The constantly percolating promises for the Internet of Things heated up this month as several forecasts envisioned accelerating IoT momentum. 

The new spate of predictions leapfrogged the promises described here. Now numbers such as $1.7 trillion or $3 trillion are the revenue targets (depending on who you believe), and 27 billion or 50 billion devices will be in use (again chose your preferred prognosticator).

Related:The IoT Customers Are Coming. Are You Ready?

Beyond the predictable inconsistent hype, though, is a fundamental recognition that processes are moving quickly now to develop applications and distribution systems for IoT ecosystems. There's plenty of talk about wireless facilities, including broadband in the IoT outlooks, but "cable" is missing from the prognosticators' papers.

Not that existing telecom carriers are absent from the IoT predictions. Indeed, this month's spate of forecasts -- from groups including Gartner, International Data Corp. (IDC),  Machina Research, ABI Research, Cisco and others -- repeatedly emphasized the importance of very short-range IoT connections, similar to the ones that cable companies' "smart home" services are beginning to offer.

Many of the IoT forecasts also concentrate on the role of "smart cities," an opportunity in which cable's core infrastructure becomes a factor.

A McKinsey research report expects that hundreds of "smart cities" worldwide by 2025 will generate 60% of global GDP. Building systems for that capacity is clearly part of the IoT equation -- especially with corporate users expected to be the primary engine for IoT initially.  

That's another opportunity for integrated cable infrastructure. (Separately, several policy development - such as the FCC's ongoing Business Data Servicesrulemaking also raise smart cities issues. In addition, groups such as the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) are examining the technical aspects of IoT security and privacy.

With the onslaught of new IoT forecasts, it's easy to get lost in the deluge of data.  A sage analysis in the IEEE Spectrumrecently pointed out that many of the IoT forecasts are based "on the demand for devices that have largely not yet been invented or commercialized."

Therein lies the challenge for cable and other infrastructure providers who are trying to foresee the facilities need to reach those unknown (unknowable) devices.

Nonetheless, the enthusiasm of this month's forecasts recognizes the quickening pace of IoT creativity. For example, IDC issued several reports in the past fortnight, including its "2016 Mid-Year Review of IoT"and its globalsurvey "International Initiatives in IoT."IDC characterized IoT as "one of the hottest technology trends across a multitude of industries."

IDC's forecasts envision a nearly 10-fold growth in IoT "actionable data" delivery between 2020 and 2025, resulting in a global annual 180 Zettabytes (that is 180 trillion gigabytes) of data created nine years from now (up from 10 Zettabytes last year).

Machina Research brings a much more conservative perspective, but still foresees a  $3 trillion  revenue opportunity from IoT by 2025. It expects that IoT will generate only 2 Zettabytes of data, mostly from consumer electronics devices. It envisions that many of the connections will be handled by Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) connections, such as LoRa (a low-power, long-range wireless protocol), Sigfox (a proprietary IoT format developed by a French firm), and LTE-NB1 (a Narrow Band wireless technology optimized for IoT).

The ABI Research study looked at the role of IoT in the emerging market for machine learning technologies for data analytics. It forecasts nearly $20 billion in revenue in 2021 "as Machine-Learning-as-a-Service (MLaaS) models take off."

To put the recent IoT hype into further perspective: They emerged just as Cisco and Intel announced massive layoffs in their traditional businesses to focus on IoT. Cisco said early this month that it would shed 5,500 staff as it "refocuses" on IoT, security, next-generation data centers and cloud" services. Intel's announcement at last week's Intel Developers Forum that it would concentrate on IoT and virtual reality followed its decision in April to lay off 12,000 employees, most of them involved with Intel's historic (but slowing) personal computer activities.

Collectively, this month's reports about IoT opportunities should fuel attention to the role that broadband operators -- with their forays into wireless micro-local delivery -- will play in the new IoT category that is both over-hyped and under-hyped simultaneously.

Pay TV subscriber rolls continued to dwindle in the seasonally weak second quarter, as losses from telco-TV service providers continued to weigh heavily on the sector.

