Comcast is taking some heat about a mix of new service packages that are being tested in the MSO’s West division that feature X1 and are being paired to some sizable broadband speed upgrades.

While critics see this approach as a way to counter the cord-cutting trend that has seen a growing number of consumers fill their video needs with internet-fed, over-the-top services, Comcast stressed that it has recently extended speed upgrades to the majority of its broadband customers, including internet-only customers, and that internet-only subs do have access to the speed tiers that are part of the new, enhanced bundles.

The new packages with the speed increases that have been subjected to that criticism were rolled out to Comcast’s West division last month and most recently to markets such as Houston, Texas; Portland, Ore.; and the state of Washington.

Here’s how those new packages with the free speed increase for existing Xfinity internet and X1 video customers stack up:

Speed increases that come with those packages follow similar, recent speed boosts for multiple internet tiers in Comcast’s Northeast and West divisions.

Critics, however, perceive the new packages that include the new speed upgrades as tools to help keep the cord-cutting trend in check as Comcast and other traditional pay TV operators continue to see their pay TV subscriber bases erode.

RELATED: Despite Video Losses, Comcast Has Strong Q1

“But for this go-round, cord cutters are not invited to the party,” The Houston Chronicle proclaimed.

Comcast acknowledged that it is testing some new multi-service packages in select markets that aim to make its bundles more attractive, but emphasized that it has also raised the speeds of internet-only customers and that those customers have the option to take any speed tier on a stand-alone basis – without having to also take Comcast’s pay TV product.

“This year alone, we have boosted speeds for Internet-only customers and customers in packages in more than two dozen different states across the country which added at least 50 Mbps more speed for these customers,” a Comcast official said in a statement. “In a few of our markets, we are also testing different multi-product packages by changing the Internet tiers for various packages we offer. Importantly, all of our internet tiers can be purchased as a stand-alone service by ANY Xfinity customer. We continue to deliver the fastest speeds to the most homes in the country – in fact, 75% of our customers now have speeds of 100 Mbps or higher and Gigabit service is now available to more than 90 percent of our service area, including Internet-only customers.”

A pivot to unlimited data plans by all of the nation’s largest cellular service providers is muddling the wireless plans being developed by Comcast and other U.S. MSOs.

AT&T and Verizon Communications, which recently joined Sprint and T-Mobile in offering unlimited mobile data plans, are undermining strategies that some cable operators were pursuing as they look to stitch their ever-expanding WiFi networks to mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreements.

Cable operators can put together unlimited plans of their own that use a WiFi-first stance that offloads traffic on metro and in-home WiFi networks and falls back on cellular connections.

“They’re scrambling internally” as other carriers launch and emphasize unlimited mobile plans of their own, an industry source with knowledge about those strategies said.

“The industry’s rush to unlimited certainly complicates things,” Craig Moffett, senior research analyst at MoffettNathanson, said in an emailed statement. “The cable operators will now have no choice but to make their own wireless plans unlimited as well. That’s a problem. Their revenues will be capped. Their costs will not.”

Still absent from the discussion are precise details about how cable operators intend to enter the wireless market, including how those offerings will be priced and packaged and how they will fit into their broader service offerings.

Comcast, which has created a mobile division and intends to launch a mobile offering of its own by midyear, has shed some light on its service, which will take advantage of the company’s MVNO deal with Verizon.

Speaking at an investor conference in late February, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said company watchers can expect Comcast’s product to be profitible, but it will launch as part of a bundle.

“The product itself is going to save you money by taking our bundle,” Roberts said, and the wireless product will also help Comcast sell other products in its arsenal.

Last week, FierceWireless reported that the popular iPhone will factor into a service that will carry the Xfinity Mobile brand.

Charter Communications is also looking to take advantage of an MVNO deal it inherited from its merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, but hasn’t revealed its go-to-market strategy.

Another person familiar with Comcast’s mobile ambitions said it would be incorrect to think that Comcast’s plan is to take the major mobile carriers head on. Amplifying Roberts’s point, the source said Comcast views the wireless business as additive, a way to enhance and build on its existing product portfolio. “That’s an important nuance,” the source said.

Another industry analyst believes that the surge of unlimited offerings from incumbent mobile giants won’t have a big impact on cable’s efforts to re-enter the market, despite past stumbles like the short-lived “Pivot” joint venture with Sprint.

