monopoly

Open access fiber drives down consumer broadband prices in New Zealand

21 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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A national project to build fiber-to-the-premise infrastructure and offer it to any Internet service provider on a wholesale basis began in New Zealand in 2011, with an initial goal of reaching 75% of Kiwi homes and businesses. According to a study done by International Data Corporation, a research firm, and sponsored by Spark, the biggest NZ reseller of FTTP service, the build out has reached about 65% of NZ premises, and the goal is now to reach 87% by 2022.… More

15 Mbps is the holy grail for 4K video

20 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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Different online video companies put it differently, but the net result is the same: if you want to watch 4K streaming video – aka ultra high definition – you need a broadband connection that reliably delivers 15 Mbps and has enough head room to support whatever other Internet traffic is passing in and out of your house.

A story by Rob Pegoraro in USA Today provides a run down of the 4K bandwidth recommendations from the two big dogs in the over-the-top video game…

  • Amazon says “you need an Internet connection of at least 15 Mbps to watch videos in UHD”.
… More

Cable's broadband monopoly profile sharpens with 2017 results

16 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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Share of U.S. broadband households, as of 31 December 2017. Source: Leichtman Research Group.

Comcast and Charter own half of U.S. residential broadband subscribers, and their share of the market – if you want to call it that – is growing. That’s one of the conclusions gleaned from a tabulation of year-end 2017 financial reports by Leichtman Research Group. As with a similar count by FierceTelecom, the numbers show telcos continue to bleed subscribers profusely, while cable – and the overall broadband universe – keep on growing.… More

Cable wins the broadband market fight, telcos lose. Again

14 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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The U.S. cable industry’s broadband subscriber count grew by 1.7% in the last quarter of 2017, while telephone companies continued to lose customers. That’s the top line from a tally by FierceTelecom of 15 of the 16 largest Internet service providers (Wow Cable hasn’t reported yet, although check the link – FierceTelecom will be updating its numbers). It’s a trend that continued throughout 2017.

In total, cable companies added 918,000 Internet subscribers, while the telco loss was a bit more than 7,000 subs – negligible in terms of percentage, but a significantly bad result in a growing market.… More

Wyoming's legislature bows to telco, cable lobbyists, but not as deeply as California's

9 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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Following California’s lead, Wyoming lawmakers grabbed their ankles and took what cable and telco lobbyists gave them: a law that subsidises broadband infrastructure, but only to the extent that incumbents want. Even so, Wyoming is not buying into the 1990s service levels that lobbyists for Frontier Communications, AT&T, Comcast and Charter Communications bribed convinced Californian assembly members and senators to accept.

As described by Phillip Dampier in Stop the Cap, what started out as an effort to give communities the option of pursuing their own broadband projects turned into an incumbent right of first refusal, secretly rewritten by lobbyists for Charter and CenturyLink.… More

AT&T CEO explains why net neutrality is necessary

14 February 2018 by Steve Blum
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Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive officer, offered a hell of good example of why he can’t be trusted to do the right thing and refrain from using his position as a dominant, monopoly-centric broadband service provider to benefit his equally hefty video content business.

In an interview with CNBC, Stephenson complained that his online competition is beating him up…

“Reality is, the biggest distributor of content out there is totally vertically integrated. This happens to be something called Netflix.

… More

Cash for 2018 campaigns drives broadband decisions in Sacramento

1 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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California lawmakers will tackle broadband issues in the coming year, but not ones that directly address the needs of businesses and consumers, or economic development goals of unserved communities. The hottest items will be reboots of two failed bills near and dear to the hearts of big telecoms companies.

Senate bill 649 was vetoed by governor Jerry Brown last October. It would have given mobile carriers, as well as telephone and cable companies, unlimited access to city and county-owned light poles, traffic signals and other vertical infrastructure at a token rental rate, far below market value.… More

Big telecom gets bigger while the small get teeny tiny, part 2

6 December 2017 by Steve Blum
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Size matters in the telecoms business. That’s true when success is measured by broadband subscriber counts, as I explored in yesterday’s post, and it’s true for share prices too. Some companies might be heading for a very hard landing.

It’s the small and mid-sized telephone companies that are in the roughest shape. CenturyLink’s share price is down 41% since this time last year, which is the best of the middle of the pack. Its purchase of Level 3 Communications seems to be slowing its descent.… More

Consumers chase better broadband, ditching small companies and old tech

5 December 2017 by Steve Blum
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Cable companies are widening their lead over telcos in the battle for broadband market domination. According to a tabulation by FierceTelecom that tracks the top 15 wireline broadband companies, cable companies picked up a net gain of 2 million broadband subscribers, while telcos lost 430,000 during the first nine months of 2017.

One clear trend: whether it’s the cable or telephone side of the ledger, the big are getting bigger, and the small are struggling.

Looking just at the third quarter – July through September – Charter Communications was the cable company gaining the most, adding 249,000 net new broadband subs, but Comcast wasn’t far behind, with a bump of 214,000 subs.… More

Justice department picks up free market ball as FCC drops it

28 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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Cable and phone companies may soon be free of any obligation to meet common carrier standards of behavior, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they can exert their monopoly muscle on the broadband market without fear of consequences.

Last week’s other big broadband story offers hope of an even more effective counterweight to broadband monopolies: anti-trust law. When the federal justice department sued to block AT&T’s takeover of Time Warner, it made a clean break from recent practice and went after the root cause of the problem – pursued a structural remedy – instead of nibbling around the edges with temporary and often tangential behavioral restrictions on the companies.… More