated equally,” anywhere in the internet supplier ecosystem. Almost nothing in the app, content, platform or device parts of the ecosystem actually treat bits or any other parts of their business practices and business models “equally.”

There are all sorts of reasons for that, including the drive to create distinctiveness and uniqueness, create new features and capabilities.

That is simply to point out that breathless warnings about the “end of the internet” because “all bits are not going to be treated equally” misses the point, badly. There are all sorts of practical ways content, apps and devices are not “treated equally.”

There are some elements of internet access policy that do make sense. Ensuring that consumers have access to all lawful apps is fundamental. But most claimed violations of network neutrality are misplaced. How Apple wants to run its app store is its own business.

Will Verizon Deploy its Deep Fiber Network Out of Region?

Sparring between various direct competitors in any business is unremarkable. Such marketing positions are perhaps even more nebulous than ever where it comes to 5G, as there are so many valid interpretations of what “5G” really means (practically and commercially).

It might also be helpful to remember that one fundamental principle, in such marketing wars, is that contestants emphasize as features what they can provide, while trying to downplay the features of what others can provide.

That should never come as a surprise. So too should we remember that what one person, firm or industry “cannot do” does not mean every person, firm or industry likewise “cannot do” something.

Still, there are some potential surprises about Verizon’s apparent decision to launch its 5G fixed wireless services outside its fixed network territory. The reason is that Verizon has talked about the advantages of its new deep fiber initiative as supporting multiple uses, and that logically would make most sense for in-region markets such as Boston, where the deep fiber network would support business customers, smaller business and small cell backhaul, but then also lay the foundation for consumer internet access.

The idea is that a single optical fiber trunking network will use separate wavelengths to support different use cases.

In the announced Sacramento fixed wireless market, it is not immediately clear that Verizon actually will deploy its deep fiber network.

It might make more sense to add incremental optical trunking on a more selective basis to support tower locations that have to be created or beefed up to support the fixed wireless initiative, as that might require less incremental optical trunking investment.

On the other hand, were Verizon to undertake a massive deep fiber network outside its fixed network footprint, that could lay the groundwork for an expanded assault on business markets out of region, using the mobile network assets.

In other words, if it invests in its own new optical fiber trunking network in Sacramento and other fixed wireless areas outside its core fixed network footprint, Verizon would have the ability to essentially become a full-fledged local access alternative for the first time, out of region.

It is not yet clear which of those deployment scenarios actually will happen. On the other hand, it is understandable that competitors might try to disparage the effort. Some other major competitors are not in position to do anything similar (either because capital is not available or there is no synergy with an existing fixed network).

Netflix, Comcast, Verizon All Show Changed Roles Within Video Business

Network slicing--the ability to create customized virtual private networks--is a key underpinning of the core networks that will support 5G, and potentially creates new revenue opportunities for service provides able to provide such customized network features.

Perhaps inevitably, network slicing will create yet another opportunity to raise “network neutrality” concerns where many would argue they do not properly exist.

The whole point of network slicing is to allow creation of services with different class or quality of service (Cos/QoS) attributes. And, of course, that is the core of the consumer “best effort only” restriction, where CoS and QoS are prohibited, even if such features are allowable for business services and managed services (linear video, voice and messaging being the prime examples of managed services supplied by a service provider).

For entirely practical reasons, it seems likely that most network slicing deployments will support enterprise networks. That is because enterprises are the most likely to have an immediate business case, as enterprises have been the buyers of content delivery services, which likewise supply QoS advantages for enterprises in the application and content businesses.

For service providers and enterprises, network slicing should help optimize traffic and provide load management advantages. Because network slices are supposed to be highly dynamic, that feature also should simply chores related to creating and modifying wholesale capacity operations, such as supplying bandwidth to mobile virtual network operators.

For enterprises and service providers, the goal of fast and easy changes to network resources also should be supported, allowing “on the fly” adjustments to latency or capacity.

In the area of machine or connected car communications, network slicing should help create guaranteed low latency communications for those use cases where very-low and assured latency is fundamental.

