Cox Communications VP of fulfillment operations LaKendra Davis Moxie will receive The WICT Network: Southern California chapter’s Catalyst Award on June 18 during the Multichannel News Wonder Women of Los Angeles gala breakfast. 

The award salutes a WICT Network: Southern California chapter member who’s had a positive impact on the industry through their mentorship, leadership and dedication to female career empowerment through involvement with WICT programs.

In her current role, Moxie heads a team of customer-experience professionals at Cox Business responsible for some $30 million in gross revenue nationally, according to WICT. Those efforts are underscored by a commitment to diversity, employee engagement and talent development.

Prior to joining Cox in 2021, she held several leadership roles at AT&T. In 2011 Moxie founded the oxyGEN organization, an employee resource group created to attract, develop and retain future leaders in business.  

“LaKendra is the perfect fit for the Catalyst Award,” WICT Network: Southern California president Jennifer Miles said in a statement. “Her commitment to her role at Cox has inspired everyone around her, but it is her work with the WICT Network, Southern California that has made her the natural choice. She has been a critical ambassador for the WICT Network’s touchstones of leadership, which include her ability to lead, coach and mentor women in our industry. I’m incredibly honored to have her accept this award on behalf of our chapter.”

Previous recipients of the chapter’s Catalyst Award include Carmen Palmer, chief product officer at Marketcast; Bonnie O’Donnell of Fox Networks; Mary Pouliopoulos, division VP, West, for Spectrum Reach, and Holly Henderson, Hallmark Media senior VP, distribution.

The WICT Network: Southern California is the event partner for the Multichannel News Wonder Women of Los Angeles awards, part of L.A. TV Week. L.A. TV Week also includes the 40 Under 40 Awards.

NBCUniversal Content Distribution said it launched an augmented reality experience centered on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live that will be available to Cox Communications and DirecTV subscribers.

Fans will be able to walk through a virtual version of the show’s Clubhouse, testing their knowledge by clicking on objects and answering trivia questions.

Fans will also be eligible to win tickets to see Watch What Happens Live.

“Cutting-edge augmented reality technology has proven to amplify viewer engagement,” NBCUniversal Content Distribution president Matt Schnaars said. “By partnering with Cox and DirecTV, we are excited to bring our loyal fans this interactive opportunity, and drive value for our distribution and advertising partners.”

Subscribers can access the Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen experience via their mobile or desktop device through a unique QR code.

The Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen experience was developed with Trigger XR.

Cox Media Group said it sent a cease-and-desist letter to Dish Network demanding the satellite-TV provider retract numerous “false claims” it says are designed to mislead customers about the dispute that resulted in a blackout of Cox’s stations to Dish subscribers this week.

“That fact is, we asked Dish for an extension of our prior contract both in writing and verbally on several different occasions,“ CMG president and CEO Daniel York said. “CMG is now publicly asking Dish yet again to put our market-leading stations back on their satellite platform under the agreement that we both have operated under for years, and we’re again inviting them to finally start engaging in a meaningful good-faith negotiation of a new contract.” 

On Monday, when 12 CMG stations went dark on Dish, Dish sent out a press release that, according to CMG, included “knowingly false statements.”

According to CMG, the claims included that the broadcaster refused to leave the channels up while negotiations continued and that CMG “underinvests in local journalism.”

“Dish’s most egregious lie is that CMG is under-investing in local journalism," said Paul Curran, executive VP of TV for CMG. “The fact is that CMG has increased investment in our news programming and product with transformative investigative journalism and a groundbreaking news and community service initiative that recently received the pinnacle of recognition for local broadcasters, the Service to America award.”

CMG called on Dish to restore the stations and begin to negotiate in good faith. ■

Cox Communications has come out on top in the latest round of the broadband advertising wars.

AT&T had appealed Cox’s “Gig Speeds Everywhere” claim in TV and radio ads to the advertising self-regulating body, the National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs.

In a decision reported Wednesday (October 26), NAD said Cox had provided a “reasonable basis” for that express claim of delivering gigabit speeds everywhere, as well as the implied comparative claim the Atlanta-based MSO can provide all of its customers with those speeds while AT&T can't provide them to its customers.

The ad in question featured a supposed text conversation between Cox and AT&T that NAD said conveyed that message.

NAD based its decision on evidence Cox provides gigabit speeds to almost any consumer it serves and to all customers in the areas where it ran the ads. NAD also said it accepted the Cox claim that less than half of AT&T Fiber customers have access to gig speeds because of the limited availability of the telco’s fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) service.

NAD, though, did recommend Cox modify the claim to make sure consumers know the gig speed applied to downloads only and not to give the impression, which was unsupported, that AT&T does not offer speeds faster than 5G in areas where it competes with Cox.

Cox said it would comply with the recommendations. ■

Cox Communications has knocked Verizon off its long-held perch as the fastest provider of fixed broadband internet in the U.S. 

Verizon had placed No. 1 in the quarterly Ookla Speedtest Intelligence ranking of fixed ISP download speeds since the beginning of 2020. But privately owned cable company Cox, delivering a download pace of 197.73 megabits per second, finished first in the second quarter. 

Verizon (171.01 Mbps) fell to fourth place, behind Comcast (184.08 Mbps) and Charter Communications (183.74 Mbps). 

There's one important caveat here: Ookla compiles its rankings based on customer-run queries on its Speedtest.net platform, and the company just switched its ranking currency from the "mean" to the "median." 

"We implemented this change to more accurately represent the typical performance that consumers actually experience on a network," an Ookla rep told CNET. 

Notably, Cox ranked No. 6 on a list of the fastest uploaded speeds for fixed providers  at 10.6 Mpbs. Verizon ranked second at 112.36, followed by first-place finisher Frontier (113.21 Mpbs). 

Verizon did still rank as the top fixed ISP provider in terms of latency, and Verizon and Cox finished Nos. 1 and 2 in regard to how their networks handle streaming video. 

In terms of regional rankings, Charter Spectrum ranked as the fasters fixed ISP in California, delivering a median download speed of 168.91 Mbps. Verizon ranked No. 1 in New York at 177.45. 

The city with the fastest internet in America? That would be Gilbert, Arizona, which had a median download speed of 253.21 Mbps in Q2.

Cox president Pat Esser has been re-elected chairman of the C-SPAN board.

That came at the public affairs networks' annual meeting, held remotely.

It is a changing of the guard nonetheless, with the election of three new directors and the exit of two of C-SPAN's longest-serving directors.

Also: C-SPAN Launches Free Mobile App

Exiting the board are John Evans, chairman of Evans Telecommunications, and Bob Miron, chairman of Advance Newhouse. Evans has been on the board since 1978 and Miron since 1986. Both are former chairs of the executive committee.

But there will still be a Miron on the board with the addition of Advance Newhouse CEO Steve Miron, who returns to the board as a senior director, joined by incoming Cox president Mark Greatrex and incoming NCTC CEO Lou Borelli, who takes the seat of his NCTC predecessor, Rich Fickle.

The current executive committee remains intact, comprising Esser (chairman); Comcast CEO Dave Watson (vice chairman); Charter president Tom Rutledge; Julie Laulis, president, Cable One; and Pat McAdaragh, president, Midco. The committee sets strategy and oversees finances.

C-SPAN is a suite of public affairs networks created and funded by the cable industry as a public service and supported by satellite and cable carriage fees.

The FCC is allowing broadband providers to get reimbursed for internet connectivity devices via the Emergency Broadband Benefit (a substantial hardship for Cox and all other EBB Program participating providers that have elected to offer a connected device. We find this waiver is in the public interest) even if their customer has switched providers since the device was supplied, saying that not to do so would prove a financial hardship on participating EBB companies.

Also Read: Emergency Broadband Benefit Sign-Ups Top Million

The FCC said the waiver would apply to all EBB participants.

Cox, joined by the National Lifeline Association, had sought a waiver of a rule prohibiting providers from seeking a reimbursement for connected devices not supplied by their current provider. The FCC will also update its Lifeline database to let those providers know whether customers have switched after getting a device.

The FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau, which granted the waiver, said it was doing so to remove a disincentive to participation in the program by broadband providers.

Cox had argued that without the waiver, it "will be unable to claim reimbursement for a device delivered to a household if, as a result of the household transferring its benefit to another provider, the household no longer receives the supported service from Cox and does not appear on Cox’s snapshot report of enrolled subscribers in the service month.

Given that a household can transfer to another EBB participating provider at any time, Cox argues, "there is a financial risk to Cox that it may offer a discount on a device for which Cox subsequently could not seek reimbursement, if the household is not served by the Cox at the time of the snapshot report..."

The FCC agreed that there is a "substantial hardship for Cox and all other EBB Program participating providers that have elected to offer a connected device," saying for that reason the waiver was in the public interest.

The FCC is currently handing out $3.2 billion in COVID 19-related broadband subsidies to make sure internet is affordable during the pandemic. Those include discounts on access devices that providers give--up to $100 dollars so long as the subscriber also pays some of the cost of the device--and then are reimbursed out of those funds.

Cox Communications said Tuesday that it has agreed to purchase the commercial enterprise and carrier business of fiber company Segra from private equity company EQT Infrastructure. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although some published reports put the value of the deal at around $3 billion.

Segra, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, is one of the largest privately held infrastructure providers in the country. As part of the deal, EQT will retain Segra’s residential and small-to-medium sized business segment in Virginia and North Carolina. Cox will acquire Segra’s commercial services segment, which serves commercial enterprise and carrier customers in nine states in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast. 

“Cox is focused on buying and investing where it makes sense, and we believe that the demand for broadband infrastructure will continue to grow, making fiber an attractive area for long-term investment,” said Cox president and CEO Pat Esser in a press release. “Acquiring Segra’s commercial services business is another key milestone in our pursuit of strategic infrastructure to ensure that we're providing the best products and services to our customers.”

Blomberg first reported Monday that Cox and EQT were in talks concerning Segra, estimating that the deal, including assumed debt, would be worth about $3 billion. 

This is the latest in a string of fiber network infrastructure investments Cox has made over the years, including EasyTel,  EdgeConneX, InSite Wireless, StackPath, Unite Private Networks and ViaWest. Once the deal is closed, the enterprise and carrier unit will retain the Segra name and its existing management team, operating as a standalone business within the Cox family of companies. 

“Our relationship with Cox will allow Segra to leverage expert resources, capabilities and strategic insights in order to scale up operations and accelerate long-term growth,” Segra CEO Timothy Biltz said in a press release. “Cox and Segra are equally devoted to the communities we serve. We will be even more strongly positioned to meet growing demand from carrier and enterprise customers for high-bandwidth fiber-infrastructure solutions. I would also like to thank EQT for its continued guidance and invaluable support as we worked to grow the business over the last nearly four years.”

Bank Street Group LLC and Goldman Sachs and Co. LLC acted as financial advisors and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP acted as legal advisor to Segra in connection with the transaction.

Fitch Ratings said debt ratings for Cox Enterprises and Cox Communications would not be affected by the transaction. Cox Enterprises has ample cash on hand after selling a majority stake in its TV and radio stations to Apollo Global Management in 2019, Fitch noted, and Cox Communications was expected to "continue to invest in strategic growth opportunities through its Cox Business segment." The deal enables Cox to exploit its fiber infrastructure and "address the overall growing demand for high capacity fiber in the commercial enterprise and carrier segment. It also allows CCI to continue its efforts to expand its addressable market footprint both organically and inorganically," Fitch said in a statement.

AT&T and Cox Media Group said they reached a new multi-year retransmission agreement, ending a blackout just hours before the start of the Super Bowl.

The blackout affected 26 stations in 20 markets, including five with the CBS affiliated stations that would have been carrying those games to subscribers of AT&T’s DirecTV, U-verse, and AT&T TV.

Also Read: Dish, WINK-TV, Fort Myers, Fla., In Pre-Super Bowl Blackout

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In the announcement of the agreement the companies said “the parties appreciate consumers’ patience during the negotiation.”

During the negotiations, AT&T went to Capitol Hill to plead its case and a top AT&T executive "demanded" that Cox return its signal before the big game.

Also, the American Television Alliance, which represents satellite and cable companies, launched an ad campaign in the markets affected warning viewers they could miss the Super Bowl.

The 20 markets involved were: Alexandria, La.; Atlanta; Binghamton, N.Y.; Boston; Charlotte; Dayton, Ohio;  Eureka, Calif.; Greenville-Greenwood, Miss.; Idaho Falls-Pocatello, Idaho;  Jacksonville, Fla.; Medford, Ore.; Memphis, Tenn.; Orlando, Fla.; Pittsburgh; Seattle; Spokane, Wash.; Syracuse, N.Y.; Tulsa, Okla.; Yakima-Tri Cities, Wash.; and Yuma, Ariz.

AT&T's federal relations staff was making its case on Capitol Hill Friday for why the company, and its video viewers, were the aggrieved parties in its retransmission consent dispute with Cox Media Group and parent Apollo Global Management.

According to a source, the two sides continued to negotiate as AT&T reached out to legislators and Hill staffers, specifically staffers in offices of legislators whose constituents were affected by the blackouts, as well as the appropriate members of the Senate Commerce and House Energy & Commerce Committees that oversee communications issues. 

Also Read: Cox Media Stations Get Blacked Out on AT&T

According to a copy of an e-mail to those legislators and Hill staffers providing an "Update on Negotiations with Cox Media Group" obtained by Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, AT&T said that DirecTV customers in five Cox markets would lose their "preferred access" to the Super Bowl Feb. 7. (AT&T conceded that CBS and the NFL would both be live streaming it.)

AT&T said that did not have to be the case. "We are committed to continuing to negotiate with CMG to come to a resolution that is good for our customers," it said, but urged CMG in the meantime "to immediately return its local stations to our customers while we negotiate." 

Also Read: AT&T Pushes Ways to Watch Super Bowl Despite CMG Blackout

Broadcasters argue that the rise in retransmission consent fees is because their high-value content is finally getting a market rate after years of being undervalued. They also argue that blackouts, or as they see them, the removal of a signal when the contract for its carriage expires without a new contract at a fair price, is a negotiating tool it would be unfair for the government to deny them. 

"[I]n the midst of an ongoing pandemic and just before Super Bowl LV, CMG pulled its stations from our DirecTV, U-verse, and AT&T TV customers," AT&T told Congress.

Also Read: Congressman Jared Huffman Calls on Cox to Restore Channels

The company said it had agreed to pay retroactively whatever rate they eventually agreed on in continuing negotiations (called a "true up") if CMG had continued to provide them the signal during those negotiations, but that, instead, "CMG put our shared customers into the middle of a private business matter by intentionally blacking out local stations in 20 markets," and "in the midst of an ongoing pandemic" as well as on the eve of the Big Game.

Given that legislators hear it from their constituents when there are blackouts that affect their districts, then let the companies hear it, AT&T wanted to make it clear that "without CMG’s consent, AT&T cannot retransmit its stations to our customers....We share our customers’ frustration and recognize it’s time to end this cycle of increasing fees and ongoing blackouts."

Also Read: ATVA Urges Retrans Reform

The letter cites National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith, himself a former member of Congress, and assurances he gave during a C-SPAN interview that broadcasters “recognize the public responsibility to not have service interruptions during this time.” But Smith also said in that interview that it takes two and he hoped "the MVPDs share that same public spiritedness and give broadcasters fair value." 

