AT&T Announces Pricing for New Streaming Services

In addition to DirecTV Now, AT&T’s new streaming video service, AT&T also has announced price points for two other services, FreeVIEW and Fullscreen, both of which can be used with no data plan usage for AT&T mobile service customers.

Fullscreen offers more than 1,500 hours of ad-free premium scripted and unscripted original series, TV shows and films licensed from studio partners.

Fullscreen can be used at no charge for one year, for all AT&T mobile plans including a messaging service, and without incurring data usage charges. Regular pricing after the introductory year is $5.99 a month.

Fullscreen can be used anytime, anywhere in the United States, at www.fullscreen.com, on iPhone, iPad, select Android Phones, Chromecast and Apple TV devices.

FreeVIEW also provides unique and exclusive content free of charge, including a sampling of on-demand content from AUDIENCE Network, Otter Media properties and other channels on DirecTV Now, using either the DirecTV Now app or at the web site, www.directvnow.com. Streaming of FreeVIEW does not incur data charges.

AT&T also announced pricing for DirecTV Now, including

• Live a Little – $35 / month (60+ channels)
• Just Right – $50 / month (80+ channels)
• Go Big – $60 / month (100+ channels)
• Gotta Have it – $70 / month (120+ channels)

Fans of HBO and Cinemax can add these channels for just $5 each per month in addition to your base programming package.

DirecTV Now will be available at launch through the following:

• Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick
• Android mobile devices and tablets
• iPhone, iPad and Apple TV
• Chromecast (Android at launch; iOS in 2017)
• Google Cast-enabled LeEco ecotvs and VIZIO SmartCast Displays
• Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari web browsers.

Support for Roku streaming players and Roku TV models, Amazon Fire tablets, and Smart TVs from Samsung and other leading brands will be added in 2017.

AT&T continues to argue that the primary audience for these services are about 20 million households that use the internet but do not buy linear TV services. That includes people who used to subscribe as well as those who never have subscribed to a linear TV service.

But that also means AT&T now competes with other services such as Sling and PlayStation Vue, for example. Some might argue the new services also will compete with Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, to some extent.

The other issue is how much impact, if any, might eventually be felt by the linear video business, affecting both AT&T’s own DirecTV service and those offered by others such as Comcast and Charter Communications, even if the immediate expected customer base is “non-buyers of linear video service.”

PC to TV Will Be Big at CES

Porting Web video to TVs will be a big theme at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, it appears. Sling Media is epxected to introduce SlingCatcher, which uses the in-home Wi-Fi network. The SlingCatcher also will also be able to transmit programming on a Slingbox-connected TV to another TV set, either to one in the same house via a home network or to one in a remote location via the Internet. SlingCatcher will be available in mid-2007 for less than $200, according to Sling Media Chief Executive Blake Krikorian.

Together with other similar initiatives from Apple Computer and Microsoft, among others,this sort of capability will need to be put into place before we can gauge the actual extent of consumer receptivity to all sorts of "direct to consumer" video. So far, not that many people claim to have used or paid for legal fare. But most observers think technical impediments (not being able to easily view on a TV, in particular) keep most people from experimenting with the new formatpaid video content. All that is going to change, though, and innovations such as SlingCatcher are the necessary forerunners of such developments.

Of course, demand is half the equation. Equally important is the supply side. Television executives, for example, now are asking if future TV programming will be delivered over the Internet, bypassing today's traditional cable and satellite providers, and seem increasingly open to the idea. Chief among the obstacles is the lack of Internet connections to TV sets, bandwidth-limited video quality, lack of business models, and the challenge of navigating through thousands of video programs, otherwise known as "search and discovery."

About all we can surmise at this point is that once these obstacles are removed, there will be a potential alignment of demand and supply. The bad news for cable TV operators, broadcasters and telcos is that "over the top" delivery disintermediates today's channel partners. This is probably a five year preparation phase. After that, watch for a slugfest between over the top video and cable, telco, satellite and broadcast delivery methods.

70% of TV Channels Lost Share in 2016

Cord cutting and cord avoidance are part of the reason most TV channels now see audience losses. What else would you expect in a market where choices keep growing, but discretionary time does not? The point is, even if one "solves" the problem of fewer people subscribing to video services, that does not mean the "market share" problem (smaller audiences) gets solved.

Most economic or industrial “problems” are difficult to solve. There typically are opposed stakeholders, often multiple drivers of industry dynamics and underlying performance trend.

