FTTH or Time Warner? It Is Not a Close Call

Would AT&T have generated more incremental revenue if it had not bought Time Warner, and instead had plowed that capital into a massive fiber to home upgrade?

The numbers suggest AT&T made a better choice buying Time Warner.

AT&T spent $85 billion to acquire Time Warner, with an immediate quarterly revenue boost of $8.2 billion. Were AT&T able to invest in fiber to home and then take an incremental five percent share of market everywhere it operates, is perhaps $2.2 billion in annual revenues, assuming $50 a month in gross revenue, or about $180 million a month in incremental revenue.

It is not clear how much upside exists for AT&T, in terms of fixed network internet access revenue, even if it were to dramatically extend its FTTH footprint, but you might argue that the best case for AT&T, for a massive upgrade of its consumer access network, is about 10 percent upside in terms of consumer market share, facing cable operators already leading the market in accounts and speed, with a clear road map for additional speed increases that easily match anything AT&T might propose, and arguably at less cost.

So here’s one take on the alternatives of buying Time Warner or using that capital instead to expand the AT&T FTTH profile. Consider the incremental revenue generated from each alternative.

Assume first that U.S. telcos could take 10 percent more market share from cable TV suppliers. Incremental revenue might then be less than $4.4 billion annually. Consider that AT&T has footprint covering perhaps 69 percent of U.S. homes. So make the incremental revenue for AT&T $3 billion, or $250 million per month.

Also, it would take some years before that degree of new FTTH assets could be put into place. Over any three-month period, AT&T might expect incremental revenue ranging from $540 million to $750 million per quarter, the former figure representing five percent share gain, the latter representing 10 percent share gain.

Neither comes close to the $8.2 billion per quarter AT&T picked up from the Time Warner acquisition.

Verizon has different strategic issues, compared to its main fixed network competitors.

Significantly, Verizon has a small geographic footprint, compared to any of its main fixed network competitors. Verizon homes passed might number 27 million. Comcast has (can actually sell service to ) about 57 million homes passed. Charter Communications has some 50 million homes passed.

AT&T’s fixed network represents perhaps 62 million U.S. homes passed.

Assume there are 138.6 million U.S. housing units, of which perhap 92 percent are occupied (including roughly seven to eight percent of rental units and two percent of homes). That suggests a potential base of 128 million housing units, including rooms rented in homes or apartments, that could buy services from a fixed network supplier.

That implies Verizon has the ability to sell to about 21 percent of homes; Comcast can sell to 45 percent; AT&T can market to 48 percent of occupied homes; while Charter can sell to 39 percent of U.S. occupied homes.

The point is that Verizon has more to gain than AT&T, Comcast or Charter from investing in internet access outside its traditional geography.

In principle, Verizon faces the same issue as does AT&T when weighing alternative uses of scarce capital.

As it deploys 5G fixed wireless, there are two key issues: how much market share and revenue can Verizon gain, and what else might Verizon have done with its investment capital? It all depends on one’s assumptions.

Some argue that, over seven years, Verizon might gain only 11 percent to 18 percent share in markets where it can sell 5G fixed wireless. Verizon believes it will do better, and some believe a 20-percent share is feasible. Verizon itself predicts it can get about 23 percent share, as a minimum, over seven years, representing about 6.3 million accounts.

Assume Verizon fixed wireless gross revenue is about $60 per account (a blend of the $50 from Verizon mobile customers and $70 from non-customers). Assume annual revenue of perhaps $720.

Assume Verizon spends about $800 per location on 5G fixed wireless infrastructure (radios, backhaul, spectrum costs), even if those same assets can be used to support other users and applications.

At 20 percent take rates, that implies a per-subscriber network cost of perhaps $4000.

Assume a cost of perhaps $300, over time,  to turn up service to accounts. That implies a rough break even in months. Assume total capex investment of perhaps $4300 per account. At $720 annual revenue, that implies breakeven on invested capital in six years.

But assume half the cost of the capital investment also supports revenue generation from other users and use cases (mobility, business users, internet of things). In that case the fixed wireless capex is perhaps $$2150 per customer, and breakeven on capex is a bit more than three years, assuming the only revenue upside is internet access revenue.

Logically, one would have to add churn reduction in some cases, and so the lifetime value of a customer; incremental advertising opportunities; some possible upside from voice services or wholesale revenue. None of that is easy to quantify with precision.