"Stations owned by CMG and their parent company, Wall Street mammoth Apollo Global Management, have previously staged blackouts at the most inconvenient times for customers," AT&T told legislators. "But their decision to do so now – in the middle of a pandemic and just prior to the Super Bowl – represents a new low in the never-ending cycle of higher fees and blackouts."

The American Television Alliance (ATVA) is calling on Washington to reform the retrans system, using the current Cox Media/DirecTV retransmission consent impasse as exhibit A.

Cox stations in 20 markets went off the satellite operator this week after Cox said DirecTV wouldn't accept a fair price for carriage of its valuable content and DirecTV owner AT&T said Cox was seeking a "take it or leave it" price for "free" TV.

Both parties in retransmission consent negotiations are required to negotiate in good faith per FCC rules. Last year, the FCC proposed its first-ever fine for failing to negotiate in good faith, a compliant filed by AT&T. 

Also Read: FCC Proposes $10M Fine in First-Ever Retrans Negotiations Fines

ATVA, whose membership includes AT&T, Dish, and various cable operators, blamed broadcasters for this and other blackouts and said it was time for Washington to reform retrans, something the group has been pushing for for years.

“Even during a public health crisis, broadcasters have increasingly relied on underhanded retransmission blackouts to price-gouge American television consumers,” said Jessica Kendust, a spokeswoman for ATVA, in a statement Wednesday (Feb. 3). “Policymakers simply must hold broadcasters, like Cox, accountable for these egregious practices by advancing consumer-friendly broadcast distribution reforms.”

Also Read: Stations Reaped Blackout Bounty

ATVA argues that broadcaster retrans fee increases are unwarranted while broadcasters have argued they are seeking a fair price for high-value content that has previously been underpriced.

Cox Media Group and Altice USA/Suddenlink have struck a retransmission consent deal for multiple stations in six markets.

The stations in Tulsa, Okla.; Memphis, Tenn.; Spokane, Wash.; Eureka, Calif.; Greenville-Greenwood, Miss; and Alexandria, La, have been off Suddenlink systems since Jan. 8, when Cox invoking the pandemic and the importance of local station connectivity to argue that Suddenlink had made and anti-consumer decision by not agreeing to a "fair market deal."

Also Read: ACAC: NCTC Retransmission Consent Good Faith Protections Yield Results

So did Suddenlink during the impasse, saying in a statement: “Despite being in the midst of a pandemic when access to affordable news is incredibly critical, Cox Media Group has pulled its channels from Suddenlink TV lineups in certain markets in an effort to extract an exorbitant increase in fees from us and our customers," Suddenlink, part of Altice U.S., said in a statement."

"The parties wish to thank consumers for their patience during this negotiation," the companies said in a statement announcing the pact.

Jon Lafayette contributed to this report.

Cox CEO Pat Esser has been elected chairman of the board of C-SPAN, the suite of public service networks funded by the cable industry.

That came at C-SPAN's virtual board meeting. "I’m proud to be part of the team of cable operators who financially support and distribute this vital network that gives government visibility to millions of Americans every day," said Esser in a statement.

Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson, who has been executive committee chairman, is vice chairman of the board.

Earlier this year, Watson was elected chairman of the board of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, succeeding Esser. 

Elected to a two-year term on the C-SPAN board was Vyve Broadband president Phil Spencer. Re-elected to their seats were NCTC president Rich Fickle and Bob Miron, retired chair of Advance/Newhouse.

Also joining the board as senior executive directors are C-SPAN co-CEOs Rob Kennedy and Susan Swain.

The C-SPAN executive committee, the board working group that oversees C-SPAN finances comprises Esser, Watson, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge; Cable One CEO Julie Laulis, and Midco CEO Pat McAdaragh.

The FCC has granted Cox and Comcast petitions for "effective competition" determinations in a number of Massachusetts counties, citing over-the-top service AT&T Now as the effective competitor.

In October 2019, the FCC made its first determination that over-the-top streaming video service was a competitor to cable systems in local markets, granting an effective competition petition from Charter in Massachusetts also citing AT&T Now (formerly DirecTV Now). 

Also Read: FCC Says OTT is Effective Competition

A finding of effective competition lifts basic-cable price regulation, which has now been eliminated in all but a handful of systems thanks to the ubiquity of satellite service. Cable operators deemed subject to effective competition also do not have to provide broadcast TV signals on the basic tier, though they still do.

Comcast and Cox then followed suit with their own petitions, citing the Charter precedent.

"Comcast and Cox, however, have reasonably demonstrated that AT&T TV NOW can and does reach consumers in the Franchise Areas either with their affiliated broadband Internet access service or that of a competitor," the Media Bureau said in granting the petitions.

The Charter decision did not stop the State of Massachusetts from opposing the Cox and Comcast petitions.

Classifying as 'effective competition' a non-facilities-based video service like AT&T TV Now, which requires the broadband facilities of a third party like Cox to get its video to its customers, would undermine the commission’s policy goal of encouraging facilities-based investment and limiting regulation of the internet," the state argued.

Following that logic Disney Plus and Netflix and others would not meet the definition of video service competition to traditional cable, even though they are clearly pulling eyeballs away from both day-and-date and VOD cable content.

Netflix certainly doesn't see it that way. In a 10-K filing it said its competition includes MVPDs, and points out that it has more than 167 million paid subscribers.

While the FCC prefers facilities-based competition, it does not exclude non-facilities-based competitors from the regulatory conversation in other areas. For example, it approved the T-Mobile-Sprint deal in part because Dish gets to run the companies' spun-off prepaid wireless business, which still requires Dish to use the Sprint and T-Mobile facilities, as part of the effort to create a competitor to the merged wireless providers.

To avoid a return to basic cable regulations, cable operators are looking to establish the precedent that OTT video maintains the effective competition status of almost all systems today, and do so now, as cord-cutting continues to cut into subscriber counts for traditional competitors and as over-the-top becomes the video delivery system of choice for former satellite customers.

Cable companies fear that if the subscriber counts for DirecTV or Dish Network go south, local franchise authorities could cite that as a reason they were no longer subject to effective competition and reinstate basic rate regulations.

The item raises the issue of just how the FCC should define OTT services beyond effective competition, and the specter of subjecting them to the same regulatory regime, such as program-access and program-carriage rules.

The C-Band auction has pushed past $2 billion, totaling $2,110,528,700 in bids after three rounds.

Currently (Wednesday, Dec. 9), bidding is in three, one-hour rounds and the FCC has announced that Thursday's bidding will follow the same schedule, with rounds at 10-11 a.m., 1-2 p.m., and 4-5 p.m.

Related: FCC Sets C-Band Auction for December

If past is prologue, the FCC will eventually increase the number of rounds and decrease bidding time to help speed the auction.

Fifty-seven bidders qualified for the auction (auction 107), which began Dec. 8. That list includes some familiar names: AT&T, Cellco Partnership, Cox, T-Mobile, and United States Cellular.

The FCC is auctioning 5,684 flexible-use licenses for spectrum in the 3.7– 3.98 GHz band in the contiguous U.S. 

While use is flexible, bidders are expected to use it to expand their 5G footprints. There are 57 qualified bidders.

Some predictions put the value of the spectrum--280 GHz worth of midband frequencies--at $25 billion-$30 billion, but the C-Band Alliance says it could be worth as much as $77 billion.

The FCC said that 57 bidders have qualified for its upcoming C-band spectrum auction (auction 107), which begins Dec. 8. It has some familiar names including AT&T, Cellco Partnership, Cox, T-Mobile, and United States Cellular.

Specifically, the FCC is auctioning flexible-use licenses in the 3.7–3.98 GHz band.

All 57 have been automatically registered for the auction. Of those, 22 applied for rural building credits, while 18 applied for small business credits.

Related: FCC Sets C-Band Auction for December

Being qualified means that their short-form applications have been deemed complete and in compliance. The FCC also said 17 applicants were not qualified to bid.

The FCC voted last February to free up 300 MHz of the C-Band for 5G, 280 of that to be auctioned and 20 MHz to be used as a guard band between wireless users and the incumbent satellite operators that will use the remaining 200 MHz to continue to deliver network programming to broadcaster and cable operator (and other) clients.

The C-Band Alliance has predicted the value of the midband 5G "sweet spot" C-Band spectrum at as much as $77 billion at auction.

Saying the COVID-19 pandemic can't be allowed to create an "irreversible" learning gap for students without access to the internet, Cox is teaming up with Common Sense Media to try and do something about it.

Cox President Pat Esser; Michael Powell, president of NCTA-the Internet & Television Association; Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer; and others unveiled the initiative at a virtual press conference Tuesday (Sept. 29).

Related: Dems Push $4 Billion for Distance Learning

Esser and Powell unveiled a big bucks initiative during the virtual press conference with Cox pledging $60 million over the next year to help close the digital learning divide.

"Our commitment remains strong, but we cannot do this alone. We need to keep partnering with cities, school districts, counties and community-based organizations to get families connected," said Esser.

Cox will also extend its offer to new Connect2Compete customers. If they sign up by year's end, they will get two months free, followed by $9.95 per month internet. Cox's outdoor WiFi hotspots will also remain open to all comers. Both of those were part of its commitment to keep Americans connected during the pandemic.

The company has also launched Cox CARES Act Solutions for Education to help states and localities spend the billions of dollars in CARES Act COVID-19 aid that can be used for distance learning.

Elsewhere on the cable broadband front, Charter has re-instituted its pandemic-prompted 60-day free internet/WiFi offer for homes with K-12 and college kids, as well as for teachers.

As schools attempt to reopen virtually, or with a mix of in-person and virtual instruction, making sure as many students--and teachers--have access to broadband as possible is more important than ever. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has freed up more funding as well as pushing Congress to allocate more funds for distance learning and states to use some of the billions already available for distance learning, while Hill Democrats have been pushing Pai to interpret the FCC's E-rate broadband subsidy restriction on funding to classroom broadband and equipment to include remote learning and equipment for the "home" classroom, something Pai has so far said the statute does not allow.

Seemingly aware that self back-patting doesn’t present great optics right now, cable network operators and their associated vendors are at least indulging in well-earned sighs of relief.

With NCTA–The Internet & Television Association showing an aggregate traffic increase of 16% for downstream data and 34% for upstream, cable operators — which collectively control two-thirds of U.S. wireline broadband connections — are seeing the sharp usage increases on their networks during the COVID-19 pandemic hit a plateau, with few instances of major outage or service interruption.

“They probably should pat themselves on the back,” said CommScope Broadband Networks chief technology officer Tom Cloonan. “Their networks have helped hold society together at a crucial time.”

Speaking during a virtual panel event on April 28 conducted by Cisco, Cox Communications chief technology officer Kevin Hart conceded, “It’s been a mad dash over the last few months, but our networks have held up well.”

From virtually every point on the cable engineering spectrum, the message has been similar. Operators have designed their networks anticipating usage patterns 12 to 18 months in advance, with plenty of headroom built in.

In some cases, though, the margin of error hasn’t been all that thick.

Built to Survive

Hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) network engineers have managed to “survive” a harrowing two months in which their networks — particularly on the upstream end, with suddenly house-bound residential customers engaged in vastly greater video-conferencing activity — “close to running out of stream,” Cloonan said.

CommScope, he said, has kept up a steady dialogue with engineers working for its operator clients, teaching them how to remotely fine-tune complicated configuration settings that had been merely adjusted to an “OK” performance level in the aftermath of the industry conversion to DOCSIS 3.1. (It’s akin to learning how to fine-tune the picture settings on your flat screen two years after taking the thing out of the box.)

This includes turning on additional channels at the cable modem termination system (CMTS) level, even those that had been in noisy “keep out” regions of the plant spectrum. They also include adjusting the buffer control settings on user modems.

“Operators have been calling us, looking for things they can do in the near term, remotely from a PC on a software level,” Cloonan said. “There have been a lot of phone calls covering a lot of topics over the last seven weeks. There are a few knobs you can turn and a few tricks you can perform. We’re all trying to squeeze every megabit out of the box we can right now.”

Beyond conducting fine-tune optimization initiatives, operators are beginning more aggressive node optimization projects that involve truck rolls and, perhaps, a bit more risk to staff.

Operators, Cloonan said, have been “kind of awakened” during the pandemic that while they’ve managed to pull through, their plants lack “infinite resources.” That has inspired some engineering teams, for example, to upgrade the upstream signals from their plants to 85 Megahertz from 42 MHz.

Hart said that “99%” of Cox’s network nodes “are in a healthy state.” But Cox did physically address “those having a problem with things like taking fiber deeper and doing node splits.”

Comcast, meanwhile, has been “running additional fiber and optical nodes” to “give us more headroom,” the company’s top technologist, Tony Werner, told reporters during a recent briefing. That work, Werner said, was in addition to a significant increase in the amount of remote “dial turns” conducted by Comcast engineers to the network.

Cloonan noted: “Every time you do a node split, you reduce the number of subscribers who have to share bandwidth. And I think we’ll be seeing a lot more note splits in the coming months. But this is something your techs can’t do from their homes. You have to roll trucks.”

Tomorrow’s Network, Today

Moderating the virtual panel presentation, Jonathan Davis, senior VP and GM of mass-scale infrastructure for Cisco, said, “As a result of COVID-19, we’re getting a glimpse of what the future of the internet is today.”

Most folks in the cable technology business seem to agree that, regardless of whether or not efforts are successful in tamping down COVID-19 and people return to their offices anytime soon, network usage will probably never again go down to February 2020 levels.

So assuming that — save for a few tweaks — the HFC network of today has proven up to the task of handling the worst crisis so far of the 21st century, will cable operators hold off on making major investments into new network technology?

The first very early indicator suggests the answer is … maybe. Harmonic just reported decelerating deployments in the first quarter for its disruptive converged cable access platform (CCAP) virtualization software, CableOS, with commercial deployments slowing to 17%.

Cloonan, though, believes the pandemic will only inspire operators to prioritize movements toward new technologies that include not just virtualization but also Extended Spectrum DOCSIS and Full Duplex DOCSIS, both of which are included in CableLabs recently published DOCSIS 4.0 specification.

“Every operator will look at what has happened and make a decision on how to analyze it and view,” Cloonan said. “But most will realize that they snuck through. Barely.” 

As the likelihood that the bulk of the country will be able to return to work and school before the end of May becomes less of a reality, Cox Communications and Altice USA have joined other cable operators and telcos in extending their commitment to the FCC’s "Keep Americans Connected" pledge through June 30.

The FCC first proposed the pledge in March, and most broadband providers across the country signed on, agreeing not to disconnect broadband customers for non payment during the COVID-19 pandemic, waiving late fees and opening WiFi hotspots to the public.

Cox and Altice USA are the latest to renew their commitment to the pledge -- Comcast, AT&T and Verizon Communications also have committed through June 30. In addition, Cox said it would extend existing offerings to provide support for customers in communities in greatest need.

“From our continued support of the FCC’s initiative to the extension of our other relief offerings, our focus remains on ensuring our customers stay connected and have the speeds they need to work and learn from home,” Cox CEO Pat Esser said in a press release. “We do not want our customers to worry about losing essential services during this time of need.”

In addition, Cox is extending previously announced relief offerings to provide continued support and relief for customers and communities in greatest need.