The problem of “jobs moving from high-wage to low-wage areas;” coal industry dynamics or viewership of linear TV channels provide examples. One can try and stop the movement of jobs, but then it becomes logical to eliminate the jobs altogether, by automating or changing business practices.

One might blame coal industry declines on government policy (true enough, in many cases), but also note that the better economics of natural gas (it is cheaper than coal for electrical generation) would cause distress in the coal industry in any case.

So too in the television network area, one might argue that changing consumer demand (cord cutting) is leading to less viewership of ESPN and other channels. But it also is true that in a market with vastly more choices, and a fixed number of buyers and discretionary time, that viewing time on any legacy channel likely has to fall.

In other words, people have a relatively-fixed amount of time for leisure, and less time than that for watching TV. If choices grow from dozens to hundreds, it stands to reason that some time has to shift from the dozens of legacy channels to the new channels. Such audience fragmentation has been going on since cable TV channels first appeared, taking audience share from the “big three” broadcast TV networks.

When there are hundreds of channels, plus new services (Netflix, Amazon Prime, DirecTV Now, Sling) that shift additional video viewing time away from “channels,” audience fragmentation seems an inevitable consequence. Dividing market share in any market is different when there are just three providers, dozens of providers, hundreds of providers or virtually thousands of choices (each on-demand title represents a chance to “spend time” that competes with watching a TV channel for the equivalent amount of time).

That is why most--if not all--legacy channels will continue to be under pressure. It is not just a “sports” or “ESPN” problem.

source: CNBC

Dish Network 2Q: Revenue and Subscriber Losses

Dish Network reported second-quarter 2016 earnings that topped expectations, but Dish Network also had a net loss of 281,000 pay-TV subscribers, including satellite and the Sling web TV service, said to be the biggest quarterly subscriber loss ever, for Dish.

DirecTV, owned by AT&T, seems to have added customer accounts in the second quarter.

Here’s the importance: every legacy service provider is in a race to create new revenue streams at least as fast as each service provider loses legacy accounts. Pressure on top-line revenue and customer account attrition might mean Dish Network is losing that battle, despite the launch of Sling TV streaming services.

That leaves speculation about Dish Network entering the mobile business.

Opinions about what Dish Network might be able to do with its amassed mobile spectrum have varied. Some seem never to have believed Dish Network really would become a mobile service provider, and eventually would simply sell its spectrum.

Others believed Dish Network might well try and enter the mobile business.

The “problem” for observers is that much hinges on whether Dish Network concludes it is time to sell, time to build to create value before selling, or time to transition to a new business model and grow over the long term.

It is not clear anybody outside Dish Network, and aside from Charlie Ergen, Dish CEO, have any idea what the company will do.

OTT Video Service Launches Escalate

Over the top video subscription service launches are becoming much more common. 

In November 2014, Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications jointly launched shomi, a Canadian subscription video on-demand (SVOD) OTT video service offering a mix of U.S.- and Canadian-produced content.

One month later, Bell Canada launched its own OTT SVOD service, CraveTV.  In December, U.S. satellite pay-TV provider DIRECTV launched Yaveo, a Spanish-language OTT video service, according to Parks Associates.

In January 2015 FOXTEL and content producer Seven West Media introduced Presto TV. The same month, Australian joint venture StreamCo unveiled its Stan SVOD streaming service. Netflix launched in Australia in March 2015.

Also in January, Star India released a beta version of Hotstar, an ad-supported video streaming service, while retailer Carrefour launched a new OTT video service in France.

In February 2015, Dish Network introduced Sling TV.

In March PlayStation Vue was launched by Sony and Nickelodeon premiered Noggin, a mobile-oriented subscription video service designed for children, while CONtv launched a comic book oriented service.

In April, HBO launched “HBO Now.”

SingTel, Sony, and Warner Bros. announced plans to create a new service, HOOQ, for the Asian market, including the Philippines, India, and Thailand.

Online retailer Overstock.com says it will launch a video service in the U.S. market in 2015.

InfiniTV is set to launch later in 2015 in Brazil, with both subscription and transactional options.

Samsung launched an OTT service in Brazil, Moony, that provides free and subscription-based access to linear TV channels.

All of that activity is one reason why global OTT video service subscription revenues will increase from nearly $9 billion in 2014 to over $19 billion in 2019, according to Parks Associates.

Can OTT Video Accounts be as Lucrative as Linear Accounts?

Logic would suggest an over the top video account, with gross revenue of $20 to $30 a month, is not going to be as profitable as a linear video account with gross revenue of $50 to $100 a month.