The point is that potential return might fall well within a framework of payback in three years.

Whether that is a “good” investment or not depends on what else might have been generated from other capital deployments.

Over a seven-year period, Verizon might have committed $13 billion in capex to generate revenue from six million fixed wireless accounts (about $1.85 billion per year). It is hard to image any alternative use of capital at that level that would result in annual revenues of $4.3 billion in internet access revenues alone.

It is in fact quite hard to create a brand new business generating as much as $1 billion a year in incremental revenues, under the best of conditions.

source: ITU

So, back to the importance of video revenues, as difficult as the Time Warner debt burden might be, the renamed Warner Media already generates $32 billion in annual incremental new revenue for AT&T. Virtually nobody other than its competitors is likely happy about the new $55 billion worth of new debt AT&T has acquired.

Still, the issue is what else AT&T could have done with $55 billion that would immediately create $32 billion in new revenues. Personally, I cannot think of another transaction that would have produced that much new revenue, immediately.

AT&T could have spent that money on fiber to home upgrades, to perhaps gain five percent to 10 percent additional market share in the consumer internet access market, in region, over perhaps five to seven years. The upside, even at 10 percent share gain, does not approach the Warner Media contribution.

Will New Internet Access Platforms Disrupt the Market?

Among the bigger questions coming to the fore in the internet access business is whether 5G can become an effective replacement for the fixed network, and whether fixed wireless can do the same to the cabled networks.

The corollary is that some contestants have more motivation to ask such questions than others. Verizon, for example, has the smallest fixed network footprint among tier-one internet access suppliers in the U.S. market.

Comcast, for example, passes (can actually sell service to these homes) about 54 million homes. Charter Communications passes some 50 million home locations.

AT&T’s fixed network passes perhaps 62 million U.S. homes. Verizon, on the other hand, passes perhaps 27 million locations.

If fixed wireless proves to be a more-affordable way to create high-speed internet access at gigabit rates, Verizon can use the platform inside and outside its present fixed network territory. That is important in several ways.

Use of 5G fixed wireless could allow Verizon to offer fiber to home speeds without the cost, in major urban areas where it has not yet ubiquitously deployed Fios FTTH.

Just as important, out of region fixed wireless offers a brand new, and sizable, revenue opportunity. Today, Verizon is unable to compete, out of region, for perhaps 102 million fixed network internet access locations it cannot reach today. Verizon itself has argued the 5G fixed wireless opportunity is about 30 percent of U.S. household locations, or perhaps 43 million locations.

Similar questions will be raised about the use of unlicensed spectrum to support commercial access operations. Though a proven approach, tier-one service providers traditionally have eschewed that approach.

That does not mean every potential contestant will have the same predilections. Wi-Fi obviously has been deemed commercially feasible in a number of deployment situations. Other access platforms of a non-traditional nature are theoretically possible as well, and arguably will be studied much more seriously by potential new challengers to tier-one access providers.

Just as obviously, the tier-one providers will move to deploy their own solutions that obviate the “need” for other solutions.

That means choices made by some would-be competitors can, and likely will, be different from choices made by tier-one providers. Typically, no single choice is “best” for every deployment scenario. So mixed platform choices are common, even one platform is preferred.

Small rural ISPs have used fixed wireless. Tier-one telcos have used cabled networks (all copper, fiber to node or fiber to home). Cable companies have used hybrid fiber coax. Mobile operators have used radio networks. Satellite operators use those networks.

Platform possibilities are multiplying, though. Wide availability of new radios, lots of new unlicensed spectrum, ways to aggregate licensed and unlicensed spectrum and commercialized millimeter wave frequencies all will make a difference. The ability to create private access networks could well emerge as well, especially for venue access.

The point is that we likely to see new debates about the “best” access technology, or at least debates about “commercially viable” access platforms.

The context there is the extent to which any platform choice works well enough to support the existing business model, is flexible enough to evolve, while offering a hook to better platforms that will be needed in the future.

Platform and standards wars are anything but unusual in the technology business, and quite common in the telecom and networking businesses as well.