Cox is also offering through July 15:

• Free Connect2Compete service, Cox’s low-cost internet product for families with school-aged children who are enrolled in low-income assistance programs. Customers must sign up before May 15 to qualify. All new customers that have enrolled since March 13 will receive free service through July 15.
• Upgraded speeds of 50 Mbps download for residential customers in the company’s Starter, StraightUp Internet and Connect2Compete packages.
• For those tiers, free Cox Complete Care phone and remote desktop support for residential customers providing assistance for loading new applications they may need to use during this time like online classroom support applications and web conferencing services.

Residential customers can still take advantage of a $19.99 offer for new Starter internet customers through May 15, which includes a temporary boost up to 50 Mbps download speeds, no annual contract or qualifications to help low income homes and those impacted from coronavirus challenges, like seniors and college students.

Altice USA signed on to the Keep America Connected pledge in March, and said it also will extend its participation through June 30. Earlier, Altice USA extended its free student broadband and WiFi offers through the 2019-2020 school year. 

Cox has sent out a notice to its residential customers that Cox technicians will no longer be making in-home visits.

They will still be coming to homes, just keeping "a safe distance outside" connecting with residents for "remote assistance" via video chats.

"You will get the support you need to stay connected," the company assured its subs, but also asked them to help themselves to manage their service whenever possible.

Cox has also reduced the hours of its Cox Stores, it told them.

"The health and safety of our employees, customers, and communities is our number one priority," the email read. "That’s why we are taking additional steps to help keep both you and our employees safe during the Coronavirus crisis, while keeping you connected to the things that matter most."

The spread of the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on the economy, as new cases continue to surface worldwide and in the United States, forcing some cities to ban gatherings of more than 50 people and businesses increasingly requiring employees to work from home. While more and more communities shut down restaurants and bars and urge people to keep at least a 6-foot distance from each other when venturing outside, the media business has responded quickly, postponing events, banning live studio audiences from show tapings, compressing pay TV windows for some movies, and expanding broadband offerings as consumers are increasingly confined to their homes.

So far, according to Johns Hopkins University, globally the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has ballooned to 207,518 worldwide (up from 120,000 just a week ago) and deaths have risen to 8,248. In the U.S., confirmed COVID-19 cases have more than tripled to nearly 6,000 with 107 deaths and the U.S. and Canada have agreed to close their 5,500-mile border to all unessential travel. 

Broadband

Cable operators and pay TV distributors across the country have stepped up to ensure that all residents have access to broadband, with most offering free high-speed internet service to non-customers with school-age children. Cox, Comcast, Charter, AT&T and Altice USA all have announced programs aimed at broader broadband access, as have a large number of rural and small market operators.

Related: Residential Data Usage Soars Amid COVID-19 Social Distancing 

In addition to offering faster broadband speeds to low-income residents  Mediacom Communications chairman and CEO Rocco Commisso also is helping to raise money for hospitals in Florence, Italy -- home to his pro soccer team ACF Fiorentina -- starting a Go Fund Me to raise €500,000. Commisso’s family personally kicked in €250,000 to kickstart the effort. 

Many operators also have signed on to Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai’s Keep American Connected Pledge, vowing not to disconnect any broadband customer for non-payment issues associated with the outbreak, waive late fees and open WiFi hotspots to non customers. 

Pai also called for cable and broadcast distributors to call a truce to retransmission consent blackouts during the outbreak, and at least one dispute -- between Cox Media and Dish -- has been put on hold through the pandemic.

Related: BroadbandNow: Most Home Internet Connections Holding Up 

Sports

As fears mounted over large gatherings of people potentially accelerating the spread of the virus, sporting events began to feel the heat, with the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League suspending their seasons. Major League Soccer said it would suspend its season for 30 days because of the virus.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver made the decision to suspend league play on March 11, after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert (and later guard Donovan Mitchell) tested positive for COVID-19.

WarnerMedia’s Turner Sports carries NBA games on its TBS and TNT networks, and Turner Sports said it supports the NBA’s decision.

On March 12 the National Collegiate Athletic Association decided to cancel its Men’s and Women’s Division I Basketball Championships, also known as “March Madness,” a day after initially saying the tournaments would be held in empty arenas. After consulting with its membership — and after two major men’s basketball powerhouses, Duke University and the University of Kansas, suspended their athletic programs — the NCAA decided to throw in the towel. 

Related: Moody’s: Sports Cancellations Could Hurt Programmers 

CBS and Turner hold the television rights to the NCAA tournament, which was scheduled for March 19- April 8. In a joint statement, CBS and Turner said they support the group’s decision.

Golf fans also were disappointed after the PGA Tour canceled all of its tournaments leading up to and including The Masters golf tourney, which was originally scheduled for April 9-12. 

Other postponements include the Kentucky Derby and the French Open,  now scheduled for Sept 5 and Sept. 20, respectively. 

Major League Baseball on March 12 said it was cancelling Spring Training and would delay Opening Day dates for the regular season by at least two weeks. 

The NHL has 189 games remaining, including 10 scheduled for March 13. The regular season was scheduled to end April 4, with the Stanley Cup Playoffs starting the week of April 6.

WWE said it would relocate its April 5 WrestleMania 36 event from Tampa to an Orlando, Fla., facility without a live audience. 

A ban on gatherings and events of more than 250 people in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties in Washington state imposed by Gov. Jay Inslee meant that an XFL contest in Seattle between the Dragons and the Los Angeles Wildcats on March 14 also would be played without fans. Later, the XFL announced it too would suspend its regular season. 

The biggest question in sports remains whether the International Olympic Committee will postpone or cancel the Summer Olympic Games, scheduled for July in Tokyo, which has been hit hard by COVID-19. At press time, the IOC maintained the games will go ahead as planned, which should be good news for U.S. broadcast rightsholder Comcast NBCUniversal. Comcast has said that even if the Olympics were canceled, which some analysts predicted could result in as much as $1 billion in lost ad revenue over the two weeks of the Games, it has adequate insurance to protect the company.

On March 17, the International Olympic Committee said the Games are expected to go on as planned.

“The IOC remains fully committed to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, and with more than four months to go before the Games there is no need for any drastic decisions at this stage; and any speculation at this moment would be counter-productive,” the IOC said in a statement.

Content

Some content produces have decided to collapse windows for movies in light of the COVID-19 outbreak, including NBCUniversal and Disney,

As theaters across the country are shutting their doors, NBCU said it would make some movies like The Hunt, The Invisible Man and Emma, available for rental on a number of on-demand services beginning March 20. Trolls World Tour, will stream on April 10, the day it was also set to debut in theaters.

Disney made its popular animated movie Frozen 2 available on its Disney + streaming service on March 15, about three months ahead of schedule.

At Warner Bros., Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey is expected to be available on pay-per view on March 24. 

Production schedules for programming across the distribution spectrum have been postponed, with broadcasters and cable networks halting taping of live late night talk shows and scripted and unscripted shows.

The Walt Disney Co. said production on Grey’s Anatomy, Genius: Aretha and several other shows would be halted due to the outbreak. 

FX, another Disney property, said earlier that it would push back the premiere of season 4 of Fargo to April 19 because of production delays related to the coronavirus outbreak. 

Network upfronts have either been canceled or transformed to a digital format, including:

CBS: Originally scheduled for May 13 at New York’s Carnegie Hall, CBS said it would reschedule the event for a later date.

NBCUniversal: NBCU said it would cancel its upfront, opting to televise and stream its presentation for the 2020-2021 season “to ensure the safety of all participants while also reflecting the increasingly direct relationship between NBCUniversal, its fans and its partners.”

Fox: Fox joined the fray later in the day, announcing that it would cancel its upfront presentation originally scheduled for May 11.

The CW: CW also said it would cancel its live upfront in May, and was exploring alternative ways to present its lineup to advertisers.

Discovery Inc.: Canceled its live upfront, scheduled for May 12. 

The Walt Disney Co.: Disney announced on March 12 that it too would cancel the upfronts for its networks and streaming service Hulu.

AT&T’s WarnerMedia and its advanced advertising unit Xandr said they also would alter plans for the upfronts.

Other networks that postponed, canceled or modified upfront events include:

• Fox News Channel canceled its live upfront in New York scheduled for March 24;

• Comcast postponed the March 12 upfront for its Freewheel cable network;

• AMC Networks canceled its March 18 upfront presentation in New York.

• A+E Networks said it would replace its live March 25 upfront meeting with a series of virtual presentations conducted on an agency-by-agency basis.

According to reports Universal Television put on hold several productions that haven’t started yet, like season 2 of Russian Doll (Netflix) and Little America (Apple) and season one of Rutherford Falls (Peacock).

Stock Market

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell into bear market territory March 11, ending an 11-year bull run as investors continued to panic over the pandemic. Since then the Dow has been on a rollercoaster -- dropping a record 3,000 points March 16, rising more than 1,000 points the next day (March 17) and dipping more than 1,900 points in afternoon trading March 18.

The market has erased the gains that began nearly four years ago with the beginning of the Trump administration. For cable, many stocks that saw record growth in 2019 -- like Comcast, Altice USA, Disney and Fox -- have retreated back to pre-2018 levels.

Disney, which has huge businesses in theme parks and cruise lines that have been shut down in the wake of the pandemic, saw its stock fall to $79.07 per share (down 15.5%) in early trading March 18, its lowest point in six years.

Industry Conferences

As fears that the ban on large gatherings will last long into the summer, many organizations are postponing industry get-togethers in the name of caution. On Wednesday (March 18)

The Cable Center said it decided to postpone its 23rd annual Cable Hall of Fame gala, originally scheduled for April 30 in New York, to sometime in the fall. The group said it would announce a firm date in the future. 

Earlier, the National Association of Broadcasters’ said it would postpone its April 18-22 NAB Show in Las Vegas, adding it is working on alternative dates for the conference.

The coronavirus has forced several smaller industry conferences and fundraisers scheduled for March to postpone their dates, including the ACA Connects policy summit, scheduled for March 17-19 in Washington, D.C.; the T. Howard Foundation’s annual fundraising dinner in New York on March 25; and the International Wireless Communications Expo, slated for March 30-April 3 in Las Vegas.

The LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition also cancelled its annual event at the NAB Show in Las Vegas due to coronavirus concerns. The event, now in its seventh year, was scheduled for April 17.

MIPTV, the international TV conference that was scheduled to be held in Cannes, France March 30-April 2 has been canceled, as has the Google I/O Developers Conference set for May 12-14 in Mountain View Calif.

The Paley Center for Media also announced that it was postponing its PaleyFest event, scheduled for March 13-22 in Los Angeles, to a later date.

HBO said it would postpone its Night of Too Many Stars: America Unites for Autism Programs gala to a later date. 

Cox Communications is joining other cable operators in battling the coronavirus, with plans to offer a low-income internet tier with no annual contract and relaxing data usage overage charges for all tiers.

“As we are all adapting in these uncertain times, Cox is continuing to focus on our customers with the greatest need to ensure they have the tools to work and learn from home,” said Pat Esser, president and chief executive officer of Cox Communications. “We remain committed to keeping our customers connected and supporting the communities we serve.”

Cox is offering the following over the next 60 days, through May 15:

• A $19.99 offer for new Starter internet customers with a temporary boost up to 50 Mbps download speeds, no annual contract or qualifications to help low income and those impacted from Coronavirus challenges, like seniors and college students.
• Eliminating data usage overages beginning today to meet the higher bandwidth demands. Customers with a 500 GB or Unlimited data usage add-on plan will receive credits.

Cox already has joined other cable operators in pledging to support the Federal Communications Commission Keep America Connected initiatives by agreeing not to terminate residential or small business service for an inability to pay their bill due to disruptions caused by the virus; waiving any late fees associated with the pandemic and opening up its WiFi outdoor hotspots. In addition, Cox said it will:

• Provide temporary increases for residential customers in the company’s Starter, StraightUp Internet and Connect2Compete packages to speeds of 50 Mbps.
• Extend Cox Complete Care remote desktop support at no charge to residential customers in those tiers to provide remote helpdesk and assistance for loading new applications they may need to use during this time like online classroom support applications and web conferencing services.
• Offer the first month free to new customers of Connect2Compete, Cox’s low-cost internet product for families with school-aged children who are enrolled in low-income assistance programs ensuring digital equity for students without internet at home. Schools are being asked to contact connectnow@cox.com with a list of eligible low-income students that currently do not have an internet connection.
• Fast-track the qualification process for Connect2Compete and partnering with PCs for People where families can purchase discounted refurbished computers. More information can be found here: https://cox.pcsrefurbished.com/.
• Increase the speeds of its Essential tier customers from 30 Mbps to 50 Mbps, which was originally planned for later in the year. 

A dozen prominent Democratic House members have written to the CEO's of the major broadband providers, cable and telecom, to ask how they are preparing for potential closures and disruptions related to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. 

Those closures and disruptions increased exponentially Thursday (March 12) with school closings and notifications of major teleworking efforts. 

The legislators are particularly concerned about those on the "wrong side" of the digital divide," including the some 12 million school-aged children without broadband in the home. 

They pointed out that even if they have a smartphone and wireless subscription, they could quickly exceed a data cap when trying to telework or use telehealth services, or monitor information about the virus. Then there is the issue of having to pay the broadband bill in a time of financial hardship. 

"As an operator of a network so critical to ensuring vital education, health, and employment continuity, we hope that you are thoughtfully considering all the ways you can serve the broader community during this worldwide challenge," they wrote. 

Anticipating that question, NCTA-The Internet & Television Association has said its members are doing just that, and Comcast already announced it would be providing free broadband for new low-income subscribers for 60 days and is boosting speeds at no additional cost. Verizon and AT&T have also weighed in on the issue. 

FCC chair Ajit Pai was getting out in front of the issue Thursday (March 12). He was on a conference call with ISPs urging them to lower costs and boost speeds given that the coronavirus is likely to drive more people online to work and study and get healthcare. 

FCC Democrats have called for suspending data caps.

NCTA: Cable Stepping Up to Confront Coronavirus

The legislators acknowledged efforts by Comcast and AT&T (which is suspending data overage charges) regarding "first steps" to support customers, and others who have been "thinking constructively." But they have want details, and ASAP. The letter asks for written plans, including timelines and dates, by next week, for, at a minimum: 

• "Ways you are working with schools to ensure that students without access to broadband service at home will be able to participate in remote learning during school closures;

• "Steps you are taking to connect those without broadband service at home, particularly with regard to low-income individuals and those who live in areas highly affected by COVID-19;

• "Ways you are working with partners in private industry to identify connectivity needs unique to this threat, and solutions for addressing those unique needs;

• "Steps you are taking to assist individuals facing financial hardship due to circumstances related to COVID-19 who are unable to pay their bills for internet and phone service, including by extending bill due dates, waiving late fees, and providing service at no cost for a short duration;

• "Ways to address the potential for increased customer service calls if more people are relying on home broadband service for an extended period of time; and

• "How to ensure that a significant shift of broadband usage from enterprise networks to residential connections for an extended period of time will not cause debilitating strain on the network."

Getting the letters were the CEOs of Cox, Altice, Frontier, T-Mobile, CenturyLink, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast. Sending the letter were Reps. Jerry McNerney, Mike Doyle, Lisa Blunt Rochester, Tony Cardenas, Yvette Clarke, Diana Degette, Anna Eshoo, Ben Ray Lujan, Doris Matsui, A. Donald McEachin, Jan Schakowsky and Peter Welch.