That might not necessarily be the case, some would suggest. On a net basis, after including subscriber acquistion costs that factor in the cost of discounts, the gap might be narrower than most would tend to believe.

That said, linear video providers continue to struggle to retain their current linear video subscribers. And some, including Dish Network, now make no distinction between an OTT and a linear account.

In the third quarter of 2015, DISH activated approximately 751,000 gross new subscribers, compared to approximately 691,000 gross new subscribers in the prior year's third quarter.

Net subscribers declined approximately 23,000 in the third quarter, compared to a loss of approximately 12,000 in the third quarter 2014.

The company closed the third quarter with 13.909 million subscribers, compared to 14.041 million subscribers at the end of third quarter 2014. That represents a loss of 132,000 accounts.

In the second quarter, Dish lost about 83,000 net accounts. If one assumes the second quarter is seasonally the toughest quarter for any linear video supplier, then Dish Network’s third quarter performance indicates a sharp acceleration of churn trends.

Dish executives might say more-stringent credit policies and a willingness to lose some “lower-quality” customers contribute to the apparent churn. In other words, Dish was willing to lose some “unprofitable” customers.

“One of the other things that we're looking at is that we do have customers that are unprofitable for us today, and they're unprofitable because they call multiple times during the month, they are always asking for discounts,” said Charlie Ergen, Dish Network CEO. “And I think it's just smart business that over time that we wean those customers off of our service.”

“Sometimes the best return you get is to let a customer go,” said Ergen.

Average revenue per user in the third quarter totaled $86.33, compared to the year-ago period's ARPU of $84.39. The churn rate was 1.86 percent compared to 1.67 percent for third quarter of 2014. In the past, churn would have fallen between the second and third quarters.

For the three and nine months ended Sept. 30, 2015, Dish has included all of its Sling TV live, linear streaming over-the-top Internet-based television services in the company's total subscriber metrics.

And observers will likely have to readjust their thinking on average revenue per account, as well as marketing cost, as more accounts migrate to over the top packages with different (lower) price points.

Though the new metrics yet are developing, some might make the argument that, in principle, OTT accounts of smaller gross revenue might yet supply net revenue equal to, or higher than, linear accounts.

That argument hinges on different costs to acquire an account. And some would claim that the discounts required to get a new linear video account represent marketing costs that now are higher than ever. Where new customer costs had been $300 per addition a couple of decades ago, they now are about $700 per new account in a strict sense, but more like $1,000 per new account if one counts the value of discounts, according to Roger Lynch,  Sling TV CEO and Dish EVP, Advanced Technologies.

Also, customer lifecycles arguably are lower than in the past, because of all the competition.

“So I think, logically, the lifecycle of a customer today in linear is less than it was three years ago or four years ago or five years ago,” said Lynch.

The notion is that an OTT subscriber might be just as profitable as a linear account, when all marketing costs are included, compared to a linear account.

The largest U.S. linear video suppliers lost about 471,000 net accounts in the second quarter of 2015. Those service providers serve about 95 percent of total U.S. accounts.

Dish reported revenue totaling $3.73 billion for the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2015, compared to $3.68 billion for the corresponding period in 2014. Subscriber-related revenue increased to $3.7 billion from $3.65 billion in the year-ago period.

Net income attributable to Dish Network totaled $196 million for the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2015, compared to net income of $146 million from the year-ago quarter.

AT&T "Harvest" Strategy is Not New; DirecTV Buy Makes Sense

Some have questioned the wisdom of AT&T’s bid to acquire DirecTV, the argument being that the capital is better invested elsewhere, while the linear video business is declining.

AT&T thinks differently, and perhaps partly because of its historical legacy and business culture. Keep in mind that AT&T (the former SBC) grew primarily by acquisition, organic growth notwithstanding.

Also, AT&T contains many executives who remember vividly the former independent AT&T’s strategies related to a declining business (long distance calling). While attempting to create new replacement revenue streams, AT&T harvested its declining, but substantial long distance business.

That is what AT&T sees in linear video, a mature business that throws off enough cash flow to be interesting, as the legacy business slowly erodes. Yes, there are risks. If the business declines precipitously, the gambit will not play out so well.

But AT&T is betting it will see what it has seen in the past: a major legacy business declining at a predictable rate.

Precisely what happens to the linear video subscription business once over the top streaming alternatives proliferate is as yet uncertain. But it is hard to imagine aggregate revenue increasing, and a stretch to think revenue will be no worse, but no better, than at present.

The best scenario for AT&T is gradual revenue descent, at predictable rates.