In recent decades, we have seen big debates about:

• fiber to home versus fiber to curb versus hybrid fiber coax
• Whether metro Wi-Fi can compete with mobile access
• Value of CDMA and GSM in the U.S. market
• Wi-Fi as an access technology to rival a mobile network
• whether a 5G network can be an effective substitute for fixed network access
• fixed wireless using unlicensed 60-GHz spectrum (Terragraph) as cable substitute
• Whether low earth orbit satellites and perhaps other methods (unmanned aerial vehicles, balloons) can be substitutes for traditional cabled networks.

In all likelihood, the outcome will not be decided on technological grounds. Virtually always, the business model (deployment cost; fit with existing operations; user acceptance) drives the decision.

New Hurdles for FTTH Investment?

Is the investment case for fiber to the home networks getting more challenging? Yes, says Rupert Wood, Analysys Mason principal analyst. A shift of revenue, attention and innovation to wireless networks is part of the reason. But the core business case for triple-play services also is becoming more challenging as well.

All of that suggests service providers will have to look outside the traditional end-user services area for sustainable growth. Many believe that will have to come in the form of services provided to business partners who can use network-provided information to support their own commerce and marketing efforts. Those partners might be application developers, content sites, ad networks, ad aggregators or other entities that can partner with service providers to add value to their existing business operations.

Current location, type of device, billing capabilities, payment systems, application programming interfaces and communication services, storage services, profile and presence information might be valuable in that regard.

Fiber to the home long has been touted by many as the "best," most "future proof" medium for fixed access networks, at least of the telco variety. But not by all. Investment analysts, virtually all cable and many telco excutives also have argued that "fiber to the home" costs too much.

Over the last decade or so, though, something new has happened. Innovation, access, usage and growth have shifted to wireless networks. None of that is helpful for the FTTH business case. That is not to say broadband access is anything but the foundation service of the future for a fixed-network service providers. Fixed networks in all likelihood always will provide orders of magnitude more usable bandwith than wireless networks.

The issue, though, is the cost of building new fiber networks, balanced against the expected financial returns.

“FTTH is often said to be ‘future-proof’, but the future appears to have veered off in a different direction,” says  Rupert Wood, Analysys Mason principal analyst. Regulatory uncertainty, the state of capital markets and executive decisions play a part in shaping the pace of fiber deployment. But saturation of end user demand now is becoming an issue as well.

The basic financial problems include competition from other contestants, which lowers the maximum penetration an operator can expect. FTTH has to be deployed, per location. But services will be sold to only some percentage of those locations. There is a stranded investment problem, in other words.

The other issue is that the triple-play services bundle is itself unstable. FTTH networks are not required to provide legacy voice services. In fact, the existing networks work fine for that purpose. One can argue that broadband is needed to provide the next generation of voice (VoIP or IP telephony), but demand for fixed-line voice has been dropping for a decade. So far, there is scant evidence that VoIP services offered in place of legacy voice have raised average revenue per user. Most observers would note the trend goes the other way: in the direction of lower prices.

And though entertainment video services offer a clear chance for telcos to gain market share at the expense of cable operators, there is at least some evidence that overall growth is stalling, limiting gains to market share wins.

Broadband access also is nearing saturation, though operators are offering higher-priced new tiers of service that could affect ARPU at some point. So the issue is that the business case for FTTH has to be carried by a declining service (voice), a possibly-mature service (video) and a nearly-mature service (broadband access).

And then there is wireless substitution. Fixed-line voice already is being cannibalized by mobile voice. Some observers now expect the same thing to start happening in broadband access, and many note new forms of video could displace some amount of entertainment video spending as well.

The fundamental contradiction is that continued investment in fixed-line networks, which is necessary over time, occurs in a context of essentially zero growth.

Atlantic-ACM, for example, now forecasts that U.S. wireline network revenue, overall, between now and 2015, will be flat at best. Compound annual growth rates, in fact, are forecast to be slightly negative, at about 0.3 percent. Where total industry revenue was about $345 billion in 2009. By 2015, revenue will be $337 billion, Atlantic-ACM predicts.

That is not to argue against replacement of aging networks; in fact that is a necessary and normal part of any network deployment. The issue is the declining amount of revenue any such network can generate.

"Overall consumer spend on telecoms has long since ceased to grow in developed economies," says Wood.

And though FTTH promises dramatically-higher bandwidth, demand is a bit uncertain at the moment. "Even though many cable operators have been offering superfast fixed broadband connectivity for some time in Europe and North America, take-up of such services remains troublingly low."

