Fierce

In the days following John Oliver's Sunday video on network neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission's public comment filing page has blown up. Indeed, the volume of commentary was over 10 times the amount Oliver inspired over the same number of days in 2014, when his influence was widely credited with encouraging the FCC's decision to reclassify internet service providers under Title II regulations a few months later. The comments varied greatly in form and content. The number of comments probably isn't reflective of the true number of people commenting, as some of the comments were submitted under the same name.

Deutsche Bank Analyst Matthew Niknam listed seven key benefits to the Comcast-Charter Communications partnership, which calls for the two companies to share wireless technology and best practices, as well as control each other’s major M&A endeavors in the wireless industry. Niknam then listed seven “opportunities” rendered by the deal:

1. It offers national scale across a fiber-dense network footprint covering 80% of the US
2. The two companies will share network technology, software, product development and operational investments and expertise
3. Each will dramatically increase its service footprint, allowing customers to reach across each other’s Wi-Fi networks, as well as any LTE or 5G network infrastructure built in the future
4. The deal offers collaboration on spectrum procurement and any future network design and buildout
5. It will enable both companies to better serve the business market with wireless services
6. It will provide better leverage and scale for procurement from vendors
7. It will extend the amount of retail service locations both companies can offer

Sprint terminated its plan to merge its Assurance Wireless brand with i-wireless’ Access Wireless business. “Sprint and i-wireless made the mutual decision to terminate the joint venture agreement and will instead continue to operate as stand-alone Lifeline service providers,” Sprint said. “Moving forward, i-wireless will continue to operate as a Sprint MVNO.”

On its website, Assurance Wireless currently offers customers who qualify for Lifeline a free Android smartphone, 350 free minutes, unlimited free texts and 500 MB of free data each month. Almost exactly a year ago, Sprint announced it would merge its Assurance Wireless brand with i-wireless’ Access Wireless, in a tie-up of Lifeline service providers. Under the agreement, Sprint would have owned 70% of the new business, which would have operated under the name i-wireless. I-wireless was to own the remaining 30%, and i-wireless founder and CEO Paul McAleese was to lead the combined business, which would have operated on Sprint's network.

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai drew applause from the wireless industry yesterday as he outlined his plan to overturn network neutrality rules adopted under his predecessor Tom Wheeler. But rolling back those rules will give the nation’s two largest carriers a huge advantage as the wireless and digital media markets collide.

The fight over net neutrality has grown more contentious in recent months in the wireless industry as carriers increasingly expand into digital media and advertising to offset slowing growth in the US mobile market. AT&T acquired DirecTV and hopes to join forces with Time Warner, for instance, while Verizon has acquired AOL and agreed to buy Yahoo. While zero-rated data is less of a factor in this era of unlimited-data plans, the undoing of net neutrality rules would still give operators opportunities to leverage their own content, placing smaller digital media companies at a disadvantage. Verizon could enable faster speeds for users willing to endure AOL ads, for instance, or AT&T could do the same for mobile users of its DirecTV Now service.

The Federal Communications Commission will lift its so-called “quiet period” on April 27 following the wrap-up of the incentive auction of 600 MHz spectrum, and analysts and industry insiders expect the mergers and acquisitinos talk to heat up quickly. The CEOs of Verizon, T-Mobile and SoftBank have all voiced their interest in potential tie-ups, and Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure noted that he was in Tokyo to meet with the parent company and discuss the carrier’s business. Speculation of major tie-ups has increased in recent months with the election of Donald Trump in the midst of the auction.

While it’s too early to know exactly how regulatory agencies might react to any specific deal, analysts and executives generally agree that they’ll demonstrate a far lighter regulatory touch under President Trump than they did under President Barack Obama. Meanwhile, the US wireless market has grown increasingly competitive, as evidenced by the launch of unlimited-data plans by all four major carriers. The market will only get more heated later this year as cable companies such as Comcast and Charter launch wireless service. Meanwhile, Dish Network—which sits on a pile of unused spectrum—continues to plot its course onto the dance floor.

Google Fiber is implementing a fiber installation process in San Antonio (TX) it hopes won’t upset local residents along with methods to reduce network build-out costs. The emerging fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) provider, according to a San Antonio Business Journal report, wants to be more responsive to the Texas community’s concerns. "They want Google Fiber, but they also want it deployed with a minimum of disruption," Google Fiber wrote in a statement. "We agree. Across all our markets, we are focused on innovating new deployment techniques that are faster, more efficient and less disruptive." The first thing on Google Fiber’s list is to remove a fiber hut that it initially constructed inside a pocket recreational area at the city’s Haskin Park. As part of the revised plan, the service provider plans to replace the hut, which holds its network cables, with a smaller utility cabinet.

CenturyLink says it does not always compete head to head with Level 3—which it is in the process of acquiring—and that the two companies are providers in an ever-evolving business services market.

In a new Federal Communications Commission filing responding to questions about the markets in which the two providers offer business services, CenturyLink said it and Level 3 offer similar services to small and large businesses, but not in every market. “While CenturyLink and Level 3 offer overlapping services for SMBs and enterprises, they do not significantly compete with each other in the provision of these services,” CenturyLink said. In the fourth quarter of 2016, CenturyLink said it had 28.5% of sales of SMB data 11 services in its ILEC territory, while Level 3 accounted for only 1.1 % of similar service sales. Ethernet is another key factor. CenturyLink noted it had 6.5% of the total US sales of business Ethernet services, and Level 3 accounted for 17.6% of such sales. CenturyLink said it is seeing competition in the business data services (BDS) market from two main sources: cable and national providers.

FairPoint has completed broadband expansion projects in 25 Vermont towns, thanks in part to funding from the FCC’s CAF-II rural broadband expansion program. By completing these broadband expansion projects, the service provider will offer higher broadband speeds to over 4,500 locations throughout the state. In towns like Dover, Jamaica, Londonderry, Stratton, West Dover, Wilmington and Winhall, over 2,200 locations have been impacted, providing broadband service to some locations for the first time.

Prices charged by cable operators for broadband services will double over the next several years, offsetting declines from broadband saturation and erosion of linear pay-TV services, says New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin. In a note sent out to investors, Chaplin noted that while cable operators continue to steal high-speed internet marketshare from telephone companies, cable companies' rate of Internet service provider customer growth is actually slowing. Chaplin said customer growth came in at 6.4% in the fourth quarter of 2016, down both year-over-year (from 6.9% in Q4 of 2015) and sequentially (down from 6.9% in Q3 of 2016).

With the Federal Communications Commission's forward incentive auction now complete, providers who won licenses have differing amounts of new 600 MHz spectrum to bring to market. But the amount providers paid for those licenses varied wildly, with some companies paying more than 10 times as much per license as other companies in certain cases.

Big providers like AT&T and T-Mobile generally paid the most, as these companies had no bidding credits to lighten the cost. But that doesn't tell the full story, as AT&T spend almost eight times as much as T-Mobile spent per license even as the latter took home a whopping 1,525 new licenses. AT&T, meanwhile, obtained just 23. For small providers, here defined as those pulling in under $55 million in revenue, the results were similarly uneven. Channel 51 paid far and away the most for each of its eight new licenses, while Omega Wireless, with 119 new licenses, got away paying under $1 million for each one. Of course, the playing field in this case was somewhat skewed, as small providers got a scaling credit depending on their revenue size.