Cox Communications said it has reached a long-term carriage deal with Fox Corp. that covers its broadcast stations and its news and sports networks.

According to the deal, terms of which were not disclosed, Cox will carry Fox’s owned and operated television stations in its territories, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, sports channels FS1 and FS2, Big Ten Network and Fox Deportes.

“This renewal extends the productive partnership we’ve long had with Cox and ensures that millions of our viewers across the country will continue to enjoy Fox’s leading sports, entertainment and news programming for years to come,” Fox president of operations and distribution Michael Biard said in a press release. 

NCC Media, the TV ad sales and technology company owned by Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications, has changed its name to Ampersand, adding that it plans to aggregate viewership data from its partners for targeted advertising and to build on its Open AP partnership.

The new name reflects the company's mission of unifying the TV advertising ecosystem across all screens, inventory and audiences, Ampersand said in a press release.

In addition, Ampersand said it has unified aggregated viewership data from nearly 40 million households in the Comcast, Charter and Cox footprints. The company added it is building on its Open AP partnership, allowing advertisers who work with Ampersand’s Client Partnerships team to directly share audience definitions created in OpenAP for expression and use in local advanced advertising.

As part of that expanded relationship, Ampersand said it will serve as part of the central hub for network-enabled addressable ads for Comcast, Charter and Cox. Working in partnership with Canoe, Ampersand will help TV programmers enable addressable capabilities on their national linear and VOD TV inventory.

"Thirty years ago, NCC showed the TV world the power of working together, unifying the fragmented cable TV ad market within a single, open platform for the benefit of advertisers, agencies and MVPDs," Ampersand CEO Nicolle Pangis said in a press release. "The Ampersand name and the new audience products represent both a nod to our past and our vision for a successful TV future in which the industry rallies around a shared approach for connecting brands to audiences across the entirety of the viewing experience."

Cox Communications and Fox Sports Regional Networks have signed a longterm carriage renewal deal that will keep 15 RSNs on the set-tops of just under 4 million remaining Cox pay TV homes.

The carriage renewal deal, which appears to have followed a negotiation that didn’t publicly leak any drama, comes as the Fox RSNs are blacked out on Dish Network. It also comes as Major League Baseball playoff races begin to heat up.

Related: Fox RSNs Go Dark to Dish Customers

The Cox lineup of Fox RSNs includes: Fox Sports Arizona, Fox Sports Florida, Fox Sports Kansas City, Fox Sports Midwest, Fox Sports New Orleans, Fox Sports Ohio, Fox Sports Oklahoma, Fox Sports Prime Ticket, Fox Sports San Diego, Fox Sports South, Fox Sports Southeast, Fox Sports Southwest, Fox Sports Sun, Fox Sports West and SportsTime Ohio.

“This long-term renewal reinforces the value the RSNs provide to the fans,” said Mike Angus, head of distribution, Fox Sports Regional Networks.

“Our goal is to connect our customers with the content that they care about most,” adde Andy Albert, Cox’s senior VP content acquisition. “We’re pleased to have reached a long-term agreement that will allow us to provide quality local sports coverage to our customers for many years to come.”

SCTE said it's helping Cox Communications create a program to train the cable company’s technician’s in the art of coax splicing.

Cox and the Society of Cable Technology Engineers have collaborated to create the Coax Splicing Boot Camp. The four-day course is designed to train field personnel to re-splice taps, passives and nodes. The course was initially delivered to Cox field engineers in Phoenix, in conjunction with a multi week on-boarding boot camp. A boot camp was also conducted in California.

Topics covered in the program include: field safety; signaling and transmission in cable networks; system design; coaxial cable; coaxial cable “connectorization”; powering an HFC and fiber deep system; aerial construction; underground construction; and activation with testing. Key learning objectives include the following abilities: to compare current and new system maps, to establish power to fiber deep nodes; to understand RF signal flows, particularly to the customer; and to successfully perform a fiber deep node cut-in within a given time frame.

“Our excellent customer service starts with our field teams, so it is paramount that we provide them with best-in-class training and techniques to deliver that promise,” said Kevin Hart, executive VP and chief product and technology officer for Cox, in a statement. “This partnership with SCTE-ISBE has enabled us to create a high-quality training program that provides our coax splicer workforce with a solid technical foundation from which they can continue to build the network of the future and exceed our customers’ expectations.”

Added Robin Fenton, VP of membership & learning operations for the SCTE and its international arm, the International Society of Broadband Engineers: “Because our training content has been designed in collaboration with operators and their vendor partners, we were able to expedite availability of a course that is designed to produce highly skilled coax splicing teams.”

The leading U.S. cable companies are spearheading an initiative to unite constituents ranging from content creators to audience measurement companies to marketers in an effort to “deliver a sound, scalable and sustainable addressable solution to marketers that maximizes the impact and value of television as a marketing platform.”

This morning at the Cannes Lion advertising conference on the French Riviera, the advertising units of Comcast, Charter and Cox put brochures on the hotel door knobs of 1,200 delegates, informing them of the new initiative called “On Addressability.” The cable operators are seeking to get a broad ranger of constituents to agree upon definitions and standards of addressable advertising. They also want to educate advertisers on the value of addressable and identify best practices and business standards for transacting on addressable campaigns.

“TV is a tremendous, resilient medium with unparalleled reach and engagement, but data has changed the way that marketers use media. Historically, TV has lagged digital in this area, and this must change,” said Marcien Jenckes, president of advertising for Comcast Cable. “Our industry needs to find a way to fully participate in, and lead, the data-driven future of advertising as only TV can. We’re fully committed to making this happen. That’s the impetus behind the On Addressability initiative.

Enabling broadly available addressable marketing on television will require a cooperative effort starting at the content creation level and winding all the way through distribution.

According to Jenckes, “It’s the distributors who bring the ads into viewers’ households each day. It is therefore incumbent upon us to lay the groundwork and set up the infrastructure to truly ‘turn on’ addressability for the industry in a way that is secure, scalable and effective.”

Added David Kline, president of Charter’s Spectrum Reach division: “Advertisers want to use television as a full-funnel solution that marries the best of traditional television, with increased data-driven capabilities for targeting and measurement. We look forward to working with Comcast, and the rest of the industry, to establish best-in-class practices that learn from digital media, yet maintain the security and brand safety that have long been at the core of television advertising.”

As Ad Age noted, There are other efforts being made to standardize addressable advertising. For example, Project OAR (Open Addressable Ready) was established earlier this year to develop and deploy a new, open standard for delivering ads to individual households on smart TVs. Members include not only Comcast’s FreeWheel advanced ad unit, but also Disney Media Networks, WarnerMedia, AT&T’s Xandr, CBS, Fox, Discovery, Hearst Television and AMC Networks, as well as Inscape, a division of Vizio that is developing the technology.

Cox Communications is testing a new broadband service designed to improve connection speeds for PC multiplayer gamers, but the cable company insists the service isn’t a manifestation of paid prioritization.

Atlanta-based Cox began testing the $15-a-month service in Phoenix, Arizona this week, allowing users access to two individual PCs per household. Users must have Cox’s Internet Preferred 100 broadband tier, or faster, and live in the operator’s Phoenix footprint to sign up.

On a promotional website viewable for those who punch in Arizona addresses within the Cox footprint, Cox promises "35% less lag, 55% fewer ping spikes and 45% less jitter.”

“We started testing a Cox Elite Gamer Service this week in Phoenix that uses software to provide a better experience through enhanced internet routing to gaming servers. Following the consumer trial, we’ll evaluate results and determine next steps,” Cox spokesman Todd Smith told MCN.

Elite Gamer service is actually a white-label repackaging of game technology product WTFast, which optimizes a user’s connection route through the internet to a multiplayer game.

“The software routes the player via a more efficient internet path, or virtual private network, to the gaming servers, resulting in an enhanced experience for gamers,” Smith said. “Cox is not managing, prioritizing or throttling any traffic on its broadband Internet service network as part of the service.”

Smith added that the trial is set to last three months. 

Cox Communications has announced that free-to-consumer, ad-supported streaming service Tubi is now available on its Contour video platform.

Contour, of course, is the licensed version of Comcast’s X1 video platform, which debuted Tubi as a native, voice-controlled service back in November.

With the deal, Tubi now has native integration with two of the three biggest U.S. cable operators—a unique position among AVOD companies.

Related: Comcast Integrates Tubi Into X1

“Our partnership with Cox expands upon our mission to make entertainment accessible to everyone,” said Farhad Massoudi, CEO of Tubi, in a statement. “With the addition of Cox Contour, Tubi will continue to have the widest distribution of any ad-supported streaming service.”

Start-up Tubi boasts a library of 12,000 movies and TV shows—a collection it’s currently trying to bolster with the recent securing of a $25 million loan back in January.

The AVOD has also had recent M&A talks with companies including Viacom. With rival streaming platform Pluto TV subsequently purchased by Viacom for $340 million, Tubi has used its resources to build its library and stay in the news.

Recent deals have included archival series pickups from NBCUniversal, as well as Warner Bros. TV.

Broadband providers and content companies are teaming up on a digital media campaign (#LeadWithMore) to mark the 40th anniversary of Women in Cable Telecommunications. The companies are committing more than $6 million in airtime to the campaign, as well as social media support.

Comcast NBCUniversal, Cox Communications, Discovery, Inc., Spectrum and Turner joined with WICT to announce the campaign at the National Press Club Monday (March 4) in Washington, with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Michael O'Rielly scheduled to be on hand to recognize the effort.

WICT unveiled a PSA, backed by those companies and "designed to build awareness of the vast career opportunities available for women in the media industry, specifically in technology, science and engineering roles."

The PSA highlights the following points:

• "Companies with women in top management have higher staff morale (Harvard Business Review).
• "Gender diversity fosters greater innovation (Pfizer and AstraZeneca).
• "Gender diverse companies are more profitable than their competition (McKinsey and Company).
• "Across the board, women in leadership roles enhance a company's performance (Peterson Institute for International Economics)."

“At a time when we can all recognize that time’s up, there’s truly no better time than now to make diversity and inclusion a central part of a competitive business strategy," said WICT Global Chair Marva Johnson.

The #LeadwithMore campaign began Monday (March 4) and continues through June 4.

In his remarks, Chairman Pai borrowed from "one of the greatest female characters ever on cable"--Mad Men's Peggy Olson. "During a job interview," he said, "a male candidate for a writing position once disrespected Peggy, assuming she was a secretary. Peggy replied simply and accurately: "I am the person you need to impress right now.' Like Peggy Olson, WICT demands our attention and deserves our respect."The chairman provided some supporting material: "First, WICT opens doors. Noted television writer Nell Scovell has said that the lack of gender diversity in parts of the media and tech sectors is 'not a pipeline problem. It’s a broken doorbell problem. There’s so much talent that’s on the doorstep ringing the bell. And no one’s opening the door.' For 40 years, you’ve been working to fix that doorbell in the cable industry.  "Second, WICT develops talent. A lot of people may get a foot in the door. But they may not know how to walk all the way in, even with a lot of hard work and aptitude. WICT’s work to create mentoring opportunities helps women turn potential into power. "Third, WICT creates role models. When you open doors for women in the cable industry, and then enable their talents to shine so they can rise to leadership positions, it has a ripple effect far beyond the careers of the women you touch directly.  When talented young women see people who look like themselves holding senior positions in the cable business, they are more likely to see those jobs as a possibility for themselves."

ATLANTA - Setting the table for a Cable-Tec Expo panel discussion on the state of the cable industry’s Reference Design Kit (RDK) open source software initiate five years after launch, moderator Leslie Ellis noted a few fast facts about the year 2013.

Read More: Cable-Tec Expo 2018

The term “selfie” hit the Zeitgeist that year. Edward Snowden disclosed secret CIA documents. Oh, and …

It was at that point that former Comcast executive Steve Heeb, president and general manager of RDK Management, and the man who has overseen the joint initiative since it was kicked off by Comcast, Liberty Global and the erstwhile Time Warner Cable, put his own thoughts into Ellis’ exercise in in time perspective.

“Five years ago, if you said you were going to put an application layer on top of broadband, they would have told you to leave the room,” Heeb said.

Indeed, the open source development paradigm wasn’t popular—or even accepted—in the cable industry when the RDK initiative was originally conceived. But at the time, operators needed to try something to get more nimble as more agile over-the-top ecosystems began purging their subscriber ranks.

By having one centralized repository of software code, operators and their key vendor partners quickly realized significant software development time savings for video set-tops. They could create one user interface that would work across numerous set-tops from multiple vendors. The time it took for system on a chip (SoC) integration got cut in half. In short, re-invention of the wheel stopped occurring in the cable industry, at least for the video piece.

Today, Heeb said, more than 350 companies use RDK—not just the operators represented on Wednesday’s panel, which included Comcast, Liberty and Cox, but major hardware vendors including Intel, Broadcom, Technicolor and Humax, just to name a few.

Heeb said that there are more than 4 million transactions a month at RDK’s central repository for RDK code.

Related: RDK Partners With Metrological for Easier OTT App Integration

The software stack is standard on all video set-top boxes deployed by Comcast, Liberty, Cox and other cable companies around the world. And RDK recently extended its video capabilities, working with European software company Metrological to design an open source means for operators to integrate popular OTT services like Netflix into their user interfaces.

“Roku has Netflix and Hulu, and so do we,” said Bill Warga, VP of technology for Liberty Global.

The ‘B’ is for broadband

For his part, Warga never had doubts RDK would catch on. “I did think that open source would take off in cable—we needed a solution like this.” He noted RDK’s use in the development of Liberty’s voice remote. With Comcast already having laid down so much of the open source road work in development of its own X1 Voice Remote, Liberty was able to instead concentrate on other challenges—such as figuring out multiple Swedish dialects—and as a result, it vastly reduced the time to market for the voice control feature.

But Warga admitted that he never foresaw RDK’s current trajectory, which is moving into broadband services.

Sketching out the new domain of RDK, Heeb said the standard is now a “whole-home open source software platform for video and broadband devices. It goes across all devices an operator has in a home—from QAM set-tops to gateways to mesh extenders and even cameras.”

Earlier this month, Istanbul-based technology vendor AirTies said it will debut a version of its mesh WiFi software for broadband devices running RDK, beginning in the first quarter of next year.

And earlier this week, German smart home technology vendor Plume announced that it has open sourced its previously proprietary middleware, which is available to operators across residential gateways, modems, routers, access points, extenders, set-top boxes, IoT hubs, smart speakers and other devices. Plume said its open-source framework, which it calls OpenSync, is compatible with, and leverages, RDK.

Ed Shrum, VP of product development and management of devices and networking for Cox, said RDK will soon be deployed in every piece of residential CPE.

One of RDK’s biggest selling points, according to Heeb, is its ability to offer operators control of device data. Cox, Shrum explained, recently took advantage of that capability on its RDK-enabled gateways to diagnose an SSID issue. “We had the data needed solve the problem at our finger tips,” he said. Prior to RDK, Shrum added, Cox would have had to get the gateway vendor to write and push out a special piece of engineering code.