“It’s another form of bundling,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst of Leichtman Research Group, said. “It doesn’t have to be differentiated from other wireless services. The differentiator, potentially, is the ability to bundle. That’s where the value lies, not in the mobile service itself.”

Plus, the latest unlimited craze is not occurring to counter what cable operators have in store, according to Jefferson Wang, senior partner, wireless, at IBB Consulting, a firm that works with a range of mobile and cable providers.

It all ties into competition among those carriers, which have no choice but to match up because the market is already saturated.

“A lot of that innovation is coming from the pricing and packaging side, which means unlimited becomes a very enticing offer to consumers,” Wang said.

He also said not to expect uniformity on how MSOs enter the market or how the move to unlimited models will affect them. How those operators jump in and the goals they set will be determined by whether they have a favorable MVNO agreement and what kind of other network assets they already have at their disposal, including fiber and WiFi infrastructure.

“To get into a consumer smartphone/wireless play is a very narrow definition of a very broad opportunity,” Wang said. “I view it more as a launching point.”

Cable operators have a lot of fiber in their networks, but it’s clear that their advantage in WiFi networking assets will be played aggressively.

Comcast, for example, has about 16 million WiFi hotspots deployed in metro and business locations and inside home gateways. At last check, the Cable WiFi roaming consortium, a group that includes Comcast, Cox Communications, Altice and Charter, has deployed about 500,000 hotspots that their respective customers can use.

The amount of data being offloaded on WiFi networks is expected to surge in the next few years.

As of 2016, 63% of all traffic from mobile-connected devices was being offloaded to fixed networks by means of WiFi devices and femtocells each month, according to Cisco Systems’s latest Visual Network Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast. The same report expects that half of IP traffic — fixed and mobile — will be WiFi by 2021, versus 30% on wired networks and 20% via mobile/cellular.

Wang of IBB Consulting said cable operators must be agile and be ready to make changes quickly in the hypercompetitive and ever-evolving mobile market.

“When you create an entry strategy, things can change,” he said. “You have to make sure you really think through your strategy, but make sure it’s flexible.”

With its wireless offering expected to be launched by mid-year, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts offered some details regarding his expectations for the product to an industry audience Monday night, adding that not only should the service be profitable for the cable operator, but should save its customers money too.

Comcast activated its Mobile Virtual Network Operator [MVNO] agreement with Verizon Communications in October, and set up its own Comcast Mobile division to manage the product in July. The company has offered few details on what the product would be, only that it will be launched as part of a bundled service by the middle of this year.

At the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom conference in San Francisco Monday, Roberts offered a glimpse into what he hopes Comcast will get out of the service.

Roberts said the goals are simple: to make money on wireless as a standalone, it should help reduce churn and it should help customers save money.

“The product itself is going to save you money by taking our bundle.,” Roberts said. “And third is, we’re going to sell more products, not including wireless, but broadband, as a result of this offering.”

Selling more products has been the mantra for years at Comcast, and in 2016 it managed to sell more video for the first time in a decade, ending the year with 161,000 more basic video subscribers than it started with. Roberts said the path toward positive video subscriber growth was paved with better products, like its X1 platform, faster data speeds – it has increased broadband speeds 14 times in the past 12 years – and improving reliability and customer service.

“If your product is better than your competition, in the fullness of time, I think that’s how you win,” Roberts said. “We haven’t always been in a position where I could say those words.”

Roberts added that a focus on improved customer service and it robust network should help ensure that Comcast stays on top.

“We’re getting ready for a day when you have a smart music system, a smart refrigerator, smart devices and they all just work in their home,” Roberts said. “Hopefully the bits per home continue to rise and the company with the best network, defined as wired and wireless, will have a real advantage.”

Roberts also touched on Comcast’s NBC Universal programming unit, adding that while others are beginning to see the benefits of vertically integrating distribution and content – especially in the wake of AT&T’s $108.7 billion offer for Time Warner Inc. – Comcast is already reaping the benefits. For example, when Comcast first gained control of NBCU, it had zero retransmission consent revenue. That figure grew to about $800 million last year and is expected to climb to $1.4 billion this year, Affiliate fees for its cable channels are also on the rise, although he admitted that growth has slowed for all programmers.

But Roberts said he sees no reason for Comcast to pursue any big deals at least for the moment.

Comcast has not been shy when it comes to acquisitions – it paid about $3.8 billion for DreamWorks Animation last year and had earlier pursued the Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Cable but decided to abandon those efforts.