Meanwhile, continued improvements by cable operators and declines at content providers suggest a widening gap between cord-cutters and cord-shavers.

The pay TV industry lost 757,000 basic video subscribers in the second quarter, an increase from the 683,000 it lost in the same period last year, according to MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett. Including estimates from Dish Network’s Sling TV over-the-top service, the sector lost 708,000 subscribers in 2016 and 613,000 customers in 2015.

Cable continued to temper its customer declines: It shed 242,000 video customers in the period, nearly half the 404,000 it lost in the prior year. But telco-TV losses increased exponentially at 526,000 for the quarter, compared to a gain of 5,000 in the prior year.

Satellite-TV providers continued on their roller coaster ride, adding 12,000 in the period compared to a loss of 284,000 in the prior year. Exactly where those customers are going is a little murkier. There has generally been a straight line from multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) losses to cord-cutting, but that path has become a little less clear over the past several quarters.

The Walt Disney Co. has shed more than 4 million subscribers over the past year, while content companies such as Discovery Communications and Time Warner Inc. have estimated subscriber losses of about 2%. Those figures are based on Nielsen data that doesn’t take into account over-the-top distributors (which could number about 800,000 subscribers via Moffett’s estimates) and skinny bundles from traditional and non-traditional sources.

“[H]ere’s what we do know. Cable is doing well. The telcos are doing badly. And satellite is mixed,” Moffett wrote in a note to clients.

BTIG media analyst Rich Greenfield, who has for years warned that OTT services are a real threat to the traditional MVPD subscriber base, sees the Q2 results as more evidence that the traditional pay TV model is eroding.

Though he doesn’t expect a wholesale collapse anytime soon, Greenfield wrote in a blog post that he sees the pay TV model getting slowly chipped away.

“Just a few years ago, the industry was adding video subs at a 1-2% rate; now the industry is losing 2% through cutting/shaving, not to mention the growing pressure from cord-nevers,” he wrote. Data suggests annual losses of 3, 4 or even 5% could become reality in the next few years, he added.

“It may not happen, but it certainly feels like the big TV bundle is becoming less and less important to consumers, given a poor price/value equation,” he wrote.

Moffett said telco TV’s erosion is due partly to the “perfect storm” of a strike at Verizon Communications, Frontier Communications’s initial problems in transitioning former Fios TV markets it bought earlier this year and AT&T’s conversion of U-verse TV subscribers to DirecTV.

Even considering those developments, telco TV’s reversal of fortune is extraordinary. Moffett noted that telco TV subscriptions have gone from a 6.1% increase to a 9.1% decline in just one year.

Cable operators continued to build on the momentum of past quarters. Comcast improved its video losses in Q2 to just 4,000 (compared to a loss of 69,000 in the prior year — its best second quarter in more than a decade), while Charter Communications lost 152,000 video customers in the period, better than the 170,000 it shed in Q2 2015. Cablevision, now part of Altice USA, lost just 2,000 subscribers for its best Q2 in four years.

“Can cable’s relative position get any better?” Morgan Stanley media analyst Ben Swinburne asked in a note to clients. He pointed to Charter’s improvements, adding that more are expected.

“[W]e think Charter’s best market share days remain ahead of it,” Swinburne wrote.

Pivotal Research Group CEO and senior media & communications analyst Jeff Wlodarczak said he believes cable’s momentum will continue at the expense of the telcos. “In the end, cable simply has a better mousetrap, which will become even more apparent in ’17 when cable inexpensively upgrades its network for DOCSIS 3.1 and its 1 [Gigabit-per-second]-plus potential download speeds,” he wrote in a note to clients.

As cable’s earnings season kicks off this week with Comcast reporting first-quarter results on Wednesday (April 27), analysts think tallies for the typically strong period will see big broadband and video subscriber gains for operators.

