Only AT&T U-verse Loses No Net Video Subscribers in First Quarter 2020

It will not surprise you that leading cable and telco subscription video providers lost customers in the first quarter of 2020. What might surprise you is that AT&T’s U-verse service lost zero customers in the quarter. That was the exception to the rule, which was that service providers lost customers in the quarter. 

Pay-TV Providers

Subscribers at end of 1Q 2020

Net Adds in 1Q 2020

Cable Companies
Comcast	20,845,000	(409,000)
Charter	16,074,000	(70,000)
Cox	3,820,000	(45,000)
Altice	3,137,500	(41,700)
Mediacom	693,000	(17,000)
Atlantic Broadband	306,252	(2,386)
Cable One	303,000	(11,000)

Total Top Cable

45,178,752

(596,086)

Satellite Services
DIRECTV	15,136,000	(897,000)
DISH TV	9,012,000	(132,000)

Total DBS

24,148,000

(1,029,000)

Phone Companies
Verizon FiOS	4,145,000	(84,000)
AT&T U-verse	3,440,000	0
Frontier	621,000	(39,000)

Total Top Phone

8,206,000

(123,000)

Streaming Service
Hulu + Live TV	3,300,000	100,000
Sling TV	2,311,000	(281,000)
AT&T TV NOW	788,000	(138,000)

Total Streaming

6,399,000

(319,000)

Total Top Providers

83,931,752

(2,067,086)

source: Leichtman Research

Tech Workers Like Work from Home, But Worry Their Careers Could be Affected

Human preferences always matter when evaluating the future of trends such as work from home, which conventional wisdom suggests “must” increase dramatically in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

That might not be as big a trend as many expect. A survey of workers from leading technology firms found, as have other surveys, that most professionals prefer remote work to office work. Some 53 percent of respondents say they would rather work remotely. 

On the other hand, 33 percent of those respondents also believe remote work will affect their career progression. Some 41 percent of Uber and Facebook professionals are concerned about their career progression.

That was true of 37 percent of respondents at Amazon, LinkedIn and Salesforce. 

About 35 percent of new hires also fear that remote work will negatively affect their career progression. But about a third of all the respondents, with work tenures ranging up to more than 10 years, also say they worry about career impact.  

Are you concerned that the new work dynamics will impact your career progression?	Yes	No	Too soon to tell	Grand Total
	1236	1172	1392	3800
	33%	31%	37%	100%
Are you concerned that the new work dynamics will impact your career progression?	Yes	No	Too soon to tell	Grand Total
Amazon	37%	27%	36%	310
Microsoft	33%	31%	36%	291
Google	35%	25%	40%	194
Facebook	41%	24%	35%	133
Uber	41%	24%	36%	76
LinkedIn	37%	25%	38%	65
Salesforce	37%	23%	40%	52
Intel Corporation	20%	35%	45%	49

source: Blind

80/20 Applies to Covid-19, Telco Capex, Most of Business and Life

A study suggests that 80 percent of Covid-19 cases were caused by 20 percent of spreaders. That is an example of how ubiquitous the 80/20 rule is quite common in nature, business and life. 

Also known as a Pareto distribution--the 80/20 rule--appears in business life, or in life, generally. Basically, the theorem states that 80 percent of results come from 20 percent of the actions.

The Pareto distribution applies to business performance, It seems to apply to telco capex. It seems to appy to the India mobile business.  

As one example, 80 percent of sales come from 20 percent of clients, or 80 percent of wealth is owned by 20 percent of the people.

In customer service 80 percent of your problems are going to come from 20 percent of your customers, and 80 percent of your profits are going to come from 20 percent of your customers.

In management 80 percent of your value is going to be created by 20 percent of your employees, and 80 percent of your problems are going to come from 20 percent of your employees (not necessarily the same 20 percent.

In computer science fixing 20 percent of your most common bugs will fix 80 percent of your errors and crashes.

In mobile gaming 80 percent of your in-game purchases are going to be made by 20 percent of your users.

In website management  80 percent of your traffic is going to come during 20 percent of your uptime and 80 percent of your traffic will route to 20 percent of your page. 

In construction 80 percent of your injuries are going to come from 20 percent of your hazards.

In sports  80 percent of your wins are going to come from 20 percent of your competitors 

or teams.

In weight loss and muscle gain, 80 percent of your results are going to come from 20 percent of 

your exercises.