Aside from some early adopters, Wood argues, new services that uniquely take advantage of FTTH are needed. Industry executives are aware of that need, and have been for quite some time.

The issue is that the scale and pace of innovation in wireless now outstrips what is happening on the fixed line network. That makes the revenue upside for FTTH a tougher challenge. In some markets, cheaper copper-based alternatives might continue to make more sense, Wood argues.

That is particularly true in Europe, says Wood, where consumer willingness to pay a premium for additional bandwidth is low and where broadband prices are already significantly lower than in North America.

"This level of commitment to FTTH looks unsustainable and fundamentally unreasonable, especially when VDSL networks will pass far more households," says Wood. "We therefore expect telcos that have opted for FTTH roll-out beyond proof-of-concept trials and greenfield sites to back away from further commitment and, in some cases, reduce the scale of their FTTH roll-out plans."

So the strategic issue now would seem to be whether continued FTTH momentum can be sustained. It would be an unexpected turn of events, if it turns out Wood is correct.

"Time" is an Important Variable for FTTH

Almost 40 years ago, an engineering vice president at a major connectivity provider quipped that “fiber is the future….and always will be.” The humor lay in the fact that deploying the “best network” requires a complicated assessment of what constitutes “best” for a particular contestant, at a particular time, with a particular combination of assets and constraints. 

We might note that the argument for fiber to the home as the ultimate solution has been “correct” for at least 50 years. But it also has not been the “best for my business today” for that same length of time, for every provider and in every geography, given the existing cost and demand curves. 

Today, the analysis is even more complicated by the change in demand. Where the business cases might once have been built on revenues from internet access, video entertainment services and voice, increasingly the fixed network business case is driven by consumer broadband and mobility plus enterprise use cases. 

"Cost per location" is one key input. But so is "expected revenue." "Cost per passing" and "cost per customer" as well as "revenue per passing" and "revenue per customer" also matter when competitive conditions prevail. The reason is that a great percentage of invested capital will be stranded, generating no revenue.

source: Semantic Scholar

The payback model necessarily extends beyond FTTH to mobility platform support and enterprise and business communications demand. The traditional arguments about lower operating cost remain. 

Evaluators might agree, in principle, that fiber to the home is the ultimate “best” solution in some cases, while also insisting other choices continue to make financial sense in the immediate time frame and for some business models. 

Rarely, if ever, in the access portion of the connectivity or computing businesses is there one single solution that works “best” for all use cases and requirements. Instead, architects and business managers have to balance numerous values and costs.

Among them, “time” is an important consideration, even if not shown in the formal cost and performance analyses. Basically, this dimension boils down to the time value of money. 

Making 10 Gbps internet access speeds available “right now” when demand is at far lower levels can be the wrong business decision. Generally, internet service providers want to match performance to customer demand and willingness to pay. Raw performance is not the only issue. 

Platform choices often boil down to “what works for the next decade, in the context of our fundamental business model choices?”

In other words, it can make sense to choose a less-capable platform now because it boosts revenue upside and reduces risk, even if that platform is not the “ultimate” solution. 

Lumen Technologies now estimates a cost less than $1,000 per passing for FTTH, in a 16-state territory that is about 70 percent urban and suburban, after the sale of former CenturyLink assets in 20 states, for example, about half what such investments might have cost two decades ago, and perhaps a third of what might have been necessary 40 years ago. 

But what makes sense for Lumen or many independent internet service providers does not make sense for Starlink, Comcast, many rural ISPs, T-Mobile or even Verizon and AT&T, in some instances. Starlink’s value is based on applications suited to constellations of low earth orbit satellites. Comcast can still rely on hybrid fiber coax as a mainstay, if not the sole platform. 

And demand is better matched to facilities cost in many rural, mountainous and hilly or heavily forested areas using some platform other than FTTH. 

T-Mobile will focus on both mobile and fixed wireless. Verizon, especially, will rely on 5G fixed wireless outside its fixed network footprint. 

The point is that there is no contradiction between the belief that “optical fiber to the home is the ultimate solution” and the countervailing arguments that other platforms make more sense in the shorter term, in many geographies, by ISPs with different business models, capital investment constraints or business models. 