Roberts said Comcast will focus on rolling out its X1 service – already in 50% of its homes with a goal to reach 60% by year-end. The company earlier announced that it would buy back about $5 billion worth of its stock and raise its dividend 15% this year as well, which should keep it busy.

“I think we’re returning a large amount of capital to shareholders while minding the store and innovating. That then says is there anything that you need to buy? We don’t think so.” Roberts said.

Today’s consumers have more options than ever when it comes to content viewing. The rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu has ushered in new digital era where consumers can have instant, on-the-go access to their favorite shows.

As the popularity of these a la carte viewing options has increased, many have speculated about the future of the traditional cable bundle. Buzz-worthy headlines about the rise of “cord-cutters” are seen as an indication of the cable industry’s demise.

While this might be the story that is often portrayed, service providers still maintain strong dominance among consumers — 83% of U.S. households still subscribe to a traditional pay TV service. At the same time, streaming services are increasingly coming up short when it comes to engaging new audiences as exemplified by Netflix, which last month reported its weakest subscriber expansion in three years.

Streaming services historically served as the answer for consumers tired of the traditional cable bundle model, paying for countless channels they never watch. As the number of over-the-top offerings dramatically grows, though, many TV viewers are overwhelmed by the “pick and-choose” model.

Because of consumer frustration with the various content sources provided by the a la carte model, and the rise of new curated content from the OTT vendors, traditional service providers have been experimenting with skinny bundles and other customized offerings that cater to consumers, tying together these once-disparate ecosystems.

As streaming services look for ways to push past the realities of their current subscriber plateau, and cable companies focus on innovation and the content delivery experience, these unlikely partners need to work together to deliver content to consumers in an aggregated fashion — a task neither could accomplish without the other.

As we see in Comcast’s move to integrate Netflix into its X1 platform, pay TV and OTT are beginning to recognize the benefits each platform can bring to each other. It’s a growing trend: 20% of U.S. pay TV providers now offer subscription VOD services in their content bundle, per SNL Kagan. Streaming services get the ability to tap into a service provider’s reach, scale and distribution; traditional providers get the opportunity to provide consumers with access to desirable content to help retain subscribers and fight the cord-cutting mentality.

By coming together, traditional service providers and OTT providers can simplify their consumer offerings and remove annoyances such as the need for multiple remotes, various connections to the TV and separate subscriptions (and bills).

Ultimately, the benefits of these partnerships translates to more consumer choice, ease of access to new content, and a one-stop-shop for viewers to enjoy their desired content on their preferred device.

Chad Dunavant is vice president of product management at CSG International.

Adding a new promotional wrinkle to a digitally-driven sales partnership announced in March, Amazon is offering a free Fire tablet to consumers who order certain services from Comcast.

The promotion, spotted by TV Predictions, includes a $49.99 Fire tablet with broadband or broadband/TV bundles, or the $229.99 Fire HD10 tablet when customers buy a triple-play package from Comcast.

The promo runs through June 16, and customers must activate service and remain a customer for 45 days to be in line for the tablet, which will be redeemed by a link and claim code supplied between July 18 and July 31.

Comcast has developed a version of its authenticated Xfinity TV Go app and Xfinity TV app for Amazon tablets.

Pay TV service providers are doing a better job of keeping customers satisfied, but that isn’t doing much to quench their subscribers’ desire to cut the cord, a new Morgan Stanley survey has found.

In its sixth annual Streaming Media Survey of 2,500 adults 18-34 conducted in March, Morgan Stanley media analyst Ben Swinburne and Internet analyst Brian Nowak found that nearly 90% of respondents who have a pay TV subscription were satisfied with their service, an increase of 400 basis points over the prior year.

At the same time, the share of respondents who said they plan to cut the pay TV cord increased 550 basis points, to 26%.

Swinburne said that while “it’s a little hard to circle that square,” the paradox seems to highlight what other analysts and operators have been saying for months — broadband service is becoming the most important part of the pay TV bundle.

A deeper look at the survey seems to bear that out. Telco service providers, which generally have higher data speeds than cable companies, had the highest satisfaction rates at 55%, but also had the highest intent to cut the cord at 22%.

Cable service providers had their best performance in the six years the study has been conducted, with just 5% of respondents saying they intend to cut the cord in the next 12 months.

