Fierce

FierceWireless went digging to find the clearest positions from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on a number of different telecommunication issues and compiled the answers into a handy chart.

Network Neutrality: Clinton has recently voiced support for the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality proposal and the agency’s intent to place broadband service under Title II regulations. Trump does not specifically call out net neutrality as a major platform within his campaign, but his past remarks suggest he is against government intervention in the form of Title II regulation.

Broadband Access: Clinton has pledged that all Americans will have access to 25 Mbps internet service by the end of her first term in 2020 should she be elected. As the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation pointed out, this includes continued funding of programs like the Connect America Fund and $25 billion set aside for broadband projects within her proposed $275 billion infrastructure investment plan. Trump has yet to make public his policy on promoting broadband network expansion, but Trump’s campaign did hire a new aide earlier this month to help formulate a plan. According to Politico, Jeffrey Eisenach, who is a staunch supporter of light-touch regulation, has joined the campaign to help Trump solidify his stance on broadband issues.

Spirit Communications and its 11 independent incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) partners have taken a page out of the Google Fiber playbook by launching a “GigUP South Carolina” campaign, illustrating the utility of 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) services. The goal of the GigUP South Carolina campaign is to promote the advances in the state’s gigabit Internet capabilities that result from Spirit’s unique business model focused on serving the state’s telecom needs. Similar to efforts in Chattanooga (TN), a city that’s been able to attract new startups and technology talent through EPB and Comcast’s 1 Gbps service rollouts, the GigUP partnership is touting South Carolina as a hub for businesses and consumers to either locate a new business or relocate.

Although AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson conceded that he’s never run a movie studio before, chances are the acquisition of Warner Bros. Pictures, part of the company’s $85.4 billion bid to buy Time Warner, isn’t an afterthought. Certainly, in 2009, when Comcast first proposed buying NBCUniversal, there wasn’t a whole lot of attention paid to the cable company taking over a badly slumping Universal Pictures unit that had fallen to dead last among the major movie studios.

Indeed, seven years ago, Time Warner’s Warner Bros. Pictures unit controlled 19.7 percent of the North American box office. With its powerful Minions still a year away from hitting the global box office and turning the fortunes of the studio around, Universal controlled just 8.3 percent of the North American theatrical market in 2009. Jump forward to 2015, and Universal controlled the lion’s share of the global box office, bringing in more than $2.4 billion in North American theatrical revenue alone and generating intellectual property that sparked EBITDA for Comcast across not just cable video on demand, but in robust businesses like theme parks and consumer products.

AT&T’s announced $85.4 billion acquisition of media giant Time Warner signals a ramp-up in consolidation of content assets that many video industry players and analysts predicted would happen. Gaining ownership of HBO and its online outlet, HBO Now, as well as Warner Brothers and Turner -- which has a classic-movies subscription video on demand (SVOD) service waiting in the wings -- gives AT&T a huge chunk of content for its pending linear over-the-top (OTT) service, DirecTV Now.

AT&T's deal for Time Warner is just the latest – but so far the largest -- in a series of maneuvers by larger corporations to scoop up pricey media and entertainment assets with key pieces of online video delivery services and infrastructure. For example, in August Disney carved away BAM Tech from Major League Baseball Advanced Media, buying a 33 percent share. And last year and early into this year, major cloud players including Amazon and IBM bought up numerous delivery providers. On the surface, Time Warner's media assets should allow AT&T to compete directly with linear multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) like Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, and give Netflix, Amazon and Hulu a run for their money. “The need to be competitive in this area is becoming paramount, with the likes of Hulu and YouTube preparing linear-channel-based online subscription offerings of their own,” said IHS Technology Director of Research Ted Hall. Analyst Rich Greenfield of BTIG said that AT&T's strategy in buying Time Warner is to get direct access to Warner Bros and HBO's "content engines." But other analysts are somewhat skeptical that owned content will help AT&T long-term.

AT&T’s proposed $85 billion takeover of Time Warner will, in part, help the combined companies push video distribution innovation that may have been slowed by cable companies. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said various cable companies and other distributors “took a long time” to create direct-to-consumer video on demand (VOD) offerings across all networks because negotiations between various pay-TV providers and network groups held up the process. “We’ve been trying at Time Warner to get more video-on-demand on, not just our networks, but have it become a universal thing for every American. You go to your set-top or television and that whole dial of networks, hundreds of channels, they should all be VOD just like HBO and Netflix,” said Bewkes. Bewkes said AT&T, which he called the largest and best at mobile delivery, will help drive more choices and different price points of video distribution for different consumers.

Of course, right now, two of the best examples of that kind of video distribution innovation is AT&T’s upcoming virtual MVPD DirecTV Now – which AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson today said would officially launch in November – and HBO Now, one of the most successful early direct-to-consumer video services. BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield said that HBO Now is likely one of the key assets driving AT&T to the deal with Time Warner. “AT&T is not buying Time Warner for its basic cable networks. AT&T is buying Time Warner to get at its content creation engines Warner Bros. and HBO, with HBO one of the only legacy media assets to establish a direct-to-consumer business (HBO Now),” wrote Greenfield in a research note.

AT&T may no longer be looking to spend much in the incentive auction of 600 MHz spectrum now that it has agreed to fork over $85 billion to acquire Time Warner. And that would likely mean that the auction won’t raise nearly as much money as had been expected.