And there is reason to believe new alternatives will have incremental impact. Though a full-blown transition to “every channel is available, a la carte” would be more damaging, that does not seem to be the general pattern for developing streaming services.

Instead, the general pattern is smaller packages of channels, not full a la carte sales.

The economics of full streaming access of a la carte channels, should that be the dominant model, arguably would be worse for the ecosystem than a linear model.

Consider the Sling TV package of 20 streaming channels. That “skinny” bundle includes ESPN.

In a full a la carte regime, where a channel such as ESPN could be purchased by itself, the implied cost, at a revenue neutral outcome, would be more than $36 a month, MoffettNathanson analysts have estimated.

Obviously, Sling TV is being sold for far less than the implied cost of ESPN alone, on a revenue-neutral basis.

The same problem is faced by other less-popular channels. Disney might cost more than $8 a month. but HGTV’s implied cost might cost only $1.42 a month.

Many observers believe fewer channels will be viable once on-demand and a la carte content viewing becomes easy and affordable. The reason is simply that the implied cost of a single channel is more than a reasonable consumer would pay.

So the context for AT&T’s bid to buy DirecTV is not that linear video is a growth business; it is not. The expectation is that DirecTV will throw off huge amounts of cash flow, despite a shrinking overall business, long enough to help AT&T make a transition of revenue sources.

Yes, there are risks. But AT&T has done it before.

Will LInear Video Follow Voice and DSL Patterns?

Are telco voice and high speed access the future model for what happens to the linear video business model? Some might argue that is reasonable.

It just stands to reason that an eventual shift to video streaming could have negative repercussions for some entertainment video distributors, the model and precedent being the replacement of digital subscriber line accounts with fiber to home or fiber to neighborhood replacement services, and the earlier switch out of fixed voice to mobile voice.

In the first switch, fixed line voice customers stopped using fixed voice, and started using mobile instead. Also, the suppliers that got the replacement product revenue often were not the same firms selling the legacy products.

So revenue recipients shifted as the legacy market shrank. But it is a complicated transition.

Where the consumer fixed voice product involved just one or a couple of lines per location (in the days of dial-up Internet access), the advent of mobile voice actually expanded the addressable market to "people, instead of places."

So where a three-person household bought one fixed voice line, it now buys three mobile accounts. "So units sold" grew substantially.

On the other hand, revenue per account arguably is lower for mobile products, compared to fixed products. Where a fixed voice line might cost $50 a month, a mobile account might represent $20 a month, for the voice portion of the service.

But won't linear video distributors also begin to offer OTT alternatives? Yes, Dish Network, for example, already does so. But there is some amount of cannibalization of existing accounts, in addition to net subscriber gains.

We have seen this pattern before, when telcos replaced DSL with fiber connections for Internet access, and earlier when customers switched from dial-up to broadband.

On one hand, a supplier gains a new fiber-based high speed access account. On the other hand, that same supplier also loses a copper-based access account when a customer switches from legacy to optical access service.

PwC’s annual five-year forecast for global entertainment and media shows slower advertising growth rates.

In 2014, PwC predicted advertising would increase 5.5 percent annually over the next five years; now PwC says that rate will slow to just four percent annually through 2019.

In the United States, TV ad spending is growing by just a little more than three percent annually on average, compared to five percent growth rates between 2013 and 2014.

Those dips are happening because OTT services are siphoning off viewers, and ad rates are set by the size of audiences.

That is one example of how the advent of over the top video streaming will act to lower gross revenue and profit margins in the TV business, as has happened in other businesses faced with replacement of legacy products by Internet-enabled products.

Since we are early in the transition from linear to over the top, it is hard to predict the revenue impact on legacy distributors. But it already would be reasonable to argue that Netflix has capped the growth of linear video subscriptions, at the very least, siphoning off growth that otherwise might have gone to pay per view and premium channel spending. In other words, Netflix is a substitute for HBO and Showtime.

Gross revenue might be an issue as well. A Sling TV subscription costs $20 a month. Netflix might cost $8 to $16 a month. A typical basic linear TV subscription easily can run $80 a month. So gross revenue compression is a clear issue for any linear video provider moving to OTT distribution.

And as telcos have found, what one gains can easily be offset by accounts replaced. So far, the displacement in linear video has not proven so large. In 2012, 80 percent of Americans bought subscription linear video. By 2016, 77 percent will do so, PwC forecasts.