Younger respondents showed the greatest desire to cut the cord — 33% of those aged 18-29 and 37% aged 30-44. But Swinburne said recent carriage disputes may have played their part. AT&T and DirecTV customers showed the greatest desire to cancel service during the survey period — 43% and 29%, respectively — while the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision has been in a carriage spat with U-verse TV. (AT&T owns both U-verse and DirecTV.)

Consumers also seem to be more willing to pay for streaming services: Those who said they would shell out for online subscriptions nearly doubled to 39% in 2016 from 19% in 2011.

More than half of total respondents cited price as the largest concern against buying TV and movies online a la carte, with more respondents willing to purchase at lower prices.

Netflix once again was first choice among services consumers would replace their pay TV subscriptions with — 35% — followed by You Tube (29%). Amazon Prime Video and Hulu Plus tied for third at 27%.

Original programming continued to drive Netflix use, with 45% of respondents saying that was a primary reason for subscribing (up from 43% last year).

Pivotal Research Group CEO and senior media & communications analyst Jeff Wlodarczak said the survey results point to a common problem when people are asked about switching pay TV service.

“When push comes to shove, people may say they want to cut the cord but, for most, that is incredibly difficult,” Wlodarczak said. Last year’s survey seems to back that up: 20% of respondents said they intended to cut the cord, but pay TV penetration only dropped 1 percentage point, to 77.5% from 78.5% in 2014. Wlodarczak also pointed out that telco TV providers don’t have an obligation to offer service to everyone, adding, “So a survey  of telco TV is effectively a survey of higher per-capita-income households that are better able to afford price increases, while cable offers service to many lower income households that feel the pinch from continued video price increases.”

CHART: Satisfaction Guaranteed

Customer satisfaction in the pay TV universe is on the rise from last year, according to Morgan Stanley research.

                                                             2016          2015

Very/Somewhat Satisfied . . . . . . . . 88% . . . . . 85%

Very/Somewhat Dissatisfied . . . . . .12% . . . . .16%

SOURCE : Alpha Wise and Morgan Stanley research

Add cable service packages from Comcast to the products and services available at Amazon.com.

As first spotted by TV Predictions, the recently launched “Amazon Cable Store” features a range of services from Comcast, spanning stand-alone broadband service, to double-play and triple-play packages. According to Variety, consumers in consumers in all Comcast service areas not yet eligible to purchase cable service packages as Amazon extends support all of the MSO’s regions.

Comcast, which has been asked for comment on the new relationship with Amazon, appears to be the first MSO to be featured in the Amazon Cable Store, but the relatively generic name of the new Amazon feature seems to suggest that other operators might eventually offer services via Amazon. If so, it could establish a valuable, new digital sales channel for Comcast and other cable operators as they seek new ways to keep broadband subscriber growth stoked and return video to a sustainable level of growth following years of decline in that category.

Update: Comcast confirmed the Amazon relationship Monday in a press release , announcing that the it’s “another step in Comcast’s multi-year effort to transform the customer experience.” The URL for the offering is: http://www.amazon.com/cablestore . 

Xfinity purchases made on Amazon, Comcast said, are supported by a dedicated team of Comcast customer service agents who are based in Comcast’s new call centers in Spokane, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona. Those agents have been specifically trained to handle all customer service interactions from sales and billing to installation and follow-up, Comcast said.

Comcast said pricing offered via Amazon.com is identical to what is available via the MSO’s existing sales channels. Customers new to Comcast can choose from more than 30 Xfinity products and services, including X1, the operator’s next-gen video product.

“Amazon is not only the biggest online retailer and a place where millions of our customers shop every day, but it’s also a brand that’s unrivaled when it comes to customer service,” Charlie Herrin, EVP of customer experience for Comcast Cable, said in a statement. “Amazon’s new marketplace provides an immersive online destination to showcase our terrific suite of products including Xfinity X1.” 

Amazon’s site is offering a wide mix of services from Comcast. It was not clear how much of a cut Amazon is getting from the offering. Notably, Amazon is reportedly in talks with programmers about securing rights for a possible live TV service, and already offers add-on subscriptions from partners such as Starz and Showtime via a new  ‘Streaming Partners Program’ for Amazon Prime. 

Though Comcast services via Amazon are not yet offered in all MSO regions, in the 80126 area code, for example, Amazon is selling several stand-alone broadband services, including a 10 Mbps offering under a promotional price of $29.99 per month for the first 12 months, before rising to $49.99 per month.