Certainly, as Wednesday’s morning panel showed, RDK’s coalition is a pretty happy one, with Comcast senior VP of devices and advanced systems declaring that his team uses RDK “every day, day and night” to create a better customer experience.

But there is at least a little discord. There’s disagreement, for example, on how much integration of FAANG companies to allow. Heeb conceded to MCN that he’s been reassuring RDK’s operator stakeholders at SCTE that bringing in popular devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home Assistant into the ecosystem will be accretive, and not a threat.

After all, he noted, there was a time, when companies like Comcast and Liberty wouldn’t think of integrating Netflix into their video systems.

Of course, that was so five years ago. 

Network engineering leaders from Comcast, Charter, Cox, Shaw and Denmark’s Stofa will headline the speakers at a seminar focused on Distributed Access Architectures (DAA), which will help kick off this year’s SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta on Oct. 22.

A follow-up to last year’s Remote PHY seminar at the Expo in Denver, this year’s event will address the ability of DAAs and the Headend Rearchitected as a Datacenter (HERD) to drive cost efficiencies, decrease time to market and increase customer satisfaction. The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers says more than 600 attendees are already registered.

Related: SCTE Announces Finalists for Energy 2020 Adaptive Power Challenge

Speakers include Kevin Kwasny, principal enter for Charter Communications; Rob Howald, VP of network architecture for Comcast; Jeff Finkelstein, executive director of advanced technologies for Cox Communications; Jamie Brown, director of network technologies for Shaw Communications; and Kjeld Balmer, head of network technology for Stofa A/S.

On the vendor side, speakers include Arris’ Tom Cloonan, CTO for network solutions, and Mike Emmendorfer, VP of systems engineering and architecture; Peter Wolff, VP of wireline product management for Casa Systems; John Chapman, CTO of cable access and fellow at Cisco; Asaf Matatyaou, VP of solutions and product management at Harmonic; Barak Hermesh, owner of network technology for the Intel Network Platforms Group; Steven Krapp, technical marketing director at MaxLinear; Jeff White, head of cable strategy and business development at Nokia; Timon Sloane, VP of marketing and ecosystem from the Open Networking Foundation; and Colin Howlett, VP of architecture for Vecima Networks.

Related: Charter, Comcast, Cox Execs Added to Cable-Tec Expo Opener

The event is jointly sponsored by CableLabs, which will also have two technologists present—Doug Jones, principal architect, and Jon Schnorr, lead engineer for network technologies. 

More than 100 million connected devices were used last year instead of traditional pay-TV set-tops to access MVPD services, according to the NCTA.

The figure was part of a wider NCTA announcement touting the energy-savings progress made by tier 1 operators since they began collaborating on set-top energy savings since 2012.

According to a report generated by independent auditor D+R Interactional, pay TV operators including AT&T, Comcast, Charter, Dish, Verizon, Cox, Cablevision, Frontier and CenturyLink, along with manufacturing partners including Arris, Techicolor and EchoStar, have generated energy savings of $3.5 billion since entering into a voluntary collaboration six years ago.

The energy saved in the first five years of the program, D+R said, was enough to power all homes in Los Angeles County for almost a year.

D+R said the program has led to a 34% reduction in energy use by pay TV set-tops since 2012— nearly enough to eliminate the annual generation produced by four typical 500-megawatt coal-run power plants.

“The first generation of federal set-top box energy regulations that was considered by the Department of Energy in 2013 by law could not have become effective until this year, and adoption of such rules could have impaired innovation in new equipment and services,” said Doug Johnson, CTA’s vice president of technology policy, in a statement. “By contrast, the voluntary agreement is already moving toward its third generation of improved energy standards, has already saved consumers billions of dollars, and has facilitated the rollout of new services such as cloud DVR, multi-room services, and 4K Ultra High Definition set-top boxes.”

Of course, only part of this energy savings can be attributed to the environmental concern of operators. Customer demand for app-based pay TV is also a major driver.

Added Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): “The cable, satellite and telephone companies have made significant progress in bringing down the energy use of the set-top boxes they place in our homes. The energy savings verified by D+R’s report are a big deal, and even more promising is the industry drive toward apps where consumers can access both live and recorded programming directly on their new Smart TV or via a device that uses very little power like an Apple TV or Roku stick that they purchase. This eliminates the need for a set-top box from their service provider and the energy costs and resultant pollution that come with it.”

Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications have teamed up with ad sales company NCC Media to form a new division within NCC to design, deploy and sell unified advertising solutions across the country to participating NCC partners.

The group will use non-personally identifying data and targeting capabilities to create advanced advertising products and will launch later this year. NCC is jointly owned by Comcast, Charter and Cox and provides national, regional and local marketers with advertising solutions that allow them reach consumers via TV programming and targeted online content on every screen.

"Today's announcement is a natural extension of the great work we are already doing with Charter, Cox and NCC Media in cable advertising. Together with our partners, we have new opportunities to build advanced advertising solutions that deliver scale, consistency and reliability," said Comcast Cable CEO David Watson in a statement.

Comcast Media 360, Comcast Spotlight's former national advertising sales team, will form the foundation of the group together with resources from NCC Media, Charter and Cox. The group will build products that deliver targeted audiences across linear and video on demand (VOD) platforms. It will drive research, data and analytic capabilities to provide consistency in how the advertising industry measures the effectiveness of an advertisement and simplify how agencies manage campaigns.

"This new group within NCC Media has the ability to make a major impact for all players within the advertising landscape," said Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge in a statement. "It has the power to transform the way we measure advertising effectiveness across linear and VOD through best-in-class data and technology."

Andrew Ward, who currently serves as vice president of CM360, will head the new group as general manager. Ward, a 15-year veteran of NCC Media, has more than 30 years experience in the ad business. At Comcast Spotlight he launched the company's addressable advertising platform as well as new data and analytic capabilities.

"In today's rapidly changing media marketplace, advertisers are looking for scale, reliability and proven results to reach audiences across devices and time," Ward said in a statement. "Charter, Comcast, Cox and NCC Media are uniquely positioned to lead this industry evolution with integrated advertising solutions driven by non-personal data, precise audience delivery and robust performance measurement."

NCC Media's board is spearheading the initiative, led by David Kline, executive vice president and president of media sales at Charter Communications; Billy Farina, senior vice president at Cox Media; and Marcien Jenckes, president of advertising at Comcast Cable.

"Together with Charter, Comcast and NCC Media, we have the scale needed to provide even better value to our customers, and we are committed to defining clear standards around measurement that will help marketers better plan, buy and execute campaigns," said Cox president Pat Esser in a statement.

MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett initiated coverage of Altice USA with a “neutral” rating and a $28 per share price target on its stock, adding that despite its early success, the cable operator’s cost-cutting initiatives will get harder to achieve as time progresses.

Altice USA burst on the scene in 2015, first as a dark horse buyer for Time Warner Cable – it lost out to Charter Communications – and later as the purchaser of Suddenlink Communications and Cablevision Systems. Altice USA, led by European telecom guru and John Malone disciple Patrick Drahi, was going to bring European management techniques to the U.S. cable business, drastically cut costs and make the business more efficient. At the time of its Cablevision purchase – for a hefty $17.7 billion –  Altice said it would cut $900 million in costs out of that New York area business, which raised eyebrows.

Since then Altice said it has come closer to that goal and embarked on an ambitious five-year fiber-to-the-home buildout that it claims will bring even more efficiencies to the network. In the second quarter, cash flow increased 22%, more than double its peers, largely resulting from those cost cutting and efficiency efforts.

In his note, Moffett said that so far Altice USA has reduced its non-programming operating expenses per subscriber by almost 20%.

“But getting the rest will be much harder,” Moffett wrote, adding that the combination of continued cord-cutting pressure and an aggressive $80 per month 1-Gigabit per second broadband offering from rival Verizon may be too tough for the company to overcome.

“Verizon’s broadband offering steals the thunder from what would otherwise be Altice’s pressure release valve,” Moffett wrote, adding that he believes Altice will be able to raise profit margins but only at the expense of growth.

“There is no free lunch,” he continued.

Altice USA went public in June at $30 each and the stock rose quickly, mainly on deal speculation. But as that chatter has waned, so have the shares. Altice USA was priced at $25.97 each, down 3% (78 cents) in early trading Oct. 11. 

Moffett also was skeptical of the cost savings Altice could extract from it fully fibered network, and doubted that the operator would be able to significantly add to its scale via acquisition.

Altice USA was said to have been lining up bankers for a bid for Charter Communications earlier this year, although that speculation has died down considerably. Charter has made it clear it is not interested in a deal.

But Moffett thinks that Altice USA’s other perennial target – Cox Communications, which also has said repeatedly it is not for sale – isn’t any more feasible.

“There appears no realistic path by which Altice can achieve meaningful scale in the U.S.,” Moffett wrote. “A Charter acquisition is out of reach. Cox appears uninterested in selling especially to Altice. Comcast? Ha. That leaves only table scraps. Small acquisitions (of under 1 million subscribers each) are possible, but there aren’t many of those out there. Very small acquisitions (of under 200,000 subscribers) are plentiful, but too costly to integrate. The window on being big enough to ‘matter’ has already closed.”

The 2017 Tech Roundtable Panelists
Kevin Hart, executive vice president and chief product and technology officer, Cox Communications
Dan Hennessy, chief architecture architect, Liberty Global
Jay Rolls, chief technology officer and senior vice president, Charter Communications
JR Walden, senior vice president of technology and CTO, Mediacom Communications
Tony Werner, president of technology and product, Comcast Cable
Read More From the 2017 Tech Roundtable Agenda
Capacity|Mobile & Wireless|The Home of the Future

MCN:What matters beyond speed and throughput/range and reach for some of the services headed our way -- augmented reality, augmented discovery, VR, aging in place, automation, healthcare? Pick your favorite.
Jay Rolls: What matters is network latency, and overall visibility. Things like AR and health care and adjacent verticals -- it’s all about interactivity, and the rapid translation of photons to electrons.

Technologies like 802.11ax will help with the latency quest, which will be never-ending. And real-time, local visibility into how the network is running will help us to deliver a consistently high quality of experience, across devices.

Kevin Hart: We're very excited about home healthcare...around enabling the aging population. Just based on demographics, there's a huge need and a huge opportunity, but within the network some of the artificial intelligence and some of the connectivity speeds but also some of the privacy components around HIPAA-compliant information ...are also important.

The infrastructure we're putting into place, from a speed [perspective] is great, but privacy and security and latency, some of the real-time responses, I think will become even more important as you see more [need] for remote healthcare monitoring and more healthcare-centric solutions over time.

Dan Hennessy: Other network conditions start to come in to play here, like latency, jitter, and packet loss.
We have equipment distributed across our footprint and in our network that allows us to closely monitor these parameters – to ensure that we know if it changes, why it changed, and what it means to the customer. This will become increasingly important. New standards, such as DOCSIS 3.1, also have targeted changes to improve the quality of service.

Tech Roundtable 2016 | Cable Tech at a Crossroads

For sure, what we expect, and as discussed in context of IoT, is a continued growth in devices. Giving our customers visibility and control is key. Making sure their devices get the right priority, and remain secure, powered, live and connected on the network -- as more and more devices connect and need proper “care and feeding” -- becomes more critical to day-to-day life.

MCN: How has your reliance on the public cloud evolved over the last couple of years? Are you using more public or private cloud, and why does that matter?
KH: It's really a hybrid of all of the above, based on the use case. We're doing a lot of things internally and some our own cloud capabilities with infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service and some of the things we're doing around virtualization. We also use third-party clouds where it makes sense, based on their skillsets and capability. And from a managed service perspective, we have some product and service offerings leveraging cloud-based components. But now that you've adopted this hybrid cloud environment, it's now about how do you optimize it for performance and cost and security -- that's probably the next frontier.

JR: We rely on both -- private and public. Both are good at different things, and the crux of it is taking advantage of what they’re good at. For instance, the public cloud is good for things that need velocity -- prototyping, instantaneous scaling. The private cloud is more for things that are in production, which need to be highly secure. A good example is cloud DVR. Cloud DVR is obviously going to need a lot of cloud infrastructure, but it’s also well understood, with well-defined metrics. Because you know how it’s going to perform, it’s just going to be more cost effective to do on a private cloud.

MCN: What is the right balance of engineering talent you need these days, and how do you attract it?
Tony Werner: We do a lot of recruiting, especially when we’re speaking at non-traditional industry events. The right balance is a tricky task - we still need RF engineers, because we still operate a lot of RF. We still need infrastructure experts, because we operate a significant infrastructure. In general, though, it’s software, systems, and architectural engineering talent that we seek. We’ve made significant strides in how we attract that talent, primarily by making sure that Comcast is a great environment for developers and innovators to come work, but we can always do more.

JR Walden: We're finding less need for HFC talent every day, in part because you still have a lot in the organization, so demands are kind of in the decline. Five to ten years ago, it was hard finding network skills. The battle for high-speed data is over. Cable has won. And most people in professional areas see that, so people with networking skills who have interest in being in the internet business are finding us a lot more than ever before.

Tech Roundtable 2015 | Revving Up to ‘Web Speed’

The area of challenge is on the software side. That has been tougher. I guess the good news is that being near New York doesn’t make for the most inexpensive job market, but people with those skills in New York are definitely not working for .com companies. At least I'm not competing for that talent. We've been plucking millennials straight out of college and teaching them ourselves and hoping that they don't leave too quickly. But we seem to be doing okay keeping the folks we have sort of home-grown.

KH: Investing in our people and our talent is a top priority at Cox in both product and technology and training and skillsets. [In early October], my team worked on an operating model of the future for the team, but software-enabled everything is critical, virtualization is critical, cybersecurity skills are paramount.

We bring in talent through recruiting and through our third-party vendors and we also have a very robust co-op and intern programs, and interns from leading schools like George Tech right here in Atlanta. Tulsa is one of our markets, and they have one of the top cybersecurity schools in the country. We're bringing in interns and co-ops and recruits from these feeder schools and also brining in talent with a lot of experience, as well, from some of these new trending areas, like mobility, IP, cybersecurity, etc.

DH: Our move away from closed vendor ecosystems to open, embedded software development -- either directly ourselves or with partners – means we must ensure that we have the right talent onboard. It’s these engineers that drive our business forward.

Over the last 12 months we have brought our technology group together across Europe, which gives a truly global opportunity for our engineers and developers to build products and services -- all the way from the UK, Germany and Switzerland, through to Eastern Europe, and across to Latin American and the Caribbean. Whether it’s fixed or mobile access, Internet, TV and video, or a full suite of B2B services. That’s a pretty rare opportunity.

JR: The right balance is the technologist who has a degree of nimbleness between hardware and software, and tends to think about things from a systems perspective. We’ve been surprised to see talent coming to our Denver engineering groups from Silicon Valley. The recurring themes appear to be both quality of life, and cost of living. I think you’ll see more and more evidence that shows a talent shift in our collective direction, and that’s really gratifying.