Cable operators have turned the corner on basic- video subscriber losses in the past several quarters, with Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable reporting their first basic-video customer gains in nearly a decade last year. In this year’s first quarter — typically a strong season for multichannel-TV subscriptions — the Big Three are expected to show video growth, while all four publicly traded cable operators (including Cablevision Systems) are expected to show gains in broadband customers.

Morgan Stanley media analyst Ben Swinburne said overall pay TV net additions should be down 50%, but that’s mainly due to satellite-TV subscriber losses and declining growth at the telcos. Cable operators, he said in a research note, should see gains via the likes of Comcast, Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable.

‘BIG 3’ GAINS IN SIGHT

Evercore ISI Group media analysts Vijay Jayant and David Joyce also predicted that Comcast, Charter and TWC would post video-subscriber gains, but said the overall pay TV video losses would be more moderate: about 80,000 in the period, compared to a loss of 60,000 in 2015.

Jayant and Joyce in a note said Q1 2015 was the first time pay TV showed a loss of video subscribers in the first quarter, which is typically strong despite being prime rate-increase time. The trend toward overall losses is expected to continue, the analysts said, while cable companies for the most part are expected to show gains.

Swinburne expects Comcast to gain 35,000 video customers while Charter and TWC should add 1,000 and 29,000 respectively.

Cablevision, which has struggled with aggressive discounting by Verizon Communications in its footprint, is expected to shed 23,000 video customers, according to Swinburne.

Jayant and Joyce believe Cablevision will shed about 15,000 video customers in the quarter, followed by gains at Comcast (40,000), Charter (15,000) and TWC (20,000). The analysts see most of the video losses being weathered by smaller operators, with Cable One expected to lose 22,000 video customers in the period, Suddenlink Communications — purchased by Altice in December — down about 10,000 video customers and “other” operators losing a collective 100,000 video customers.

Jayant and Joyce believe Charter will get more aggressive after its $78.7 billion deal to acquire Time Warner Cable is approved, after which he predicts the company will unleash “an arsenal of marketing campaigns.”

Already during Q1, Charter has continued its strategy of targeting satellite-TV subscribers and was giving away a free DVR to new tripleplay subscribers, the analysts said in their report.

On the broadband side, growth is expected to slow because of sluggish telco additions, but cable should continue to exert its dominance in the space.

Overall, Swinburne predicts 775,000 broadband additions, down slightly from last year as AT&T’s U-verse Internet loses 5,000 subscribers and Verizon’s Fios Internet gains 6,000, down from 41,000 in Q1 2015.

Swinburne predicted cable would grab 95% of total broadband additions in the period. Leading the charge will be Comcast (373,000), Charter (123,000), and TWC (227,000).

On the telco side, broadband additions are should continue to slide, with AT&T shedding 5,000 customers, compared to an addition of 94,000 in 2015.

Verizon, which released first-quarter results last Thursday morning, surprised many analysts on the broadband front, reporting 98,000 Fios Internet additions in the period, below the 133,000 additions of last year but still above the 6,000 that Swinburne predicted. Fios TV adds were about even with last year at 36,000, compared to 35,000 in 2015.

On the satellite side, AT&T’s DirecTV unit is expected to report 170,000 net new video subscribers in the quarter, fueled by its parent’s efforts to migrate U-verse TV customers over to the satellite platform. Earlier this month, AT&T debuted a satellite, broadband and wireline phone triple play for $90 per month that could drive additional growth.

CABLE’S BROADBAND HEFT

At Evercore ISI Group, Jayant and Joyce estimated that broadband additions will grow by 1.1 million customers in the first quarter, with cable accounting for more than 1 million of those adds. Telcos, the two analysts estimate, will account for about 50,000 broadband additions.

At Dish Network, which reported its results April 20, net new subscriber losses were 23,000 in the period, but that includes subscriber gains from its Sling TV over-the-top product. Moffett-Nathanson media analyst Craig Moffett estimated that Dish lost about 158,000 legacy satellite TV customers in the period, its worst first quarter ever.