In user experience — 20 percent of the features of your product or service will be used by users

80 percent of the time. 

Whose Free Speech is Protected?

First Amendment law admittedly is arcane, but occasionally becomes important in the context of how industries ought to be regulated. One thorny issue is whether social media apps actually are platforms or publishers. It matters. The traditional poles of regulation have had unregulated and protected “free speech” rules applied to publishers, while common carriers are regulated. 

The distinction is that a publisher exercises editorial judgment, and picks and chooses what it will say. The common carrier, such as a railroad, electrical or gas utility, merely transports, and does not choose. 

As applied to internet app platforms, the claim has been that the likes of Facebook and Twitter only transport, or allow, content and views to be expressed; they do not “publish” by exercising editorial control. The problem is that they now do so, even if they remain a mix of platform and publisher. 

Hybrid matters have emerged. Radio and television broadcasting, as well as cable TV services, historically were not as unrestricted as newspapers or magazines, in part because they use public rights of way or public airwaves. Also, broadcasters once were covered by a fairness doctrine that restricted complete broadcaster publishing freedom, even if, generally speaking, stations had freedom to program their content. 

In the case of broadcasting, choices also were made about “who” has the right of free speech, the speaker or the listener. Though we might argue it was the speaker whose rights are protected, broadcasting regulation often has shifted that “right” to the listener. That is what the equal time rule or fairness doctrine implies. 

Nor is the matter as simple as originally intended, to protect citizens and speakers from restrictions by government entities. The original notion was that political speech, in particular, was what needed protection. Over time, the range of expressions deemed to be protected political speech has been extended. 

While the First Amendment only protects citizens from government restraint, most would agree that private entities (big platforms) arguably have an equally-chilling impact on citizen free political expression. 

To the extent that Facebook and Twitter claim to be “platforms,” they arguably operate as do common carriers, in the specific sense of “transporting” what others say, not saying themselves. To the extent they exercise actual editorial control, they act as publishers (as do newspapers, magazines, radio stations, web sites). 

To complicate matters, this is not to say Twitter and Facebook, as legal entities, have no “right of political speech” as entities speaking for themselves. They do have such rights. What is confused is speech rights held by the speakers on their platforms, as compared to the “readers or viewers” on their platforms. When Twitter censors speakers, it is because Twitter claims to protect “readers and viewers,” not speakers. 

And that is part of the philosophical underpinning of the “platform or publisher” discussions. There are elements beyond free speech implications, but the choice of “whose political rights to protect” is in play. It is not merely the issue of whether Twitter is a common carrier or a publisher. 

There also is the key matter of whether the right of political free speech is possessed by the speaker or the viewer or listener or reader. Traditional First Amendment rights have been for the speaker in the case of newspapers and magazines, generally in favor of the speaker in the case of radio, TV or cable TV, but with a shift in the direction of protecting the rights of viewers or listeners. 

That same distinction now shapes our understanding of how political free speech is protected when platforms are so dominant.

Some Problems Some Themselves

Real life has a way of making some expected problems a non issue. Most readers now are too young to remember it, but half a century ago it was not clear how we actually would enable simple voice communications for half the people on the planet. 

That is not an unsolvable problem, looked at by 2020 standards. So one can occasionally hear people talk about the phrase “half the world’s people have never made a phone call” as an urban legend. That is not correct now, but might have illustrated the problem in 1980, when the only platform we had available was fixed networks. 

Globally, there were about 4.4 billion people on earth in 1980. In 1980, globally, there were about 7.4 phone lines for every 100 people. So global teledensity was 7.4 percent. That does not directly translate into use of phones, as there were payphones. So people used phones that were not theirs. But phone access was quite limited in many countries. 

In 1980, for example, the number of phone lines per 100 people was perhaps 20 in many developing countries. 

source: Researchgate

In 1980, India had less than half a phone line for every 100 persons. 

source: CEIC

The phrase “half the world has never made a phone call” was an estimate even in 1980. But that aside, it is ahistorical to say the statement never was true, or never illustrated teledensity. Today, when there are perhaps six billion mobile accounts in service, against a population of perhaps eight billion, voice usage increasingly is a diminishing problem. But it was not always so. Historical context matters. 

Likewise, other potential problems seem to solve themselves. It always can be argued that there are competitive implications to market power. In the context of communications, managed services are treated, in terms of regulation, differently than internet apps. 