Network slicing also should help in instances where quality of experience (latency and bandwidth) is important for end users.  

With regard to perceived “network neutrality” concerns, network slicing will provide additional evidence of how truly hard it is to separate “unhindered access to lawful internet apps” from legitimate network management practices. Network neutrality rules always have been murky on that division of prohibited and permissible traffic shaping practices.

The phrase “treat every bit equally” is unhelpful, in the context of network neutrality discussions, as most major suppliers of consumer internet apps already employ measures to treat their own bits differentially. That is the whole point of CDNs: unequal treatment.

The whole point of a CDN is to provide better quality of experience by minimizing latency, for the firms that choose to use CDNs.

Beyond that, the whole effort to case every business practice as covered by network neutrality (consumer access to all lawful apps; best-effort-only access) is further stressed by network slicing, to the extent that content or app providers decide to take advantage of such network features to improve quality of experience for their internet-accessed apps.

So is the effort to portray the only-important business practices covered by the “lawful access” and “no blocking” principles solely to access providers, and not to app providers. Amazon will not allow Google to sell its voice-activated home appliances on Amazon; Google blocks Amazon appliances from using YouTube.

That is more than “prioritizing packets,” that is actual blocking of lawful commerce and content. And yet, so far, there is little serious consideration of those business practices from the standpoint of maintaining end user or customer access to all lawful apps, content or products.

That, perhaps, is the main point. Business practices are not necessarily “violations” of internet freedom, though some believe zero rating, a business practice, also should be covered by such rules. Some would argue that the effort to cast only some business practices as violating internet freedom is wrong. Freedom is the better approach.

Consumers should have the freedom to use lawful apps. App, content and commerce providers should have freedom to choose their own business practices. Access providers should be free to create additional mechanisms, features and services for access that enhance quality of experience.

That makes even more sense as the roles blur and fuse. Increasingly, content ownership, content development, delivery and use are functions integrated across the value chain. Freedom for all is the better approach than “freedom only for some.”

Good News, Bad News for Telco FTTH

There is good and bad news in Cincinnati Bell’s latest report on its fiber to home adoption. In the first year of marketing, Cincinnati Bell gets about 30 percent of customers to buy. After about four years of marketing, the company seems to get about 50 percent adoption.

So the good news is that fiber to home internet access seems to compete well with cable modem services, after a few years, in terms of market share. In a two-provider market, the company roughly splits the internet access market with cable operators.

The bad news is that no telco yet has been able to demonstrate that its fiber to home efforts, or fiber plus other access platforms, are able to take market share leadership from cable companies.

source: Cincinnati Bell

In rough terms, the upgrade to fiber to home networks allows a telco to battle back to splitting the market with cable, instead of losing share to cable.

There appears to be additional upside in linear video revenue, though some might question the magnitude of those contributions, long term.

So though there are other ways to monetize such investments, the cautionary note is that even with high-performance FTTH networks in place, about the best any telco has been able to show so far is an ability to split the internet access market with cable.

No telco has shown an ability to dominate that market, after upgrading to FTTH. In the future, the business case could be challenged to a greater extent if new rivals emerge. Independent ISPs and  mobile substitution are the prime examples.

If a new provider is able to gain 20 percent market share, that would limit telco and cable share to a theoretical maximum of 40 percent each. Some ISPs believe they will routinely do better than that, gaining perhaps 30 percent market share. Ting believes it can get as much as 50 percent share.  

Calculating share can be difficult, as these days, “revenue generating units” often are the metric used to derive market share. And RGUs are different from “homes” or “locations.” EPB, the poster child for municipal networks, offers voice, video and internet, and claims 45 percent market share.

But it does so by counting RGUs and comparing that to homes in the service territory. Internet access share is likely closer to 27 percent.

Still, the point is that, in a growing number of consumer markets, there might be three sustainable suppliers, not just two. That will have important ramifications for potential market share.

The larger point is that, in a two-supplier market, FTTH seems capable of allowing a local telco to get as much as half the market for internet access services. That drops in a three-provider market.

FTTH really does help. But how much it can help depends in part on the number of contestants in the market.