r81984Fair and Balanced Premium Member join:2001-11-14 Katy, TX 3 edits
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r81984
Premium Member
2023-Mar-21 12:05 pm
Financial Analysts: Cable is a Bigger Threat to Wireless Than Wireless isI would not say that any cable company is a threat to incumbent cell carriers. All cell carriers and cable companies (ATT/Directv, Charter, Comcast, Dish, Verizon, Cox, Altice, Frontier, Verizon, TMobile, etc) are diversifying into all parts of telecom and tv service. Incumbent cable companies have not been aggressive in trying to buy spectrum, but they are all making deals with each other to invest in the same services. They are also making deals to use each others wifi/fiber/backbones. These agreements with cable companies all seem to be set on being mutually beneficial to align with one cell carrier than to be about competition. Cell carriers all have had wifi offloading projects for the last 15 years from their own wifi coverage in dense areas, partnering with other wireline ISPs, and 3rd parties. Even Boingo has deals with several cell carriers for wifi offload in airports, sports stadiums, universities, military bases, etc. All these companies are basically working together as they all are ISPs, they all own spectrum, they are all tv providers. I would speculate all these companies have long term assimilation plans than to compete with each other. It seems more likely they are positioning/leveraging themselves for buyouts and mergers as everyone knows that landline TV and satellite TV is not sustainable long term (in the next 20 years). Being a dumb landline and wireless ISP is the future for all these companies as Streaming replaces landline/satellite tv. ATT has split off its TV and Media groups, but is still majority share holders in them. ATT sold off its stake in Hulu. Verizon sold off its media division with only keeping a 10% stake. NBC/Comcast plans to sell its 33% of Hulu to Disney, but NBC/Comcast are making their own standalone streaming box in a partnership with Charter. I guess the next big media move would be if NBC splits off Comcast or if Disney tries to buy a cell provider, ISP, or cable company. There was a time when ATTComcast tried to buy Disney.
In 2011, Comcast, Time Warner, and Bright House sold their spectrum to Verizon which includes agreements that they can sell Verizon service or wholesale it. It was a quick way to partner with cell carriers without actually building a cell network. In the last few years, Comcast and Charter have bought small amounts of spectrum, but they seem to be set on running a "hybrid MVNO". They use Verizon most places and while at home they offload to their customers wifi. They are trying to setup their own 5G cells in heavy traffic areas to offload more data onto their own networks. So it looks like they want long term MVNO partnerships to cover all the gaps. Altice has been doing the same thing with T-Mobile. Verizon seems to be the most aggressive for partnering with incumbent cable tv companies. Comcast, Charter, and now Cox are Verizon MVNOs. WOW, Altice, Google are TMobile MVNOs. DISH switched from TMobile to being ATTs MVNO. Comcast has recently stated it is going to integrate cell phone connections and batteries into their cable modems as a backup called “Storm-Ready Wi-Fi.
Most carrier traffic is already on wifi. OpenSignal reported that Verizon subscribers on average offload 77.7% of their data onto WiFi, with the rest over cellular. Comcast customers offload 93.8% of their data onto WiFi with Charter being similar to Comcast.
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