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Altice to Become Frist Major U.S. Cable TV Operator to Abandon HFC in Favor of FTTH

In a major break with other leading U.S cable TV providers across the United States, Altice USA, the fourth largest U.S. cable TV company, announced plans to switch to a new fiber-to-the-home

Network, appears ready to use proprietary technologies it has developed on its own, and also appears to believe that “energy cost savings” will be substantial enough to allow construction of the FTTH network “within the existing capital budget.”

Any one of those actions--abandoning the hybrid fiber coax platform; using its own proprietary platform; or building a brand new network without boosting its capital budget--would be unusual steps. Taking all three is mind-boggling.

Of the three decisions, it is the clear break with HFC that stands out most starkly. The cable TV industry has insisted for decades that HFC is an extensible platform capable of supporting all future requirements. And the industry has argued for many decades that its platform was, in fact, superior to FTTH, in terms of its business model. In other words, HFC would allow cable to deliver all services, and better services, without the capital expense of starting over with FTTH.

Altice is breaking decisively with HFC, and will be the first major cable TV operator to abandon HFC in favor of FTTH. The strategic implications are enormous. If Altice winds up being correct,

then perhaps HFC does not have the “legs” touted by its backers, even if 10 Gbps is on the cable industry industry HFC roadmap.

If Altice is correct--and DOCSIS and HFC really cannot support future bandwidth requirements--then there is at least a possibility that other cable TV operators will face unexpectedly-high capital investment requirements they are not now modeling, as they would have to build wholly-new networks, not simply upgrade edge and headend gear, as now is the case.

That would have implications for profit margins (lower), capital budgets (higher) and equity prices (probably lower).

Altice has plenty of experience with FTTH networks. Altice France is on track to reach 22 million fiber homes by the end of 2022, and Altice Portugal will reach the milestone of 5.3 million fiber homes passed by the end of 2020.

The five-year deployment schedule will begin in 2017, and the company expects to reach all of its Optimum footprint and most of its Suddenlink footprint during that timeframe, within five years.

Perhaps just as surprising, Altice expects to do so without a material change in its overall capital budget.

Some will be skeptical about one or more of the Altice claims. Some might argue Altice is right, long term, but maybe wrong near term. Comcast, for example, uses HFC for all consumer locations, but spot deploys an overlay fiber-to-home network for customers (business or consumer) who want to buy a symmetrical 2 Gbps internet access service.

In large part, that is a practical choice. Comcast does not immediately have a way to supply symmetrical 2-Gbps service over its HFC network, though it can supply asymmetrical 1-Gbps service over HFC.

The point--it will be argued--is that even if, at some point in the future, FTTH is necessary for consumer customers (no other major cable TV company has said this), HFC will continue to supply everything necessary for the foreseeable future.

The big danger of moving to FTTH, say HFC proponents, is over-investment that does not generate a reasonable financial return, for the intermediate future.

Nor are cable TV executives the only believers in many other ways of supplying bandwidth and internet access to consumer customers. AT&T, for example, seems to be a big believer in fixed wireless, and Verizon thinks fixed wireless will be the first commercial application for 5G networks in the United States.

Google and Facebook likewise are developing multiple new platforms using wireless access (balloons, unmanned aerial vehicles, fixed wireless, Wi-Fi, shared spectrum, possibly others).

For no other reason than that Altice now will become the first major U.S. cable TV firm to abandon HFC, and therefore calling into question the cable industry insistence that HFC essentially is future proof, the move to FTTH is noteworthy.

Some skeptics undoutedly will question the ability to build the new network without increasing capital budgets; the assumptions about operating cost savings; or the danger of using proprietary platforms.

Still, it is a history-making move.

How Will 5G Small Cell Costs Compare to FTTH?

Nobody yet really knows how fixed wireless enabled by a 5G network will compare, in terms of deployment cost, with fiber to home costs, except to say virtually everyone expects that cost to be less than FTTH.

The issue is “how much lower, per potential passing,” those costs will prove to be. Many of the potential data points (fixed wireless to high rise buildings; mesh networks for business or consumers) are so different from potential ubiquitous 5G small cell deployments that those other examples are not so useful. Nor can the other deployments fully capture the costs of dealing with line of sight impediments, when small cells might be deployed very densely, perhaps on every other light pole.

What is really different about dense small cell networks is that, for the first time, the total cost of the infrastructure might be dominated by the cost of the trunking network, not the radio access network.