The 2017 Tech Roundtable Panelists
Kevin Hart, executive vice president and chief product and technology officer, Cox Communications
Dan Hennessy, chief architecture architect, Liberty Global
Jay Rolls, chief technology officer and senior vice president, Charter Communications
JR Walden, senior vice president of technology and CTO, Mediacom Communications
Tony Werner, president of technology and product, Comcast Cable

Read More From the 2017 Tech Roundtable Agenda
Capacity|Mobile & Wireless| Beyond Speeds and Feeds and Attracting Talent


MCN: To what extent are you gearing up to automate people’s homes to make them more useful?
Dan Hennessy: Our automation focus is very much linked to our core products and services, and where we can bring clear value right now: Voice search and control of our video services. Ensuring that all our platforms work in harmony. Installing new hardware in the home, like WiFi APs, such that it happens seamlessly. Giving customers a way to easily onboard third party IoT devices in their home.

What’s as important here is the business logic we’re building in our back office for “connectivity services.” It’s similar to what we’ve done for our video products and services, in terms of having a flexible, microservices-based back end that is open to third party integration.

JR Walden: We're an Icontrol affiliate [Comcast and Alarm.com bought pieces of Icontrol earlier this year]. It hasn’t been a huge business for us. I think we have concerns that trying to compete with CE companies in that space...is going to be tough for Icontrol, let alone Mediacom.

We want to be a service provider. We think we're good at being a service provider, so what’s the service here? We imagine providing some services to help facilitate and manage the customer's smart home and IoT device future. I don't know if we'll manage the service as a whole...but we think there's a place to play there. Like maybe you could use your Amazon Echo to do things on your TiVo set-top box...rather than using the remote or using a voice remote.

Rather than trying to be the guy who does everything, let's work with what people want, even if Google Home is the device or it's an Amazon device. We’re going to come out with a voice remote, too, that works with Nuance [Communications].

Kevin Hart: We're making great advances in our connected home and smart home platforms. We’re leveraging the existing platform, but we've also got other future-state possibilities, and coupling the Cox HomeLife platform offering with our Panoramic WiFi [product]. We've been going market to market and connecting a home and making it a true smart home with over 50 or so connected devices in the home, and virtual reality and home care demos, robotic dogs, you name it. We're also doing a little bit some remote healthcare monitoring. There's a lot of possibilities here and I think we're just scratching the surface of the industry.

Tony Werner: With the combination of xFi and Xfinity Home we think we’re in an ideal position to give our customers a simple one-stop solution for controlling their connected homes. With xFi, we take the mystery and guesswork out of our customers’ home WiFi networks, providing a real-time dashboard of what devices are on the network and how they are performing. With Xfinity Home, we’ve combined a powerful home security solution, with an increasingly integrated IoT hub. Through our “Works With Xfinity” program, our customers can control their Nest thermostats, August locks, Chamberlin garage door openers, and many other popular IoT devices all from their Xfinity Home app. We are continuously bringing more partners onto the platform. On the backend, we’re leveraging machine learning and our own homegrown rules engine to give our customers more pinpoint control over how their connected homes work.

MCN: In what ways is AI and machine learning guiding your technology strategy?
DH: AI and ML already exist in our businesses in a number of different areas -- both embedded in our products and services, and also as part of a number of new avenues we’re investigating. Not just customer facing, but for operational and engineering analytics use cases, too.

We’re using machine learning, for instance, to help us fine tune our understanding of how WiFi performs in our customer’s homes. RF modeling, and knowing those behaviors, can get us so far. Adding in telemetry from our devices in the field, and ML in the backend infrastructure, takes our insights to the next level.

Additionally, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the associated AI is already deployed as part of our voice search and personalization services. We see much more applicability here in the front lines of our business, where interactions across 24 million customers can be tailored much more accurately.

The key with AI and ML is telemetry and data management. To leverage these techniques, we need to be able to collect and analyze data. From that, we can affect changes back into our services and infrastructure -- whether this is across the network, our service platforms, or our care and operational support systems.

A big step in the right direction is to understand the art of the possible. We’re starting to innovate with partners, internally. We’ve started with multiple trials, and some first deployments as well.

Jay Rolls: Both AI and ML will play an increasing role across our technology stacks, from network management to troubleshooting to connecting customers with the content they want. I think as our networks become denser and more complex, adding more intelligence will help us mine data that matters to the overall success of the businesses.

MCN: What does the Internet of Things mean to your company?
KH: From a product standpoint, some of the analytics that are built into the products, whether they’re visual analytics or voice analytics are making the products more intelligent and more personal. The voice remote stuff is cool on the front end, but having contacts and predicting your next couple moves in the connected home are a big part of what you'll see more and more of on the product roadmap.

From a technology operational network perspective, there's things we are doing with software-defined networking and some of the intelligence we’re building in through software and quality of service and latency. And from an operational perspective, doing more and more with some of the artificial intelligence around quality of service, call-in rates and truck roll reduction and customer experience. It's early days, but we've seen some very promising results.

JR: Whether it’s ensuring security and privacy, or connecting customers to specific capabilities, like health monitoring and wellness -- the IoT scene, which our customers are bringing onto our networks by the handfuls, enables us to take a customer-centric approach. The key to the IoT and our industry is that it’s based on the common denominator of connectivity.

TW: We are committed to AI and machine learning, because we’ve seen firsthand how those technologies can make our products better and improve the customer experience. We use AI and Machine Learning algorithms today to advance and refine our Natural Language Processing platform, detect and fix incidents in our network, and help our customers find content they love. We’ve got a first-rate team of PhDs working on these technologies day and night, and customers are already seeing that reflected in the products they use every day.

DH: Opportunity, more than anything. We’re seeing an explosion in connected devices, for sure, and the need for seamless onboarding, increased visibility, control, configuration and management. This is a key consideration as we think about how we develop our connectivity products and services.

Our customers rely on us to ensure their home network is secure, effective, and above all, is just there. Available. The key will be which devices and services our customers bring into their homes. The IoT market remains fragmented, from a service and technology standards point of view (Sigfox, LoRa, NB-IoT etc.) We’re experimenting with most of these.

We also see many new partnership possibilities opening up, with both established and new players. The IoT landscape brings in very diverse industries -- from lighting, to kitchen goods, home security and other utilities. How these will play out, and where the value and roles lie, is still a work in progress.

Beyond residential, we’re seeing plenty of interest in the B2B segment. We have a number of trials with home builders and commercial real estate firms, where mutual opportunities exist. Whether it’s environmental sensors and control, WiFi coverage and management, broader sensor and device onboarding, or management.

MCN: What matters when the task is securing the physical home, as well as the digital stuff in it?
TW: One of our over-arching product goals is to provide equipment and services that behave like a courteous guest in the home. Always there, always on, always connected, and pleasing to the eye, but also always on the lookout. Our Xfinity Home product started out as a physical home security offering, and quickly expanded into automation and smart home. A big part of that overall philosophy is to safeguard for both physical belongings, and digital identities.

JR: It’s a one-word answer: Trust. We’re in a unique position, because we are poised to protect between the physical, and the digital. As IP-connected devices proliferate, in the home and the business, we are becoming the trusted entity. Both for reliable service, as well as stewards of security.

DH: Trust is key here, of course – with an operational model that truly supports the offering. In both residential and B2B markets, local regulation and standards compliance will influence our interest and ability to enter this market. We also don’t see (for now) the same degree of demand as we see in other markets (notably North America) for these services.

The 2017 Tech Roundtable Panelists
Kevin Hart, executive vice president and chief product and technology officer, Cox Communications
Dan Hennessy, chief architecture architect, Liberty Global
Jay Rolls, chief technology officer and senior vice president, Charter Communications
JR Walden, senior vice president of technology and CTO, Mediacom Communications
Tony Werner, president of technology and product, Comcast Cable
Read More From the 2017 Tech Roundtable Agenda
Mobile & Wireless|The Home of the Future| Beyond Speeds and Feeds and Attracting Talent

MCN: What are your priorities, as it relates to network capacity?
Jay Rolls: Our priority is to constantly balance capacity against demand. It’s a never-ending quest. We watch it very closely, and we’re very pragmatic about it -- the volume of tools, metrics and ways to see what’s really happening, and invest accordingly, is really deepening in ways that matter.

Tony Werner: We’ve been on a pretty steady path of doubling our network capacity every 18-24 months for several years, and I don’t see anything that makes me think that will change. We’re making better and faster products for our customers who expect and deserve world-class online experiences, and the network has to deliver on that promise. The key from my perspective is staying ahead of that curve in a way that’s smart and future-proof. We’ve been strategically extending fiber further into our network to meet customer demand, and that effort, combined with our commitment to deploying DOCSIS 3.1 has given us a network that’s powerful, flexible, and ready for what’s next.

JR Walden: We have completed the removal of all the analog channels. That was the big step one. Step two was to start transitioning high-speed data over to DOCSIS 3.1, so we're not adding any more 3.0 channels, and reuse spectrum for 3.1, which is a bit more efficient. The whole company is 3.1, all of the modems we're buying since June have been 3.1, so we've begun that next transition. 

We're in the process of migrating to MPEG-4, mostly the HDs. That's following along with some of our set-top refresh -- getting some of the old MPEG-2-only capable boxes out of the network and we can transition more of the channels to MPEG-4. 

Right on the heels of that, we're going to start moving some channels, the lower-viewed channels and some premiums, over to IP. We're also reducing node sizes. We average about 285 homes to 290 homes per node as an average. 

Kevin Hart: Ultimately, our goal is to continue to provide a great customer experience with a competitive broadband product and service. To do that, we are continuing to keep pace with downstream and upstream data rates, which is key to being competitive with our speed offerings, and quality of service. Reducing latency is also a top priority.

We’re investing in the network and in those growth rates, in terms of downstream and upstream speeds. Those are key drivers. Ultimately, providing that in-home or on-premises (business) experience, with our WiFi products — is equally important.

Tech Roundtable 2016 | Cable Tech at a Crossroads

Dan Hennessy: We see demand increasing by up to 45% across our markets and in recent years, we responded with a wide deployment of CCAP [converged cable access platform] equipment throughout our footprint. That investment, along with ongoing node size optimization, enabled us to increase capacity at a much faster rate. As a result, 70 – 80% of our plant will be DOCSIS 3.1 ready by the end of next year, giving us a path to even greater capacity expansion allowing us to continue to increase the available capacity across our access network, upstream and downstream 

MCN: What is your strategy with regard to fiber?
TW: Suffice it to say that fiber plays a key role on our network architecture. Our network today contains more than 150,000 route miles of fiber, and to meet customer demand, we extend fiber further into the neighborhoods we serve each year. When it comes to delivering gigabit speeds, our focus is obviously on DOCSIS 3.1, and our new xFi Advanced Gateway, which will bring Gig availability to more people, in more markets than ever before. But part of the reason we’re able to deliver that capacity is because we’ve systematically enhanced our network with fiber.

I feel pretty strongly that the best path ahead is to leverage the existing coaxial network and DOCSIS resources to the fullest, then inch towards FTTH, over time. Why? Because we can. We don’t have to build an entire network just to turn up one customer.

KH: Once you leverage the existing coax that we have, by taking fiber deep toward an N+0 architecture, we're future-proofing our investment , we're positioning ourselves to leverage DOCSIS 3.1, and also position ourselves for Full Duplex, because symmetrical speeds will be important. 

And we're also thinking about the fiber investment and fiber deep as it relates to our wireless strategy, enabling some of our customer with a small cell strategy but also positioning ourselves to take advantage of that in the future as well as thinking about fiber deep to benefit both residential and our commercial customers simultaneously. 

We've got a ten-year network 2.0 network transformation plan, and fiber deep, DOCSIS 3.1 and Full Duplex are at the core of what's driving the investment. 

DH: We’re aggressively future-proofing our network. Over 80% of our new build program is based on a combination of either fiber-deep, retaining the HFC final drop, or fiber-to-the-home.

The U.K. is a good example -- that’s where our “Project Lightning” network expansion initiative is happening (announced in early 2015). Cable network build had been very limited in parts of the U.K. since the ‘80s, and until a few years ago and is now benefiting from this fiber strategy.

JW: [Fiber deep] is a bit further out, at least as a large-scale type of project. I think fiber deep for MDUs, high-density areas and some planned communities, higher end communities doing deeper fiber or fiber-to-the-home [is happening]. But as a wholesale [change] and going to node+0 kind of architecture, I don't see that in the next two years. 

Tech Roundtable 2015 | Revving Up to ‘Web Speed’

JR: Fiber-deep is part of the overall capacity conversation. We’re constantly analyzing and monitoring our infrastructure, and matching those results against the technologies we have in our portfolio -- whether that’s DOCSIS 3.1, or taking fiber deeper, or Full Duplex DOCSIS. It’s a rational approach, where we’re trying to balance the needs, the available technologies, and the costs. DOCSIS 3.1 has some pretty remarkable capabilities, but it’s not necessarily a hard-and-fast reason to not take fiber deeper, for instance. Different situations drive different capacity decisions. There’s nothing universal about it -- you have to take it on a market-by-market basis.

MCN: To what extent will you use bridging techniques, like remote PHY & DOCSIS 3.1?
DH: We’re already trialing and testing both Remote PHY and DOCSIS 3.1 across our footprint. Our plan of record is to exploit virtualized and distributed access architectures.

Our strategy is fully focused on leveraging 3.1 and cost to upgrade is less than 20 Euro per home passed, so a very efficient way of getting to speeds of 1 Gbps-plus.

KH: We're making tremendous progress in calendar year 2017 on our DOCSIS 3.1 CCAP deployment. We started in earnest early in the year and by the end of this year, we'll have over one-third of our footprint 3.1-enabled with north of 90% of our footprint enabled with 3.1 by the end of 2018 and early 2019. We're definitely going to be leveraging a remote PHY architecture and some of the early stage testing around remote PHY currently. 

JR: They both play a role. Just like DOCSIS 3.0 and PON played a role in the evolution of the network over the past five years, DOCSIS 3.1 and remote PHY are going to play a major role in the coming years. Everyone will be using them, us included. Like everything else, it’s a matter of matching the right tool to the right task.

TW: I could tell you how committed we are to DOCSIS 3.1, but it may be easier just to lay out our progress to date. Since December 2015, when we provisioned the world’s first DOCSIS 3.1 modem on a customer-facing network, we have been aggressively expanding our D3.1-powered gigabit offering. Today, we have deployed D3.1 in 23 states and dozens of markets, with more coming online all the time. What I love about this technology is that it is a cost-effective way to make gigabit speeds a reality for a far broader cross-section of Americans, and not just to those lucky few who live in a few select neighborhoods. As for remote PHY and DAA [Distributed Access Architecture], both technologies are advancing at a breakneck clip, and I think you’ll hear more from us about them soon. 

MCN: What are the consumer factors pushing you toward the desire to provide symmetrical bandwidth, and eventually take advantage of technologies like Full Duplex DOCSIS (FDX)?
JR: The world of applications and services continues to evolve, obviously, but so far we’ve been able to meet those needs with an asymmetrical topology. That said, things like real-time gaming, augmented and virtual reality, and the Internet of Things -- some of those will likely drive more symmetry in the network. It remains to be seen. Whether it goes completely crazy, or just nudges the demand on the network, it’s good to have techniques like FDX on the drawing board.

KH: It’s a little but further out on the horizon. The upstream growth rate is ticking up a couple of notches, but not to the tune that we would need significant additional capacity and/or a complementary need for symmetrical bandwidth. We're still testing that, but the experiences, the gaming, the latency and interactive [applications] and additionally connected everything, I think, will be drivers of higher need for improved symmetrical speeds. But at this stage, the symmetrical is a nice-to-have for residential and definitely will be a good option for our commercial customers. 

