U.S. Streaming Video Providers Debt-to-Cash Flow Leverage

With the caveat that debt loads have been acquired for diverse reasons, firms operating in the streaming video subscription business have debt-to-cash flow leverage around the 3.3 times to 6.7 times  range (AT&T the former, Netflix the latter). 

At least some of that debt relates to investments in content. 

source: Moody's

Churn Rates are Non-Linear

Nearly 45 percent of respondents of 2,500 people surveyed by EFTM about service provider switching behavior said they had not switched telcos in more than five years. That is not as unusual a figure as you might think. 

source: EFTM

In the U.S. market, churn rates have been steadily dropping. For at least three of the four largest U.S. mobile service providers, churn typically is perhaps 1.5 percent monthly, sometimes less. 

Roughly speaking, a churn rate of 1.5 percent a month works out to be about 18 percent annual churn. The caveat is that churn is non-linear: high rates in the early months of an engagement, then lower churn over time. 

source: Profitwell

The key concept, when evaluating churn, is to recognize that most customer churn happens relatively soon in a supplier relationship. Note that churn rates are very high early in the relationship, but becoming relatively stable after about six months. That is the reason the Australian data collected by EFTM, which might lead you to assume a 20-percent rate effectively means all the customers acquired in a particular month are gone in five years, turns out to be incorrect. 

source: evergage

In each new customer cohort, churn rates drop dramatically after perhaps two months, so the average churn rate is not reflective of the lifecycle churn rate. 

After five years, at  20 percent annual churn, about 65 percent of the cohort have left, but 35 percent remain. More significantly, after 10 years, perhaps 10 percent of the original cohort remain  customers. 

source: Chaotic Flow

So the results of the EFTM survey are not unusual. After five years, at 20 percent annual churn, or about 1.7 percent monthly, one would expect 35 percent of customers to remain, where the EFTM survey found 45 percent remaining. 

In my own case I have had a continuous relationship with one mobile service provider for more than 20 years. Generally speaking, higher average revenue accounts have less churn than lower ARPU accounts. Customers on contracts churn less than customers who can leave after any particular billing period. 

And the customer on-boarding process can be a key enabler of lower churn for new customers, who are not only learning how to use a service or a device offered by a particular provider, but might also be testing whether a particular plan, coverage or device  is right for them.

Mobile Product Life Cycle in India

Here’s one way of visualizing a product life cycle at work. Over a seven-year period in India, mobile data customers will nearly completely switch product choices from either 2G or 3G to 4G. 

source: KPMG

Telcos Must Replace 1/2 of Legacy Revenue Every Decade

By definition, a mobile access platform has a definite product lifecycle, as the next-generation network is introduced about every decade, with a useful life of about 20 years. 

But that is true for virtually any product. The implications for connectivity services executives is quite clear: they must plan to replace every new product they introduce. My own rule of thumb is that service providers must plan on replacing about half of current legacy revenues every decade.

source: University of Michigan Information and Technology Services

Illustrated on this chart, for example, are a number of products including:

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Resources for Networks & Communications Systems

Cable Television

Cellular Femtocell

Core Network

DAS (University Owned & Managed)

DAS (Vendor Owned & Managed)

GSM, CDMA, & LTE

In-Building WiFi Networks

In-Building Wired Networks

InfiniBand

IPTV

IPv4 and IPv6

Live Event Streaming

Local Server Rooms

Modular Data Center (Custom Data Centers)

Personal Cellular Use for University Business

Smartphones & Cellular on Campus

Software Definable Networks

Software Definable Radios

Streaming Media Players

Telepresence Robots

Traditional Telephone Systems

U-M Data Centers

Videoconferencing (BlueJeans)

VoIP Telephone Systems

VPN/Remote Access

White Spaces

WiFi Calling

source: Slide Team

Can Telcos Become Platforms?

In many emerging industry segments, when executives are asked what role their firm might aspire to, they often have said they were aiming to become a platform. What has been less clear is whether established firms such as connectivity providers might likewise aspire to become platforms. 

Perhaps it matters how a “platform” is defined, and how it is different from marketplaces and retailers in general. 

Some define a platform as a business model that creates value by facilitating exchanges between two or more interdependent groups, usually consumers and producers. Using that definition, a shopping mall is a platform. 

Using that same definition, Amazon is a platform. So are Google, Facebook, and other apps of that sort. Irrespective of what the specific value is for end users, the platform brings together advertisers and merchants with potential customers. 

source: Applico

Using a different definition, Apple might also be a platform, as many considered Wintel to be in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Another way of looking at matters is that platforms feature “two-sided” business models. Such models involve an intermediary that enables exchanges between at least two distinct sets of actors. 

Examples include credit cards (cardholders and merchants); health maintenance organizations (patients and doctors); operating systems (end-users and developers); yellow pages (advertisers and consumers); video-game consoles (gamers and game developers); recruitment sites (job seekers and recruiters); search engines (advertisers and users); and the internet. 

But that definition involves a subtlety: all market transactions involve two actors, one buying, one selling; one producing, one consuming. The notion of platform impliciting involves the notion that some economic value is produced by the platform that enables such transactions at greater scale. An advertising network or social media app might provide a good example. 

Facebook enables advertisers to reach an audience, for example, at scale. But network effects, in and of themselves, are not what defines platforms. Telecom networks have network effects, but arguably are not historically platforms. 

True, traditional communication networks bring users together--as does Facebook--but not users with advertisers, or customers with retailers. That might be less true in the future. Telcos who sell video entertainment services might become platforms to the extent that they connect advertisers with audiences, while also providing services to subscribers. 

That is another twist on two-sided markets: sometimes revenue is earned from serving the interests of both actors. In the case of video entertainment, suppliers earn subscription revenues from subscribers, and also advertising revenues from retailers. In some other cases the same might happen when telcos also become support app providers trying to reach their subscribers. 

The point is that the shift from a traditional one-sided (revenue from subscribers) telco model and a platform or two-sided business model is a big change.

Google Stadia Will Stress U.K. Usage Caps

If Google Stadia, the streaming gaming service, actually does consume as much as 15.75 GB per hour when used at the highest settings, then a significant number of home internet customers in the United Kingdom are going to blow through their data allowances, Broadband Now believes.

That estimate is based on statistics from the NPD Group suggesting that the 34 million gamers play 22 hours per week on average. “If these individuals switched to using Stadia as their primary gaming platform, they would eat through even the highest data caps (usually around 1 TB, or 1,000 GB), coming in at roughly 1,386 GB monthly,” says Broadband Now. 

 source" Broadband Now

“We estimate that approximately six million out of the 34 million daily gamers would eat through their  data caps if Google Stadia becomes their primary gaming destination,” Broadband Now says.

That, in general, illustrates the business problem internet service providers face: data consumption keeps going up, but ability to pay is relatively fixed. That is why performance goes up, but average monthly bills tend to stay flat. 

Prices per gigabyte are highest in lesser developed countries, as you might guess, adjusted for purchasing power parity, but really low in developed countries, looking at cost as a percentage of gross national income per person. But the clear trend over time is for internet access costs to fall. 

source: ITU

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