But what happens if the mainstream consumer begins to replace linear subscriptions with OTT subscriptions? Perhaps nobody really knows, yet

What percentage of $80 a month accounts drop to $40 a month or are abandoned? Keep in mind that both happened with voice services: a majority of consumers simply stopped buying, switching to mobile voice.

Many consumers pay less because they buy discounted triple play services. If past proves to be precedent, linear video will suffer subscriber losses, gross revenue decline and margin compression. even if some amount of new OTT business is gained.  

Can Charlie Ergen Do it Again?

John Chambers, former Cisco CEO, is known for his belief that the technology business is about making transitions.

There are likely many observers who believe Dish Network cannot make another transition in its business model, as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T have done in the past. People sometimes forget (or never knew) that Charlie Ergen, Dish Chairman and also chairman of Echostar, has made at least a couple of business model transitions.

He started out in business selling personal earth stations, back before there was a direct broadcast by satellite business. That business of retailing television receive only dishes existed at a time when satellite TV programmers did not encrypt their signals, allowing any owner of a TVRO earth station to watch the feeds at no incremental cost.

That was declared lawful by the Federal Communications Commission in late 1979, allowing consumers willing to put up a 20-foot reflector to watch HBO, and eventually many other satellite-delivered channels, for free.

But programmers started encrypting their signals, killing the TVRO business. So in 1990 Ergen purchased satellite orbital slots, founding EchoStar in 1993, to support a new DBS service known as Dish Network,  that arose to supply satellite TV on a paid basis to subscribers, largely in rural areas.

In the intervening years Dish Network acquired Blockbuster, the chain of video retail outlets, and then continued to acquire other satellite assets, making bids for Hulu and Sprint as well as Clearwire. Those the Hulu, Sprint and Clearwire efforts did not result in a transaction, you can see the development of thinking about business model.

Separately, EchoStar moved into decoder manufacturing and also bought Hughes Network Systems, the supplier of satellite enterprise network services,  and consumer internet access.

Most recently, Dish has amassed, by acquisition and spectrum auctions, 5G spectrum assets that now represent the future of the company.

The point is that Ergen has made at least one major successful business model transition (TVRO to DBS), with a key diversification into satellite enterprise services and consumer internet access by satellite through EchoStar.

Ergen also has attempted to become a key player in streaming (Sling TV) and mobile services.

So it arguably is clear that Ergen has seen the need for a further business model transition out of DBS and into something else for quite a while. Some would say the 95 MHz of 5G spectrum now represents nearly the entire value of Dish Network, as the DBS business continues to shrink.

Many have believed that Ergen ultimately would simply sell the spectrum, rather than try and pull off yet another major business model transition. But at least some now believe Dish has no choice but to go ahead and build a narrowband internet of things network as the foundation for its next transition.

The reason is simply that no acquirer would be likely to get transaction approval before the deadline for building an operating network using much of the spectrum purchased at auction. That has to be done by 2020 or Dish (or any other owner) loses the AWS spectrum assets.

That buildout includes a stipulation that the network be active and reach about 70 percent of U.S. population in 2020.

So it now appears Dish will have to do so, spending perhaps $1 billion to create the narrowband IoT network as a first step. The actual revenue model has not yet been talked about (Dish could operate as a wholesaler to others who want to create a national NB-IoT network, or could sell at retail to enterprise customers.

Some likely continue to think Ergen will not be successful making that sort of business transition from video entertainment provider to mobile service provider. But skeptics believed cable TV operators would not be good at programming, or that AT&T would not be all that successful as a video retailer, or that AT&T cannot be competent as a programmer.

To be sure, some still might question some parts of those theses. But video suppliers have become competent providers of communication services, while telcos now are successful video subscription suppliers, and there is no reason to doubt, in principle, that a big video subscription services supplier cannot become a competent programmer.

Ergen has made big business model transitions in the past, and he might well do so again.

If Video Goes Mobile, Pricing Plans Will Really Have to Change

Executives at Comcast, Verizon and Dish Network are not dumb. They know there is a high likelihood of disruption of the linear video subscription business. Precisely what form any new model takes remains a matter of some speculation.

At a high level, there are three fundamentally different visions. There is the model of HBO or Netflix, where “channels” are not the foundation, programs are.

Then there is the Sling TV and other similar coming models where channels still are a building block, but the bundle is stripped down to perhaps 20 or 30 channels.

Finally, there is the completely unbundled model where single channels “go direct” to end users.

There likely is room for some forms of all three models, though it is highly probable not all three models will be of equal importance, in terms of revenue or subscribers.