It might not be unreasonable to assume that a fiber-deep network of the sort Verizon is building, which might be called a “fiber to light pole” deployment, would be less than, or close to, the cost of a fiber to node architecture. According to Nokia estimates, the trunking network should cost less than half the cost of fiber to the home, and conceivably just a quarter of FTTH cost.

source: Nokia

How Much FTTH Investment Will Prove Excessive?

Some observers might note that there have been periods of overinvestment in various connectivity sectors since 1995, and in data center capacity to a lesser extent. 

Subsea capacity and competitive local exchange carrier segments in the 1995 to 2001 period come to mind, as well as low earth orbit satellite systems in the early 2000s as well. 

Global Crossing, Level 3 Communications, 360Networks, NorthPoint Communications, and Winstar Communications were a few of the subsea or CLEC firms that went bankrupt. 

In 1998 Teledesic raised $9 billion in funding to launch a constellation of 288 satellites, but filed for bankruptcy in 2002. In 1999, Iridium launched a constellation of 66 satellites to provide global mobile satellite services and was bought out  by Globalstar in 2007.

In 2000, Orbcomm launched a constellation of 28 satellites to provide two-way data messaging services. The company survived as a small participant in the LEO business.

In the mobile segment, Metropcs, Nextel and VoiceStream declared bankruptcy about the same time. 

And though data center capacity has in the past briefly been overbuilt, demand has relatively quickly absorbed the supply. 

Data Center Market	Years	Degree of oversupply
Northern Virginia	2015-2017	20%-30%
Silicon Valley	2016-2018	15%-25%
Frankfurt	2017-2019	10%-20%
Singapore	2018-2020	5%-15%

Some might ask questions about the sustainability of many fiber-to-home business plans now underway in the U.S. market. In the past, firms have come to grief when they borrowed too much money, were overly optimistic about their sales and revenues and faced too much competition. 

Consider one scenario where overinvestment in FTTH proves troublesome. Keep in mind that investment to create facilities does not mean customer acceptance. Lumen, for example, sells FTTH to about 26 percent of locations passed. Verizon has peaked at just a bit over 40 percent, as have most other telcos with FTTH footprints. The typical pattern is lower take rates when service is launched, with higher terminal rates after three years of marketing in any single market.  

While revenue sources for some ISPs with extensive FTTH networks will include revenue from business customers and wholesale operations, many ISPs are looking at payback models anchored by home broadband services with monthly revenues between $50 to $80 a month. 

Whether you believe that is sustainable for an ISP with 80 percent or greater market share and other revenue sources, questions begin to grow as the terminal market share forecasts in competitive markets dip towards 20 percent or 30 percent. 

Though there is certain to be huge disagreement about such forecasts, one might argue that the home broadband market is moving towards a much-reduced role for fiber-to-home platforms and a heightened role for mobile and other wireless access technologies, as the number and types of connected devices grows, with greater reliance on mobile or untethered access, and increasing ability to leverage mobile network assets to support both mobile and fixed use cases. 

Some rival platform executives might be more optimistic about their chances of competing with FTTH. Most customers, for example, do not buy the fastest-available services but rather “good enough” services that cost less. Also, we should expect every platform to continue to increase provided speeds over time. 

Some observers might expect satellite access to remain at no more than 10 percent. And though FTTH should gain, so will mobile-only and fixed wireless. Perhaps most in the “things will change, but not drastically” camp believe that HFC share (cable operator) will decline as more customers buy FTTH instead. 

Platform	2023 Market Share	2030 Market Share
Fiber to Home	15%	20%
Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC)	60%	50%
Fixed Wireless	5%	10%
Mobile-Only	15%	20%

Fiber supporters will argue that FTTH will do far better, eventually perhaps representing 40 percent share of market by 2030, as all fixed network ISPs shift to FTTH platforms, including cable operators. In such scenarios, perhaps FTTH holds 40 percent share (including share of telcos, cable and independent ISPs). HFC could drop to 30 percent while shares of the other platforms share the rest of the market. 

The real sensitivity in the model is how fast new FTTH lines can be added by 2030, compared to how fast cable operators can continue to upgrade HFC service, or themselves switch to FTTH. 

The argument for FTTH is that it is the only futureproof platform for internet access. And while that might prove correct. But it might be a longer transition than many now expect.