Jeff Baumgartner

US cable operators are increasingly threatened by the vast sums of money being plowed into fiber overbuilders, but cable industry legend John Malone believes that multiple-system operators (MSOs) such as Charter Communications are well-prepared to handle the hazards of more capable competition. Malone, whose Liberty Broadband unit holds 26 percent of Charter and owns Alaska's GCI, remains upbeat about Charter's prospects in the face of new and emerging competition from fiber overbuilders. "I believe they can defend their territory quite effectively," Malone said.

US broadband growth continued to surge through the third quarter of 2020, but "pull-forward" growth driven by the ongoing pandemic will likely lead to a slowdown in 2021, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett predicted in a new report. According to the report, the US broadband market finished Q3 2020 with a penetration rate of 84%.

The rate of US broadband subscriber growth continued to slow in Q1 2018, according to a new analysis from Leichtman Research Group. The nation’s top cable operators and telecommunication companies, representing about 95% of the market, added roughly 800,000 net broadband subs in the period, down from 965,000 net adds in the year-ago quarter, LRG said.

If you’ve snapped up a smart TV, with built-in Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and other Web connections, heads up on this warning — your smart TV could make you vulnerable to hackers and is probably monitoring more of your viewing than you realize. Consumer Reports just analyzed smart TVs from five big U.S. TV brands — Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL and Vizio — and found several problems. All can track what consumers watch, and two of the brands failed a basic security test. 

Shoring up the notion that home internet service penetration is plateauing, about 84% of US homes now get that service, up 1% from 2012’s levels, and up from 74% in 2007, Leichtman Research Group found in a new broadband-focused study.

With most results now in, the US pay TV industry lost about 762,000 video subscribers in the first quarter of 2017, a worst-ever result for the period, according to a new report from MoffettNathanson. “For the better part of fifteen years, pundits have predicted that cord-cutting was the future. Well, the future has arrived,” MoffetNathanson’s Craig Moffett declared in his Q1 2017 Cord-Cutting Monitor.

He noted that video losses from Q1 was more than five times as large as last year’s loss of 141,000. “It leaves the Pay TV subscriber universe shrinking at its worst ever annual rate of decline (-2.4%). And it was the worst ever accelerate in the rate of decline (60 bps),” Moffett explained, adding later that the incremental number of cord-cutter and cord-never homes has grown to more than 6.5 million since 2013.

AT&T Fiber, the new brand for an fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) effort previously called AT&T GigaPower, said it has expanded its footprint to parts of 17 more metros. The latest cities to get access include Birmingham (AL), Charleston and Colombia (SC), Chicago (IL), Greensboro (NC), Huntsville and Mobile (AL), Houston (TX), Indianapolis (IN), Kansas City (MO), Little Rock (AR), Los Angeles (Jurupa, Los Angeles and Orange County) (CA), San Diego and Sacramento (CA), Memphis (TN), New Orleans (LA), and St. Louis (MO). In markets such as San Diego and New Orleans, AT&T Fiber is selling a symmetirical 1 Gbps service starting at $80 per month, with a 12-month commitment, rising to $119 per month after that introductory period. AT&T is also pitching TV bundles with DirecTV and U-verse TV.

The nation’s largest cable operators again took the lion’s share of broadband subscriber adds in 2016, according to a new analysis from Leichtman Research Group. The top cable companies added 3.3 million broadband subscribers in 2016, the most net adds in any year since 2007, while the top telecommunication companies lost about 600,000 high-speed Internet customers in 2016, widened from a loss of 185,000 in 2015, LRG said. Cable’s dominance continues to deepen, as the top cable companies netted 122% of broadband adds in 2016, versus 106% in 2015, and 89% in 2014. From a broader view, the top 14 cable and telecommunication providers in the US, representing 95% of the market, added 2.7 million net additional high-speed Internet subs in 2016, down from 3.1 million net adds in 2015, LRG said.

Comcast said it plans to launch a DOCSIS 3.1-based 1-Gig broadband service to residences and businesses in Huntsville (AL) later in 2017, paving the way for a big broadband showdown with AT&T and an expected municipal service offering. Comcast is already selling DOCSIS 3.1 services in Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago and Detroit, and has set plans to introduce D3.1-based offerings in several markets this year, including Denver, San Francisco, and Kansas City, among others. Comcast didn’t announce expected pricing of the 1-Gig service in Huntsville, but, in other markets, it’s been offering it for a base price of $139.95 per month alongside the testing of a promotional price of $70 per month when customers agree to a three-year service contract.

Verizon said it has reached a technical milestone for NG-PON2, a next-gen fiber-to-the-premises platform capable of supporting up to 40 Gbps of capacity, after wrapping up an interoperability lab trial. Verizon, which announced the lab trial initiative last year and tests of NG-PON2 that started in 2015, said Adtran, Broadcom, Cortina Access and Ericsson (in partnership with Calix) participated in the interop trial, which is aligned with the telco’s Open OMCI (ONT Management and Control Interface) specs, which define the OLT-to-ONT interface. Verizon said it will share the results in the next few months. Verizon called the interop a “breakthrough” because it represents a significant step in creating a platform that will enabling the mixing and matching of vendors for various components for NG-PON2, an emerging standard (the ITU-T approved the NG-PON2 specs in 2015) that enables up to 40 Gbps of capacity and symmetrical speeds of up 10 Gbps per customer.