The nation’s second-largest mobile network operator announced over the weekend that it has agreed to buy Time Warner in a blockbuster deal to expand its digital media empire. The move comes as AT&T prepares to launch DirecTV Now, a mobile-focused, over-the-top (OTT) offering in an effort to leverage the 2015 $49 billion acquisition of the satellite TV provider. Interestingly, the announcement came just a few days after Stage 2 of the incentive auction of TV broadcasters’ airwaves ended abruptly after a single round, surprising analysts and other onlookers who expected the second stage to last two weeks or more. Stage 2 generated only $21.5 billion in bids, falling far short of the $54.6 billion that would have ended the event. The unexpectedly truncated round led some analysts to suggest that one bidder that had been looking to buy spectrum nationwide may have put its wallet back in its pocket, essentially walking away from the event. And Tim Farrar of TMF Associates took that scenario one step further, suggesting Comcast – which had been expected to spend roughly $5 billion or $6 billion at auction – might have opted out, choosing to focus primarily on the MVNO agreement it activated with Verizon last year rather than investing heavily to acquire its own spectrum licenses.

AT&T’s giant $85.4 billion deal for Time Warner likely will satiate AT&T in the mergers & acquisitions space, at least for a time. After all, AT&T failed to acquire T-Mobile in 2011, but was successful in purchasing DirecTV in 2015 for around $49 billion. And AT&T executives have argued that the carrier’s purchase of Time Warner will be successful since it’s a “vertical” acquisition rather than a “horizontal” transaction involving two players in the same industry.

So if AT&T is busy buying Time Warner, what will happen next? First, it’s clear the stage is set for further M&A. The Federal Communications Commission’s ongoing incentive auction of TV broadcasters’ unwanted 600 MHz spectrum is likely to end later this year or early next year. And the presidential election will be over Nov. 8, paving the way for some kind of stability at the FCC and the Department of Justice. Possibilities: Comcast, Charter, Altice and cable; T-Mobile and Sprint; Dish (an outlier); and Verizon.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s business data services proposal is facing opposition from the Schools, Health, Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition who say that the proposal needs to regulate Ethernet pricing, a key factor for its cash-strapped constituency.

A key point of content for SHLB is that Wheeler’s proposal only applies to TDM-based services. The organization has asked the FCC to consider developing a technology-neutral regulatory construct that takes into consider IP-based Ethernet and existing TDM services. “The record evidence shows that TDM and IP services are not two separate markets -- they are substitutable services,” SHLB Coalition said in a letter to the FCC. “The very first paragraph of the Commission’s Tech Transitions Order discusses how IP-networks are replacing TDM-based networks and calls for a “technology-neutral” policy. SHLB pointed out that “Ethernet services are sometimes delivered over TDM circuits illustrates the difficulty of establishing different regulatory rules for these two technologies.” Not surprisingly, a particular concern SHLB cites is service cost, which is a major issue organizations that reside in rural markets. Schools and rural anchor institutions in rural markets often are limited to just one provider, inhibiting their choice for competitively priced services.

Chattanooga’s EPB says that while it is still limited by Tennessee law to selling 1 Gbps FTTH service within its defined borders, the municipal fiber provider is confident that growing demand for higher speed broadband could drive a change to current legislation.

Despite the legal barrier, the service provider continues to get requests from nearby towns to get their broadband service. At the same time, local incumbent telcos like AT&T have not made any moves to upgrade their facilities to offer faster speeds that consumers want. “We have a defined electric power footprint and the state of Tennessee only allows us to offer internet service within that defined electric power footprint and our answer has always been no,” said Danna Bailey, VP of corporate communications for EPB. “We’d like to serve you because Tennessee law prohibits it and it’s become a statewide issue as we hear more stories in not-always rural parts of the state who have access to little or no broadband at all.” The service provider has begun working with six other communities in Tennessee that have built out similar FTTH networks. As part of that work, the communities have continued to petition the state general assembly to get the law changed, but no progress has been made. “We haven’t been successful in working with the Tennessee general assembly to get this law changed,” Bailey said. “I expect that will come up again on the docket this winter when general assembly goes back into session.” EPB and the other communities continue to hear about more voters telling them stories about how students have to drive to a local restaurant to use Wi-Fi to complete homework assignments.

Comcast may have been one of the most vocal opponents to the fiber-to-the-home moves by Chattanooga, Tennessee-based utility EPB, but the company’s efforts over the past year to wire the city with fiber-based 2 Gbps services for residential and businesses is giving customers more choice. While Comcast has not revealed how many customers have signed up for its 2 Gbps service in Chattanooga -- a much smaller market in comparison to other ones it serves like Chicago -- its moves are a likely response to EPB’s efforts to offer the community 1 Gbps and even 10 Gbps fiber-based services.

Comcast has increased its network investments and launched new products in the city, including Gigabit Pro, Comcast’s 2-gigabit internet service, and installed hundreds of Xfinity Wi-Fi hotspots in its markets. Gigabit Pro is a FTTH-based service, which requires a special installation at the home. The cable MSO has been no less aggressive on the business front. In June, Comcast Business completed a multi-million dollar fiber optic network across greater Chattanooga capable of delivering up to 10-gigabit speeds to local businesses. Even though Chattanooga is not a Tier 1 city, Comcast and even incumbent telecom AT&T are bringing better broadband into the area, responding to a competitive environment.