The odds of a “going direct” (over the top) model are less robust, for the simple reason that the business model is the toughest. Going direct requires a huge new investment in marketing, billing and customer support that traditionally no networks possess.

One of the attractions of the traditional bundle, or even the new OTT bundles, is that the content provider can rely on the distributor for the heavy lifting in terms of marketing and support, while avoiding the issues associated with retail billing relationships.

So consider a few of the reasons Apple might eventually be a significant provider.

Apple has a customer base of nearly 90 million iPhone users just in the U.S. market.

The whole linear video business serves about 95 million households.

Apple also is among the market participants that would benefit the most from a major shift to smartphone-centric viewing. That might have seemed a foolhardy notion two decades ago. It is anything but foolish these days, at least as a potentially huge new model.

What remains unclear is what mix of “channels” and “programs” various contestants will emphasize. So far, Netflix is the leading practitioner of the “programs” model, while Sling TV is an example of the “channels” model.

Some of us would bet those are the leading future models. The “direct to consumer” approach, unbundled, might be a factor, but faces huge challenges, mostly around the business model.

Most content owners likely would agree the bundled model--either whole channels or programs--is most feasible, financially.

One unresolved issue, should the mobile model gain big traction, is how distributors will handle the capacity demands, and how they will price bandwidth. The wholesale cost for a firm such as Netflix is one thing; Internet access sold direct to end users is quite another matter.

Retail mobile Internet access costs vary, but might represent retail end user charges of between $7 per gigabyte and $15 per gigabyte. The per-gigabyte cost of a fixed network connection is more statistical, and depends on how much data a given account consumes in a single billing period. But fixed network costs in U.S. markets can be as low as a dollar a gigabyte or even less.

If video entertainment goes "mobile" to any significant degree, video bandwidth is going to be an issue, since no mobile operator likely can sell bandwidth at $1 a gigabyte or less. The obvious solution is to encourage or even require consumption only on Wi-Fi connections.

To a far greater degree than will be the case for OTT video consumed on fixed networks, mobile consumption is going to be a huge issue for ISPs.

OTT Versus Linear Video is Becoming a Global Battlefield

By now, nobody is surprised to hear that linear video subscriptions continue to drop or that over the top subscriptions are growing. Perhaps the bigger story is the globalization of the business. Netflix now is a global content supplier, while most other providers operate mostly in a single country, or a small number of countries.

So while it still makes sense to track how U.S. service providers are doing, compared to U.S. competitors, the battle has become global, and Netflix arguably is the leader, in that regard.

source: Statista

In aggregate, there are more U.S. paid streaming accounts than linear accounts in service.

Netflix has some 55 million U.S. accounts, while Amazon Prime has some 90 million subscribers. All the largest linear video providers together have about 92.2 million accounts.

Total revenue is another story, as monthly subscription revenue earned by a linear account can be an order of magnitude greater than the revenue from any single OTT streaming account.

source: Ovum (Informa)

In 2017, for example, the major U.S. providers lost about 1.5 million accounts, up from some 760,000 in 2016, according to Leichtman Research Group.

The big swing was that streaming services owned by the linear providers gained 1.5 million accounts, nearly the amount lost by the two satellite services.

The biggest six cable companies now have about 48.1 million video accounts. Satellite TV services claim 31.5 million subscribers (including DirecTV, owned by AT&T).

The largest three fixed network telephone providers have 9.2 million subscribers (nearly all provided by AT&T and Verizon).

The top OTT services have about 3.4 million subscribers.

Pay-TV Providers	Subscribers at End of 4Q 2017	Net Adds in 2017
Cable Companies
Comcast	22,357,000	(151,000)
Charter	16,997,000	(239,000)
Altice	3,405,500	(129,000)
Mediacom	821,000	(14,000)
Cable ONE*	283,001	(37,245)
Other major private companies**	4,200,000	(90,000)
Total Top Cable	48,063,501	(660,245)
Satellite Services (DBS)
DIRECTV	20,458,000	(554,000)
DISH TV^	11,030,000	(995,000)
Total DBS	31,488,000	(1,549,000)
Phone Companies
Verizon FiOS	4,619,000	(75,000)
AT&T U-verse	3,657,000	(624,000)
Frontier	961,000	(184,000)
Total Top Phone	9,237,000	(883,000)
Internet-Delivered
Sling TV^^	2,212,000	711,000
DIRECTV NOW	1,155,000	888,000
Total Top Internet-Delivered	3,367,000	1,599,000
Total Top Providers	92,155,501	(1,493,245)