DH: Presently, both our products and the consumption of those products are highly asymmetric. While we see some increase in upstream demand from cloud-based services, we don’t see the asymmetry changing any time soon.

Because of that, we are actively engaged with CableLabs and industry partners on the development of Full Duplex. We see it as part of our future access toolkit.

The 2017 Tech Roundtable Panelists
Kevin Hart, executive vice president and chief product and technology officer, Cox Communications
Dan Hennessy, chief architecture architect, Liberty Global
Jay Rolls, chief technology officer and senior vice president, Charter Communications
JR Walden, senior vice president of technology and CTO, Mediacom Communications
Tony Werner, president of technology and product, Comcast Cable
Read More From the 2017 Tech Roundtable Agenda
Capacity|The Home of the Future|Beyond Speeds and Feeds and Attracting Talent

MCN: What are your wireless priorities?
Dan Hennessy: We believe that connectivity to the home, around the home, and on the go needs to be a high performance, reliable and seamless experience.  As such, we are focused on three areas.

For fixed broadband connectivity services in the home, we want to ensure that our customers are able to benefit from the power of our network -- both to and around the home. That’s regardless of where they live, what their home is like (how big and what it’s made of), or how many devices they want to connect to their in home WiFi. This is where a significant amount of engineering and innovation effort is spent.

From a mobile services perspective, it’s about making sure our customers get the best quad-play deal and experience out there. To do that, we will build on our MVNO capabilities across our markets. Where needed, we want to leverage VoWiFi technologies, to solve for in-home/business coverage issues. As well, we want to ensure that our customers are able to leverage our WiFi access points--roughly 10 million, across Europe. The goal is to bring the fixed and mobile connectivity experience together, seamlessly. To give our customers the best of both.

The third areas is specific to where we have a full MNO footprint, such as in Belgium. Telenet’s acquisition of the mobile operator, BASE, presented an opportunity to upgrade and deliver a world-class radio access network -- alongside the power of a cable access network.

Tech Roundtable 2016 | Cable Tech at a Crossroads

Jay Rolls: First is the launch of WiFi-first MVNO service with Verizon next year, which will serve us well for our short- and medium-term wireless goals.

Second is optimizing the WiFi experience for our residential and business customers. So many people equate “the internet” to “the WiFi signal”! That’s why it’s important that we continue to improve everyone’s WiFi.

Beyond that, we’re conducting both lab and field trials of CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service), in the unlicensed 3.5 GHz spectrum, as well as 5G millimeter wave technologies for fixed use cases, like backhaul.

Kevin Hart: The in-home experience, the on-premises experience and the experience within common spaces in MDUs -- about a third of our residential footprint is multi-dwelling units, so having a having a best-in-class WiFi experience there is key. We've also done a ton with convention centers with hospitality networks and hotels. We made an investment in a company [Blueprint RF, acquired by Cox over the summer] that's going to be bring best in class WiFi for commercial businesses. 

We’ve done some 5G trials, in conjunction with CableLabs. From a technical standpoint, we’ve been one of the leaders in small cell deployments, because of what we’ve been doing with some of our key partners and customers. The 5G trial was a fixed point to point [test]...just to prove out some of the technology and the performance.

JR Walden: We've been focused on in-home WiFi for many years. Maybe 60% of our customers pay us for a managed home WiFi solution. About 90% of our new customers do take that product. We have also been rolling out community WiFi, or metro WiFi...in a number of our communities, but not as aggressively as some of the big guys as we tend to have more low-density markets. I’m not necessarily convinced there are any business models around that. The theory around that is it's a customer affinity [strategy]. But it's not super-expensive to do, so you don't have to gamble too much on that. 

In regards to getting into more of a mobile play, we certainly haven't announced any plans. We've certainly been looking at what options might be and things like 5G and CBRS or other kind of solutions might impact us, both as a B2B or wholesale kind of enabler, like we were with cell tower backhaul, but also potentially getting into the retail side. 

That's one of those areas we'd rather be a fast-follower, frankly, so I’ll root for Comcast or Charter or somebody to blaze a successful trail, and then maybe we'll be prepared to invest in that. 

MCN: What are you doing to make WiFi better or best in class?
Tony Werner: We’re committed to offering a fantastic Wi-Fi experience to our customers, and from our perspective, that means providing a combination of speed, coverage and control. When it comes to speed, our xFi Advanced Gateway is not just the fastest gateway we’ve ever built, we believe it is the best device available today anywhere in the world.

On coverage, we want our customers to have amazing online experiences wherever they go, in or out of the home. On the go, that means continuing to expand our network of more than 18 million Wi-Fi hot spots, and at home, it’s a combination of our world-class gateway, and our forthcoming pods, which will give customers who want it a powerful Wi-Fi mesh network that can blanket any size home with great Wi-Fi. Finally, on control, we really believe xFi is a game changer. We launched it in May to more than 10 million devices, and the response we’ve seen has been tremendous, both in terms of adoption, and customer satisfaction. Today with xFi, our customers can pause WiFi to their kids’ devices for bedtime or dinner (our most popular feature), track the activity of devices on their home networks, and troubleshoot when things go wrong.

In addition, as you know we’re big proponents of RDK-B, where the B stands for “broadband.” It’s similar intent to RDK-V, video, which is the core foundation of our X1 UI. RDK-B is piled with techniques and technologies to continuously improve WiFi experiences.

KH: On the residential side, our offering, called Panoramic WiFi with the tagline of "It's wall to wall fast," has had an excellent take rate from a customer perspective. NPS (net promoter score) is up significantly. It's a combination of having a better in-home device, a professional install and additional to make sure your signal strength, location, quality of service is what you want it to be inside your premises. 

DH: Our WiFi strategy focuses on both raw hardware capabilities, and the software we use to optimize for value and performance. Both solve for whole home connectivity. We are constantly evaluating hardware-related developments and standards to include in the equipment we deploy in customers’ homes.

Alongside that, we are focused on software developments (embedded and cloud-based) to optimize WiFi range, reliability and performance. That means channel optimization, air time fairness, band- and client-steering. We have a range of embedded software and cloud-based services going to market in 2017 and 2018.

We’re also looking at the best ways to give our customers the right equipment to ensure whole home coverage, from point-of-sale to care. This includes developing a mix of property profiling (size, fabrication etc.) and machine learning techniques.

Making WiFi better for our customers is very much about giving them visibility and control.

Tech Roundtable 2015 | Revving Up to ‘Web Speed’

Ensuring all the hardware and technology we’re using works in harmony, such that the customer can see it, configure, it, and personalize it. We’re doing this with our “Connect” app, which – in addition to allowing them to manage their mobile tariffs and access hotspots while on the go -- brings all of this to the customer. Whether it’s parental controls, guest WiFi access, speed tests, onboarding of powerline devices, resetting passwords. It’s all the things our customers would and should expect. Meaning WiFi that consistently works well, with control in the palm of their hand.

JR: We’re currently deploying 802.11ac Wave 2 in the home, which has impressively nerdy feature names, like beam-steering and multi-user operation. Bottom line, they make the signals behave better in a given (and often hostile) environment. We’re also actively testing the benefits of 802.11ax, which works in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectral areas and enables multi-gigabit speeds.

On top of that, we’re planning a 2018 deployment of cloud-based radio resource management, which is all about optimizing the WiFi experience -- it takes some of what’s traditionally been processed locally, and pulls it back into the network. And, we’re testing some distributed WiFi solutions, to expand indoor coverage.

MCN: Is 5G an opportunity for small cell and backhaul, or a threat to the last mile? (A little bit of both?)
JW: The business model [for 5G] kind of confuses me some. For the markets that Mediacom operates in, which are much lower density than maybe the average -- we're well below 50 homes a mile. Although we don’t have as many line-of-sight issues with many tall buildings, the reach of these very high frequencies are really going to limit their use in lower density markets. 

I realize that Verizon and others are talking about 5G...but it's starting to feel a lot like 3D, in that there's a ton of talk about it, but when you go and look at the engineering, this is not going to be like LTE. When 4G came along, it was really about enabling a new frequency and new, more efficient protocols. This is fundamentally a different architecture. You're not going to enable with this with macro towers; you're going to have to build a whole new network to do this. And it's going to cost a lot of money. I think they have the performance to compete with landlines, but I don't think they have the capacity...at any cost-effective rate to really compete with landline. 

JR: It’s both, but probably more of an opportunity for backhaul. I mean, in rural areas, or very non-dense areas, having a wireless option, vs. wired, may make sense. We’re testing 5G for both, but to us it looks better for fixed use cases. That’s because millimeter wave comes with very large channel sizes, that can offer very high bandwidth -- but at those frequencies, propagation can be really challenging. Anything in the line of sight -- a tree, a building -- can mess things up.

DH: We don’t see 5G as a threat to the last mile. For starters, the economics aren’t there, at least in the foreseeable future. Plus, a 5G last mile will not offer the performance equivalent to fiber rich and deep access networks.

Spectrally, 5G performance will require larger bandwidths, which implies higher frequency spectrum and the use of advanced radio technologies, such as Massive MIMO or coordinated multi-site transmissions.

Higher spectral bands imply denser deployments of radio access nodes (smaller cells) with more backhaul locations, so for sure there are opportunities to scale backhaul revenues here.

When asked what a good coverage 5G access network might look like, I often point to one of our cable access maps showing our WiFi hotspots.

Ultimately, it’s not a question of 5G or cable access in the last mile. More, it’s a question of how will 5G radio access and fixed, fiber-rich cable access complement each other. Just like how unlicensed WiFi radio access compliments fixed cable access today.

KH: It is a little bit of both. From a technical perspective, we're taking advantage of some of the small cell opportunities.  

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For cable operators and other internet service providers, offering a solid broadband service no longer ends where the wire connects to the home.

Now that most devices in the home are wireless, the responsibility of the ISP has rapidly shifted beyond modems and integrated WiFi gateways to tightly integrated, whole-home setups that extend coverage to every nook and cranny of the premises.

Until recently, whole-home WiFi had been the primary domain of relatively expensive retail products tailored for tech-savvy consumers who don’t mind doing things themselves. However, the costs of those products continue to drop, opening the door to core and premium offerings that aim to drive retention alongside some new, incremental revenues while still being simple enough for the masses to install and manage.

Related: Home Builders Eye Designs Optimized for WiFi

That has created opportunities for vendors. Among them, AirTies has hooked up with several ISPs, including Atlantic Broadband, Frontier Communications, and Midco. Eero, which has been focused on retail, has teamed with Blue Ridge Communications on a setup that includes the supplier’s WiFi access points and security solutions. And Cable One has launched WiFi One, a product set designed to boost wireless coverage in the home using a mix of gateways from Arris and Hitron, as well as Hitron-made WiFi extenders.

Related: Time to Own the Home

Those examples are coming into focus as WiFi becomes the de facto means of accessing the internet in the home for most consumers, with some estimates showing that 86% of all in-home broadband now travels over WiFi. According to Cisco Systems’s latest Visual Networking Index study, 63% of all internet protocol traffic will be wireless (including WiFi and cellular), and 98.1% of broadband consumer premises equipment will be equipped with 802.11ac WiFi by 2021.

Top of Mind
WiFi has also become synonymous with internet connectivity in the minds of many consumers. “When we ask customers what is the internet, most tell you that the internet is WiFi,” Cox Communications vice president of product strategy and management Philip Nutsugah said.

With that in mind, Atlanta-based Cox has pushed ahead with the national launch of Panoramic WiFi, a premium-level, whole-home WiFi service that starts at $9.99 per month.

That offering centers on a modem/WiFi router with a DOCSIS 3.0 modem and WiFi extenders that utilize MoCA 2.0 technology and cost an additional $4 each per month. Panoramic WiFi also includes a customized installation, 24/7 support and access to My WiFi, a network management app for iOS and Android mobile devices.

With the emergence of the smart home and the Internet of Things, WiFi is becoming the “critical last foot, last yard inside the home,” Nutsugah said.

Related: Study Finds Home WiFi Mesh Products Work Better With a Wired Backbone

Other major ISPs have also taken notice and are doing something about it.

“We knew two-and-a-half years ago that we needed to do something different in the WiFi space,” Eric Schaefer, Comcast senior vice president and general manager, communications, data and mobility services, explained.

An average of 9.7 devices are connected to Comcast’s gateways at any given time, he said, adding that the MSO expects that number to grow to about 50 in the next three to four years. In another nod to the proliferation of WiFi, about 90% of Comcast’s XB3 gateways don’t have anything connected to their Ethernet ports.

For Comcast, ‘xFi’ Marks the Spot
Comcast is targeting this opportunity with xFi, a cloud-based platform launched in May. It enables consumers to manage their WiFi systems via X1 set-tops, a web portal or mobile apps.

Offered free to Xfinity Internet customers, xFi supports millions of compatible devices, including the xFi Wireless Gateway (the rechristened XB3) and the xFi Advanced Wireless Gateway, a new DOCSIS 3.1-based device that used to be known as the XB6.

“Our vision is to bring enterprise-grade management to every one of our xFi gateways,” Schaefer said.

Later this year, Comcast will complement those gateways with a new line of WiFi “pods” that will fill in coverage gaps in the home. Comcast is developing those in partnership with Plume. (Comcast also led a recent $37.5 million investment round in Plume.)

Among its features, xFi enables users to view their WiFi names and passwords, monitor network activity and troubleshoot connection issues. xFi users can also create individual user profiles and organize the devices they use (including giving nicknames to devices), view the devices connected to their home network and adjust their wireless gateway settings. xFi also lets customers “pause” all WiFi access on the home network, and use a “Bedtime Mode” whereby they can automatically pause WiFi access on the home network during scheduled times.

Comcast is early into its xFi era, “but overall I’m pleased with where we are with the launch,” Schaefer said.

The xFi app for Android devices has received an average ranking of 3.4 (out of 5), based on 311 total reviews, with 148 users giving it a five-star rating.

‘Home Operating System’
Schaefer said the initial batch of features for xFi are somewhat limited, but the platform’s cloud-based nature will allow it to rapidly iterate and tack on new capabilities, as is the case with X1, Comcast’s next-generation video platform.

“It’s really the home operating system … that brings everything together in the home the same way X1 brought all of the programming content together on the video side,” Schaefer said of xFi. “You need to manage WiFi and organize it the way you would organize 100 channels of HD or 100,000 hours of VOD.”

Comcast intends to add the Plume-based WiFi pod products and software to the mix sometime in Q4, Schaefer said. Those will also be woven into Comcast’s cloud-managed platform, which will make near real-time decisions as conditions ebb and flow in the home. For example, those devices will steer to a different band if the current one experiences interference.

“The primary access point remains the gateway and the Plume pods will extend off of that main gateway,” he said.

A big challenge, he said, will be managing all of those data transactions across tens of millions of devices, which Comcast will try to handle with its cloud-based platform and the use of RDK-B. That’s the broadband flavor of the Reference Design Kit, the preintegrated software platform for set-tops and gateways managed by Comcast, Liberty Global and Charter Communications (via its acquisition of Time Warner Cable).

“It’s a different kind of scale,” Schaefer said.