Sling TV, Dish’s over-the-top service, grew by about 135,000 subscribers, though. Sling TV, by Moffett’s reckoning, has about 658,000 video subscribers, in line with estimates. Swinburne estimated legacy satellite losses could be in the 110,000 to 160,000 range.

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) said its “Energy 2020” program took a step forward with an initial batch of standards that focus on baseline and benchmark metrics that will help operators vastly cut down their energy output in the coming years.

Introduced last June and outlined at last year’s SCTE Cable-Tec Expo in Denver, Energy 2020’s targets include a 20% reduction of power consumption a unit basis, a 25% reduction in energy costs on a unit basis, a 10% reduction of grid dependency and an optimization of technical facility and data center footprints by 20%.

As a push toward those goals, SCTE said the program’s Energy Metrics, Data Collection & Reporting Working Group has published four standards that cover the “rack to the system level”:

-SCTE 210 2015 -- Performance Metrics for Energy Efficiency & Functional Density of Cable Data Generation, Storage, Routing, and Transport Equipment;

-SCTE 211 2015 -- Energy Metrics for Cable Operator Access Networks;

-SCTE 212 2015 -- Cable Operator Energy Audit Framework and Establishment of Energy Baseline; and

-SCTE 213 2015 – Edge and Core Facilities Energy Metrics.

Those standards follow SCTE 186 2012 (Product Environmental Requirements for Cable Telecommunications Facilities), developed and published prior to the Energy 2020 initiative that focused but wasn’t limited to cable modem termination systems, receivers, modulators, video encoders, multimedia gateways, servers, routers, and edge QAMs.

The 186 standard is considered a “stepping stone” to the new standards being announced today, Dan Cooper, vice president, critical infrastructure for Time Warner Cable and chair of the SCTE Standards Energy Management Subcommittee, said.

While more standards tied to the program are in development, establishing accepted, unified metrics that underpin the program are “key out of the gate” as MSOs look to measure and track that information on a consistent basis, Cooper explained.

He said establishing these standards were among the group’s top priorities, noting that they’ve been in development for about six months. The next steps are to get them engrained into the process as MSOS work with vendors (who are being encouraged to follow the standards,) implement upgrades and act on other buying decisions that place a greater emphasis on power consumption.

In addition to helping cable become more “green,” the program is also good for business. “Power is a cost,” Cooper said. “The more efficient we can be, the better our bottom line will be.”

He said the project is on track, but acknowledges that “it’s a pretty big undertaking.”

Energy 2020 is co-chaired by John Schanz, EVP and chief network officer of Comcast Cable; and Balan Nair, the EVP and CTO of Liberty Global. Of recent note, Dave Fellows, formerly with Comcast, AT&T Broadband and Scientific-Atlanta, and now CTO and co-founder of Layer3 TV, was named chief scientist of the initiative.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the chairs of the Senate Commerce Committee and House Energy & Commerce Committee, respectively, say they are working on legislation that would protect against online discrimination and blocking and even paid prioritization without reclassifying Internet access under Title II.

Cable operators have argued they can live with some form of all of those rules, but not under Title II common carrier regs they say could be disastrous for innovation and investment. The White House is backing Title II and does not buy those arguments, according to an official who spoke to reporters Tuesday about the President's high-speed broadband initiatives.

"We need unambiguous rules of the road that protect Internet users and can help spur job creation and economic growth," they wrote. "The rules we propose would prohibit blocking and throttling (the selective slowing of data), and also ensure that Internet service providers could not charge a premium to prioritize content delivery."

That still leaves a chance for user-directed prioritization, which is one option for paid prioritization offered up one ISP.

But they ague that using Title II, which they brand Roosevelt-era utility regs, could result in billions in higher fees, be applied to mobile broadband, which faces unique network management challenges, and would almost certainly "perpetuate years of litigation and even more uncertainty for consumers and job creators."

In a co-bylined piece for Reuters, Thune (pictured) and Upton said they were working with both sides of the aisle on compromise rules, but any Democrats signing on would have to go against the President, who has said Title II is the way to go.