Also on offer are broadband services that deliver downstream speeds of up to 25 Mbps ($39.99 per month for 12 months), 75 Mbps ($49.99 per month for a year), and 150 Mbps ($49.99 per month for 12 months, before rising to $89.95 per month). That pricing doesn’t include a modem, which costs up to $10 per month if it’s leased, or installation fees.

Comcast is also using Amazon to sell TV/Internet bundles, including a package with 30-plus channels, with HBO, an HD-DVR, and a 75 Mbps broadband service, for $79.99 per month for 12 months, before rising to $92.95 per month.

The Comcast “starter” triple-play bundle via Amazon offers 140-plus channels, an HD-DVR, 75 Mbps broadband, and voice service for $99 for the first 12 months, then $164.93 after 12 months, and $194.89 per month after 24 months.

Comcast is also selling no-term services and packages via Amazon that cost more than the contract prices. 

The cloud is ready to rain down some new video providers to take on cable TV.

Using the unwieldy moniker of “virtual multichannel video programming distributor,” these new services, despite their relative tiny size, are trying harder than ever before to gain traction with consumers.

Sony’s introduction last month of PlayStation Vue, a cloud-based pay TV offering, was a watershed moment in the “virtual” MVPD era, picking up where Intel Media left off after the unit got cold feet and punted its “OnCue” assets to Verizon Communications.

A wave of over-the-top services, including new entrants and veteran players, is ready to crash various pockets of the pay TV market, presenting everything from full-freight off erings to trimmed down, personalized packages tailored for the small, but growing crowd of costconscious but still tech-savvy cord-cutters.

While the notion of the virtual MVPD has been percolating for years, several stars have aligned to make the idea a reality. The continual increase in speed and reach of broadband services, combined with the proliferation of IP-connected video devices have set the stage for an increasing number of programmers to embrace new over-thetop distribution models.

Meanwhile, help is also coming from regulators as the Federal Communications Commission pursues new rules that would define some online video distributors as MVPDs and make it easier for these new competitors to negotiate for coveted distribution rights.

But even those factors won’t guarantee that virtual MVPDs will be successful, let alone shake up the pay TV market. Still lacking are details on pricing and packaging, making it di fficult to predict how well these new OTT services will perform in the already saturated market for TV viewers.

“It’s like having a cake in the oven and guessing how good it tastes,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst of Leichtman Research Group, said.

Still, analysts agree that smart pricing paired with a service outfitted with intuitive features (but mostly pricing) will help to determine the future of this new breed of MVPD.

“The technology will not be enough of a differentiator to get people to move [providers],” Colin Dixon, founder and chief analyst of nScreenMedia, said.

And there’s no uniform way to approach the market, as there appear to be some material differences in how these virtual MVPD services will be priced, as well as the size and scope of the audiences they will target.

The anticipated price of Dish Network’s coming over-the-top service will be about $1 per day, making it particularly appealing to cordcutters, college students and a broader group of millennials.

But millennials won’t make for easy prey. nScreenMedia found in a survey that 19% of consumers in that age group have never subscribed to a pay TV service, and just 2% of that group said they are considering subscribing in the next three months.

Sony, meanwhile, appears to be gunning for a fuller pay TV service that more closely mimics traditional offerings.

While Leichtman believes Sony’s large embedded base of PlayStation consoles gives it an important advantage, the company will likely need to find a way to offer more for less than its well-entrenched cable, telco and satellite-TV competition.

“Trying to do the same thing that an existing service already does obviously is going to be a greater challenge,” Leichtman said. “The industry is changing, but not by doing the same thing. The question is, what’s going to be the glue for the new services?”

That’s where new technologies and features will come into play. If that glue involves the integration of apps such as Netflix and the use of more intuitive interfaces, many incumbents are already doing that now or have it on their roadmaps.

“The problem [for new entrants] is companies like Comcast with X1 are already claiming a lot of these advanced features,” Dixon said.

The task ahead for these new MVPDs won’t be easy. Here’s a glance at some that will be taking their shot at pay TV glory.

Sony: A New ‘Vue’ on Pay TV

Sony hasn’t revealed pricing and packaging for its new service, called PlayStation Vue, but the initial invitation-only offering will feature about 75 channels per market, a number that’s expected to increase as the CE giant inks more programming deals.

Notably, PlayStation Vue will feature a fancy user interface that supports catch-up and video-on-demand services, and a helpful component that will make the past three days of “popular programming” available without the need to schedule individual recordings.