Common carrier rules prohibit differences in terms of service for like classes of buyers. But not all network-delivered services are common carrier instances. Subscription TV, broadcast TV and radio, internet access and all apps are unregulated or lightly-regulated offerings.

Collect calls, toll-free calls or sponsored data provide examples of instances where a third party subsidizes user or customer consumption. In the mobile arena, sponsored data, or zero rating, have sometimes been viewed as impermissible violations of network neutrality rules or principles. 

But real life has a way of muting the potential market power abuses. AT&T, for example, zero rates mobile data usage when customers of its mobile network watch HBO Max content. Though any third party can buy the same feature from AT&T, apparently few do so. 

But there are other market forces at work. AT&T and other U.S. mobile operators have moved to unlimited usage plans that make any zero rating superfluous. In practice, the anti-competitive threat of zero rating is negated by unlimited data usage plans. 

Some potential problems essentially solve themselves.

International Calling Jumps 20% in March 2020

The stay-at-home orders issued to combat the Covid-19 virus have boosted international voice traffic about 20 percent in March 2020, compared to 2019, says i3forum.  Roaming traffic dropped by 30 percent, as travel shrunk. The average length of calls increased by more than 30 percent in March and over 60 percent in April 2020 compared to 2019 levels.

The issue is what happens after the pandemic has passed. It might take an unusual degree of confidence--or excessive linear thinking--to predict that such elevated levels of usage persist. 

IDC predicts a quick return to normalcy, when looking at global customer spending on telecommunications and subscription TV services. Spending is forecast to dip 0.8 percent compared to 2019. IDC expects the decline to continue in 2021, but at a somewhat lower degree. 

Global Regional Services Revenue and Year-on-Year Growth (revenues in $B)
Global Region	2019 Revenue	2020 Revenue	Growth
Americas	$623	$623	0.0%
Asia/Pacific	$471	$465	-1.4%
EMEA	$480	$474	-1.2%
Grand Total	$1,574	$1,561	-0.8%

source: IDC

Business spending might be a different matter. A significant percentage of small businesses will never reopen, so that spending will cease. Some larger businesses might allow some employees to continue working remotely, which will shift spending locations and types, even if it does not lower overall spending. Much also will depend on the speed and magnitude of post-pandemic recovery. 

Countries that fall into significant recession will see lower business spending on communications. 

The mobile segment, the largest segment of the market, will post a slight decline in 2020 due to lower revenues from roaming charges, less mobile data overages due to the stay-at-home situation, and slower net additions, especially in the consumer segment, IDC predicts. 

Fixed data services spending will increase by 2.9 percent in 2020. But spending on fixed voice services will continue to decline.

In 2020, telecom services spending will drop in all geographic regions.

Does Technology Cause Growth, or Does Growth Cause Technology Adoption?

A Deloitte survey of 1,300 enterprise information technology executives across 69 countries and 22 industry sectors finds, as do most such surveys, a correlation between higher-performance firms and lower-performing firms. What never is clear is whether there is a causal relationship between technology investment, customer obsessiveness or any other metric. 

Some 11.6 percent organizations “are delivering significant value through technology,” Deloitte says. Deloitte also notes that such firms also have “an orientation toward growth and leaders who advocate for, prioritize, and appreciate the value of technology.” 

Some industries “always” feature high rates of growth, most likely have moderate growth, while others have low to negative rates of growth. Some industries require high investment in technology, while others might not benefit even from high rates of investment, especially if customer demand is declining. 

source: Deloitte

Software firms, for example, have long-term growth rates between 19 percent and 22 percent, and have business models that virtually require significant technology investment. They also are high-growth industries 

Trucking, on the other hand, has a negative three percent growth rate over the next five years. When an industry is declining, it is not clear that technology adoption can reverse the decline. 

source: Deloitte

Deloitte’s argument is that technology-using, customer-focused, growth-oriented firms got that way because they have positive attitudes toward technology. One might make the argument in reverse: software and technology businesses are fast-growing firms whose very products are “technology.” They innovate because that is how they create new markets and new products, which in turn is the foundation of their growth. 

Such firms often are customer-obsessed because their very survival requires discovering what needs customers have that their products and firms can serve. They do not always know that in advance. 

Conversely, low-growth or no-growth firms might not be customer obsessed because, no matter what they do, demand and revenue drop every year. They essentially are in revenue harvesting mode, where business strategy might actually be to invest as little as possible, as growth is not possible.