That scale also extends to the workforce. Nutsugah said Cox has trained its technicians to support the new whole-home WiFi product, learning about the importance of elements such as device placement.

Providing a more solid WiFi platform will bring some operational benefits, because it will result in fewer customer calls, Nutsugah added.

Making Things Simple
“Our goal is to take the complexity out of it for the customer and simplify it for them,” Nutsugah said.

Plume, which also counts Liberty Global, Samsung, Shaw Ventures and Presidio Ventures (a unit of Jupiter Communications, Japan’s largest cable operator) among its financial backers, entered the whole-home WiFi sector with retail products, but sees partnerships like the one it has with Comcast as the proper path forward. Comcast will be making its own pod designs that integrate Plume’s technology, but Plume has also notched a deal with France’s Sagemcom to make and supply pods to the service provider market.

“The service provider angle … has been our plan from the beginning,” Fahri Diner, Plume’s CEO, said. “We’re launching Plume largely to service providers. This is not something that’s optional for [them]. It’s a must-do.”

And though Plume sells devices, it views itself mostly as a software company, basing much of its activity on an “adaptive” platform that responds as the wireless conditions in the home change. “Hardware is not the issue,” Diner said. “What was missing is a very advanced control plane that can looks across multiple devices. … Think of us as air-traffic control.”

It’s not just about raw connectivity, but connectivity that is optimized for video distribution around the home, Arris chief technology officer of consumer premises equipment Charles Cheevers said.

“Managed video over WiFi absolutely needs to be reliable,” he said, noting that the need is becoming more pronounced as pay TV operators expand on the deployment of wireless set-tops. Comcast, for example, has begun to roll out the Xi5, a wireless set-top for its X1 platform.

Ask cable providers these days about their top customer-service priorities and the answer is likely to be along the lines of: It’s time to own the wireless space inside the home.

That was a familiar refrain at both The Independent Show, the Indianapolis gathering of small to midsized operators, and at the New England cable convention in Newport, R.I., where Charter Communications executive vice president Tom Adams used that very phrase. Providing 60 Megabits per second of internet speed is great, he noted — but how consumers experience that bandwidth in terms of how WiFi-connected devices perform makes the difference in how happy they are about it.

Jeff Baumgartner points this out in "Whole-Home WiFi Heats Up," the feature that opens this week's issue of MCN. As Philip Nutsugah of Cox said, most consumers will tell you “the internet is WiFi.” Cox also sees it as a revenue opportunity, rolling out the $9.99 monthly Panoramic WiFi product promising “fast WiFi coverage in every single part of your home.”

Importantly, it’s not just Cox and Comcast — which recently launched a WiFi-network management platform dubbed xFi — seizing on this, but also smaller operators such as Atlantic Broadband and Midco. Executives from Wave Broadband and Harron Communications in Indy said it was essential to educate consumers about how to get the best experience from their WiFi-linked gadgets.

How many gadgets? An average of about 10 are connected to Comcast’s gateways at any given time — a number seen as quintupling in the next several years.

When cable operators introduced broadband, it was the product that sold itself and a huge quality of life improvement. Now broadband is a necessity and the most important part of the cable bundle. Providers continue to increase the download and upload speeds that consumers crave. Keeping them happy, though, may depend on delivering the best WiFi experience, too.

Cox Communications named Len Barlik EVP and chief operating officer of the cable company. He replaces Jill Campbell, who was promoted to parent Cox Enterprises earlier this month.

Barlik joined Cox in 2011 as executive vice president of product management and development. During his tenure, Cox launched several products such as Contour, the company’s flagship video product, Gigabit broadband speeds for residential customers and the Homelife home security and automation portfolio. Most recently, he served as chief human resources officer where he realigned leadership, processes and tools to better equip the evolving workforce to meet customer needs, Cox said.

RELATED: Taylor, Campbell promoted to Cox Enterprises leadership roles

“No matter the role, Len’s approach is always characterized by a long-range, strategic vision, a sense of urgency and the ability to move an organization to deliver on its strategy,” Cox president Pat Esser said in a statement. “As chief operations officer, Len will ensure that our marketplace strategies are tightly aligned with our operating principles so that we can continue to improve the customer experience and grow the company.”

As executive vice president and chief operations officer, Barlik will oversee field operations, customer experience, care operations, field service strategy, operations process management and public affairs.

Charter Communications chair/CEO Tom Rutledge had been re-elected chairman of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association.

Cable execs were in Washington this week for the Cable Hall of Fame and NCTA's Near Future conference.

Also re-elected for second, one-year terms, on the board were Pat Esser, president, Cox Communications, vice chair; and John Skipper, ESPN president and co-chair, Disney Media Networks, secretary.

Dave Watson was elected to a first term as treasurer. He is president of Comcast Cable and EVP of Comcast Corp.

Bob Stanzione, executive chairman of Arris, was re-elected to a two-year term.

Elected at-large programmer directors were: David Zaslav, president, Discovery Communications; Peter Rice, chairman, Fox Networks Group; and Josh Sapan, president, AMC Networks, each to two-year terms.

Bob Bakish, president of Viacom, was elected for a one-year term.

Elected at-large system directors to new, three-year terms were John Evans, chairman, Evans Telecommunications, and Pat McAdaragh, president, Midco.

Nancy Dubuc, president of A+E Networks, and Alfred Liggins, president of Radio One and chairman of TV One, were named to at-large director seats for two-year terms.

Observers expecting Amazon to explore deeper dives into streamed content distribution take note: Former Suddenlink Communications and Cox Communications programming executive Kathy Payne has joined the online retailer as head of content acquisition for pay TV offering Amazon Channels.

Payne is well-versed in the ways of negotiating carriage deals with programmers. She served in various capacities for more than 20 years at Cox — last as vice president of content acquisition — before moving to Suddenlink in 2014 as senior vice president and chief programming officer. She left Suddenlink in June, after its purchase by Altice N.V., now Altice USA.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed Payne is an employee and her official title is head of content acquisition, but declined further comment. Payne did not respond to The Wire’s request for comment.

Payne’s experience dealing with the likes of The Walt Disney Co., 21st Century Fox and Time Warner Inc. could indicate Amazon is getting serious about beefing up the services available through Amazon Channels. Launched in 2015, Amazon Channels is an offshoot of the Amazon Prime Video service, selling premium channels like HBO, Showtime and Starz as well as about 100 specialized streaming channels like Seeso, Shudder and Acorn TV. Amazon Channels is part of the overall Amazon Prime Video subscription, but some channels carry an additional fee.

Wedbush Securities managing director, equity research Michael Pachter, who follows Amazon, told The Wire, “Payne’s skill set certainly lends itself more to linear programming than to on-demand reruns, and her hire by Amazon suggests that they might be considering getting into OTT services that include traditional pay TV.”

Amazon has said before it hopes to keep growing Amazon Channels, which grew from around 80 at its inception to more than 100 this year. Its a la carte menu includes HBO for $15 per month, Starz for $9, Shudder for $5 and Seeso for $4. It doesn’t offer live feeds of those services, or any broadcast or basic-cable networks, but Amazon has said over time it could consider packaging channels into bundles at a discount.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if Amazon became an OTT distributor of linear television programming, and given the company’s substantial investment in [cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services] and in licensed and original TV and movie content, it isn’t a big stretch for them to get into nationwide television service,” Pachter said.

Univision Communications said it has named cable veteran Bobby Amirshahi senior vice president, corporate communications effective immediately. He will be based in New York and report to Univision EVP and chief communications officer Rosemary Mercedes.

Amirshahi will work closely with UCI’s corporate communications and investor relations teams to support and align and elevate the Company’s communications initiatives. Amirshahi will also be responsible for developing and executing UCI’s comprehensive PR plan to expand the Company’s positioning as the media destination for the diverse and increasingly multicultural audiences in the United States.

“Bobby has over 20 years of experience managing corporate communications for some of the largest, most influential media companies, giving him a deep understanding of our business and the unique opportunities and challenges faced by our industry,” Mercedes said in a statement. “With a strong track record of implementing successful programs spanning media relations, issues management, financial communications, and corporate social responsibility, Bobby is uniquely equipped to help us expand and deepen our communications efforts with all of our stakeholders.”

Amirshahi has a long track record in the cable and network business. Most recently serving in senior communications positions at Time Warner Cable, Vaicom’s MTV Networks and Cox Communications. He began his career in communications at the Telecommunications Industry Association in Washington, D.C.

“I am honored to have the opportunity to join such a dynamic and differentiated company like Univision,” Amirshahi said in a statement. “I look forward to working closely with UCI’s talented communicators to continue building and enhancing UCI’s profile among our employees, influencers and investors.”

Cox Communications appears to be in step with new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's focus on closing the digital divide, stepping up its efforts in concert with the American Library Association.

Cox President Pat Esser plans to announce later today that the company is boosting its long-standing Connect2Compete efforts--since the late 1990's--to provide broadband access to low income Americans by increasing access to digital literacy training for students and families at libraries and online (www.digitallearn.org).

The company points out that more than nine out of 10 students say Internet is required to do their homework.

Cox says it will create, in partnership with the ALA, customized training courses in both English and Spanish in Tucson (where Esser will announce the effort), as well as Topeka and Baton Rouge, then study the outcomes.

In addition, all Cox markets and local libraries in those markets will "collaborate on digital literacy and internet adoption initiatives, including an advertising campaign on Cox’s cross-channel cable lineup."

Cox customers will be able to access training at www.digitallearn.org as well as in many of the 1,500 libraries in the company's footprint (18 states).

“Experience with computers and the internet is necessary for competing in today’s digital world,” said Esser in a statement about the pilot project. “Through our partnership, we will ensure that the libraries never close for our families, expanding the reach of their digital collections and services, and empowering more families to experience limitless learning and full participation in the knowledge economy.”

“America’s libraries combine the expertise of our librarians with a robust technology infrastructure and growing digital resources to advance digital opportunity for all in our nation,” said ALA President Julie Todaro of the joint effort.  “We look forward to working with Cox to further extend our reach and resources to help more families thrive online.”

Cable ops have long said that digital literacy, in addition to access, is a key component of driving broadband use. "Those who receive formal digital literacy training (as opposed to informal assistance from family or friends) are significantly more likely to use the internet to pursue economic opportunities and cultivate social ties," says Cox.

Cox has been a major force in Connect2Compete, the industry program providing discount broadband to families of kids eligible for school lunch programs. In addition, last year Cox began offering free in-home WiFi for Connect2Compete participants.

COLLEEN LANGNER

NAME: Colleen Langner

TITLE: Senior Vice President, Marketing Operations

COMPANY: Cox Communications

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Helped launch cable’s first triple-play bundle while a Cox marketer in Orange County, Calif. Launched first Cox Solutions Stores (there are now more than 100). Steadily adding responsibilities, she now leads all marketing operations, including customer acquisition and retention teams, and media planning and buying, reporting to EVP Mark Greatrex.

QUOTABLE: “I always want to be in a role where I’m closest to the consumer. The consumer will tell you their wants and desires.”

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Colleen Langner got “the cable bug” with her first job out of college (Marquette University), working with the cable marketing council in her hometown of Chicago. The road to her current role as senior vice president of marketing operations for Cox Communications included milestones like helping the MSO launch broadband Internet service, digital telephone and digital cable in a groundbreaking three-service bundled offering in Orange County, Calif.

Her husband Dan’s job took them west, in 1990; her career rise at Cox brought them to Atlanta about four years ago. Along the way, they have raised three teenage sons who have grown up with the business.

“I had my oldest when digital cable launched, and I had my second when high-speed Internet came around and then, when I had my third, it was phone,” she said recently, referring to 19-year-old Jack, 16-year-old Corey and 14-year-old Ryan. “My husband said to me, ‘There’s no more products.’ So thank God we didn’t launch home security until recently.”

‘COOL AS A CUCUMBER’

That sense of humor is part of what makes Langner, in Cox chief operating officer Jill Campbell’s words, “an extremely positive, optimistic leader.”

Campbell gave an example. During a period last year when Cox was trying to increase its average revenue per customer and people were bombarding Langner with ideas, Langner remained “cool as a cucumber,” thanking everyone and praising their suggestions.

“She never, never says negative things,” Campbell said. “People really want to follow her and they will take the hill because of how she presents things.”

Mark Greatrex, Cox’s chief marketing and sales officer, credits her help as a key lieutenant in leading two big transformations of the marketing team, moving from state-by-state approaches to a centralized one with nationwide portfolios in categories such as customer acquisition and retention and digital outreach.

Among other attributes, she’s agile at tweaking campaigns on the fly and moving marketing resources around quickly as needed, Greatrex said. “In a very high change environment, that’s tremendously important.”

Change was certainly in the air in mid 1990s Orange County, when Cox began offering an alternative to the then-Pacific Bell phone monopoly and introduced high-speed Internet to consumers weary of dial-up modems. “We used to say with high-speed Internet, we all lived in Missouri, the show-me state. People had to see it to believe it, to see how fast it was.”

Digital cable, which upped the channel ante from 30 to hundreds and added an on-screen guide to sort through them, was another revelation marketers wanted consumers to experience first hand.

Kip Simonson, who was Langner’s boss at the Cox system back then (and now works at Mediacom Communications), said Langner was adept at helping branch out into this new realm of retail marketing. One weekend, Simonson said, Cox set up a 10,000-square-foot tent in the parking lot of a CompUSA store and, he recalled, more than 5,000 people showed up to try out the new products.

“She was a huge help in setting up big events,” he said.

The Mediacom marketer saw Langner at the recent CES in Las Vegas. In an interview shortly after the gadget-fest ended, Langner said highlights for her were “around smart home: home security, home innovation and how our products are now working together.”

Keeping up (or even staying ahead) of what consumers want nowadays leads Langner into marketing those home-monitoring and automation services in Cox Homelife, and clueing Cox consumers into the benefits of the new Contour video platform, with voice remote and enhanced search, and Gigabit Internet.

When Cox reintroduced Contour — now incorporating X1 technology developed by Comcast — she led an employee campaign within Cox to make everyone a knowledgeable ambassador for New Contour. “She has got tremendous collaboration and influencing skills,” Greatrex noted, both for communicating with her team of more than 100 employees and for dealing with her senior-management peers.

ALL ABOUT TEAM BUILDING

Langner said she gets a lot of satisfaction from watching the personal growth by members of her team as they learn new capabilities made possible by data and technology to get to new levels of marketing — “seeing how they’ve flourished and the accomplishments they’ve made not only at Cox but within the industry.”

“For me, it’s really around building teams that I can trust and know that people have your back,” she said. “That’s what I instill with my team members. And make sure they also stay close to the consumer. … I think that can lift and move the whole business forward.”

The youngest of six children, Langner’s dad (her pre-married surname was McKay) was a Chicago city policeman and her mom was a bank vice president.

In addition to Campbell and Greatrex and former Cox marketing chief Joe Rooney, Langner counts her mom, Pat, who is now 85, as a mentor “and a role model. Gosh, if she can do it with six kids. I only have three.”

Keeping up with her sons’ activities, including football and wrestling, keeps her busy outside of work. Since moving east from Southern California, the family maintains a love of the beach by visiting ones on the Gulf Coast, including Destin, Fla., and gets back to the Golden State at least a couple of times a year.

“I like to say there’s nothing that a good book and a walk on the beach can’t help.”