Sony is also putting a unique twist on the cloud digital video recorder, freeing customers from having to worry about storage and recording conflicts, with the trade-off that recorded shows won’t be kept longer than 28 days.

Sony has put a clear focus on its initial targets — the more than 35 million PS3 and PS4 owners in the U.S. who like video and are also looking for a new and potentially better pay TV experience.

“We know that highly engaged gamers are entertainment junkies that spend a lot of time using their PlayStation, and increasingly for other entertainment including SVOD services rather than watching traditional cable TV,” a Sony o cial said, noting that the company has seen video streaming on the platform surge 40% each year for the last three years, and that the average user watches three hours of video per session. “They want the same great PlayStation experience with their live TV content, but with a better user experience and less hassle.”

Dixon said he believes that Sony, despite the new features and capabilities that will grace PlayStation Vue, will need to undercut the incumbents on pricing, at least by a little bit. “It cannot announce the same price or be more expensive and in any way be successful,” he said.

Todd Juenger, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research who got an early look at the PlayStation Vue service, took an educated guess on how Sony might price its service.

Given the networks that have been announced, Juenger said he doesn’t see it fetching anything less than $30 per month — and likely more than $35 — based on estimates that Sony’s affiliate fees will be in the range of $23 to $28 per month. As Sony looks to flesh out its programming lineup, those fees could rise to $45 to $50 per month.

That, Juenger wrote, could put PlayStation Vue’s retail service in the neighborhood of at least $60 per month, resulting in a “razor-thin margin, especially after including operating costs.”

Sony, he wrote, “faces the same catch-22 as every other MVPD. The more networks included in the service, the more appealing it will be … On the other hand, the more networks it includes, the more expensive the product will be.”

Sony has not yet outlined its strategy for homes with multiple TV sets. However, PlayStation Vue will eventually be made to work on devices other than the PS3 and PS4.

Dish Network to Serve Up Skinny TV

Rather than cannibalizing itself with an OTT offering that would replicate its primary satellite-TV service, Dish Network’s plan is to expand the pie by targeting consumers who aren’t current pay TV subscribers with slimmeddown programming packages that will cost about $30 per month.

Dish declined to comment for this article, but the service it is developing is sometimes referred to as a “personalized subscription service” because some programming will be limited to a single stream per subscriber, and because it will look to drive value using targeted advertising.

“We know that [consumer segment] is growing by 4 [million] or 5 million a year, and probably will continue to grow and probably accelerate,” Charlie Ergen, Dish chairman, said on the company’s recent third-quarter earnings call, confident that the company will meet its self-imposed deadl ine to launch the OTT offering by year-end.

Dish expects the coming service to appeal to consumers who are 18 to 35 years old, and skew toward a male audience and sports enthusiasts.

“We’re not going after the guy who spent $100 a month and has got a house and four TVs and three kids, and he’s 55 years old. That is not the target market,” Ergen said.

Dish appears to be willing to experiment and give its new OTT offerings time to find its niche. “I don’t think it’s going to change the world in the first few months,” Ergen said. “But I think that it’s something that has a long-term path trajectory.”

Ergen also expects the OTT product to carry a smaller margin and a higher churn rate than Dish’s core business, but counterbalanced by materially lower subscriber acquisition costs, certainly well below $800.

“When you look at total return, we … would anticipate that it would be as good or better than our core business,” Ergen said, believing that the advertising piece of an OTT offering will be “materially higher” than what Dish gets now with regular linear TV. “When you run all the numbers, to the extent that you’re getting incremental subs, it makes sense.”

Layer3 TV: Cryptic Video Plans

Layer3 TV, a Denver-based startup made up of cableindustry veterans from companies such as Comcast, Motorola and Time Warner Cable, bills itself as a “next-generation cable operator,” but has kept mum on its specific plans, including whether it will look to pair up with an existing MVPD or strike out on its own.

But the types of jobs it’s been trying to fill (senior director of customer care, senior user experience designer, embedded application developer and digital rights management and content security engineer, among them), as well as its development of a distribution center in the Denver area, appear to show that Layer3 TV’s intentions are to create a service almost from scratch, enabling it to go direct to the consumer over broadband.

While Layer3 TV’s still being secretive about its specific service plans and which markets it might target first, CEO Jeff Binder did confirm that the company, which has raised $21 million so far, intends to launch sometime next year.

Despite its relatively low public profile, Layer3 TV has been bending the ear of the Federal Communications Commission in meetings that indicate that its product will indeed be delivered over-the-top.

According to ex parte filings about recent meetings with the FCC, Layer3 TV hasn’t taken a position on Comcast’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable, but has been discussing network-neutrality “safeguards” and conditions that the FCC might consider if it were to approve the deal.

Among Layer3 TV’s suggestions: the ability to interconnect, “for a reasonable price,” at locations close to the customer base a company is trying to serve; while also presenting the position that data caps, while “appearing to safeguard a network from overload,” also create challenges for companies that serve video streams to consumers.

Layer3 TV also suggested that the FCC should think about “some cap on peering charges based upon the total payload in a given month whereby the costs are not so prohibitive as to prevent potential video competition.”

Wireless Wildcards

Next year is also expected to be a big one for some of the nation’s largest mobile service providers as they prepare over-the-top services that will give them a foray to the TV.

One company that will help them make that jump is MobiTV, which is developing a “white-label” streaming stick that will connect to TVs via the HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) port and deliver video over WiFi.

No wireless carriers have announced plans for such a virtual MVPD service, but likely candidates are MobiTV’s existing carrier partners, which include AT&T, Sprint, US Cellular and Verizon Wireless.

And as timing goes, there’s an expectation that more details about those plans could emerge at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the site where Sony announced that it would begin to test a virtual MVPD and set this trend in motion.

Sony PlayStation Vue

Launch date: Invite-only beta debuted in November in New York. Commercial service launches are slated for the first quarter of 2015 in Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

ANNOUNCED PROGRAMMING PARTNERS:

CBS: CBS’s live linear feed in owned-and-operated TV markets, plus video-on-demand.

Discovery Communications: Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, Science, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, Discovery Family Channel and 11 more brands.

Fox: Fox’s O&O TV stations; Fox Networks Group’s portfolio of national entertainment programming services, including FX, FXX, FXM, National Geographic Channel and Nat Geo Wild; Fox Sports’ national and regional programming services (Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Big Ten Network; Fox’s regional sports networks, including YES Network and FS Prime Ticket).

NBCUniversal: All local offerings from NBC, Telemundo and regional sports networks; as well as Bravo, CNBC, E!, NBCSN, Oxygen, Sprout, Syfy, USA Network and others.

Scripps Networks Interactive: HGTV, Food Network, Travel Channel, DIY Network and Cooking Channel.

Viacom: BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Palladia, Spike, VH1 and others.

Advantages: Out of the chute, Sony can wield its well-known brand and target a base of 35 million PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 customers, offer a broadband-connected video platform that has already been integrated with Netflix, Crackle and many other popular over-the-top apps and deliver everything off of an agile, cloud-based architecture. No truck rolls.

Disadvantages: If the plan is to match up with a lineup that’s very similar to what competitors offer, the challenge early on will be to fill programming gaps and add channels from The Walt Disney Co., A+E Networks, Time Warner Inc., and Turner Broadcasting System. To undercut incumbent pricing, Sony will likely have to buy share by sacrificing service margins.

For Sony, like all virtual MVPDs, the quality of the video service will depend on the quality of the subscriber’s broadband connection.

Dish Network

Launch date: Before the end of 2014. Dish hasn’t named the service, but Dish Digital LLC has registered the “NUTV” trademark.

Announced programming partners:

The Walt Disney Co.: For ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, ABC Family and the Disney Channel networks.

A+E Networks: For A&E, Lifetime, History, LMN, FYI, H2, History En Español, Crime + Investigation and Military History.

Scripps Networks: For HGTV, DIY Network, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Travel Channel and Great American Country.

Advantages: Dish has a core pay TV business with millions of customers to fall back on, giving it the ability to experiment with new types of programming packages, pricing and targeted advertising systems that would appeal to cord-cutters and millennials.

Disadvantages: Narrow market focus and limited programming lineup could prevent the new OTT offering from extending beyond a small, niche audience.

Layer3 TV

Launch date: Sometime in 2015.

Announced programing partners: None. But it’s looking to change that following the recent appointment of Lindsay Gardner, the former Fox Networks and Cox Communications executive, as content advisory chair.

Advantages: Flush with startup specialists, as well as seasoned MVPD operations and engineering talent.

Disadvantages: If Layer3 TV’s plan is to pursue the market without MVPD partnerships, it will start with zero subscribers, providing a challenge to sign up customers without an established consumer brand.