John Deere. Canon. Mercedes. Samsung. Hyundai. Sony. Honda. Peterbilt. 

Each one and all eight see these two highlighted things in their future. As does the entire global — but especially the Unites States’ — health industry. 

At CES 2023 (the Consumer Electronics Show just passed) nearly every press conference, booth visit, conference session and even most one-on-one meetings involved at least an unspoken element of both the below items. I did not travel far, and long hours, expecting these two. But I sure found them in spades.

One was data. Indeed, data appears to be part of nearly every future business. While 10 years ago I looked and found few data applications, today it’s a surprise when I don’t see them. 

This leads to No. 2: delivery. Data has far less capability if it cannot be properly distributed to other devices, small or large, nearby or far away. 

This suggests two things for most future businesses: first, get deeper into data, including data management and enhancement; and second, the foundational forms of data distribution — such as fiber, and via spectrum services, i.e., wireless and satellite — are worth keeping and enhancing, in lockstep with data collection.

In two long days at CES 2023 last week in Las Vegas, the snapshots below — especially the future of the U.S. health care session — tell a story of future fascination, and of ubiquitous broadband connectivity.

The "fog" in the title above represents the new industry moniker, representing all the interchange of data signals and the transport of that data between devices. This “fog” is expected to get so much thicker in the years and decades ahead (see Fog Computing). 

This list below is a peek into the plans and planning of some of the biggest names in consumer electronics (and related businesses). They include a glimpse of how each one will carry the torch of distributing data between devices, to enhance just about every part of — and item within — each part of their product and service ecosystems.

Canon

The Japanese electronics giant touted its celebrity director-turned-spokesman M. Night Shyamalan. The Hollywood legend cheered Canon’s new virtual reality (VR) headsets under the MReal brand name (together with the Canon software called Kokomo). Additionally, a panel of sports and entertainment executives highlighted low-latency data delivery and collection, to enhance not just the consumer consumption of sports content, but also uses such as improving player and team performances (see Canon at CES 2023). Data distribution was embedded in the entire presentation.

Mercedes

From only a broadband connectivity POV, the titan German vehicle creator, Mercedes-Benz, focused its enhancement of what it calls its in-vehicle “holistic” use and entertainment experience. Key to that, a spokesman explained, is enhancing the simplicity of a customer’s “simple connectivity.” He offered further, beginning in the U.S. this year, customers will be able to “just start a new Mercedes app and immediately get directly into the vehicle’s connectivity.” (See The Standout Cars and Tech of CES 2023.)

Samsung

Samsung is the other huge South Korean conglomerate I visited at CES 2023, and like its fellow Asian electronics entity, Hyundai, Samsung avoided a focus on its main lines, instead pumping messages tied to its lesser-known products. In this case, the Samsung tagline was “Bringing Calm to our Connected World,” the highlight of the “connected” feature being Samsung’s claim of 14 billion connected devices in the world today. Home, car and workplace were the three centers of that connectivity message, championing Samsung’s “SmartThings” application, and a Samsung-estimated 80 million connected devices, themed around … you guessed it, “sustainability.” Broadband connectivity of all that data is paramount.

Hyundai

Hyundai, best recognized in the U.S. for its automobile expertise, spent most of its press conference block highlighting its global shipping, notably ships at sea. Ocean mobility and energy collection were themes, both also immersed in data and data delivery. Hyundai claimed that 40% of the world’s population lives within 40 miles of a coastline, emphasizing the relevance of actions aimed at the world’s oceans. “Hyundai leads the era of smart mobility by providing a platform that combines software and associated hardware, called Mobis,” extolled an online press announcement.

Sony + Honda

Saving its biggest and newest news for last, one of the oldest and largest of the pioneer Japanese consumer electronics concerns, Sony, began predictably illustrating its own latest gaming and VR developments. This was focused on its Gran Turismo product and service. A new Sony camera, labeled “Venice,” coupled with an app called Leonardo, both focusing remarkably on the disabled, and those folks’ abilities to also thrive in a gaming environment. The last 15 minutes of the Sony conference drove home its alliance with its country partner and giant vehicle manufacturer, Honda, to create a new mid-sized road sedan, branded “Afeela.” Needless to say, with 45 total cameras, 16 of which are inside the Afeela car, the importance of data collection, transfer, management, and seamless transfer back and forth will be paramount to its success — inside and outside the car. Further technology foci were autonomous driving and in-car entertainment. Sony’s spokesman used the phrase, “Everyone and everything intelligently connected” (See Electric Pickup Trucks, Flying Cars and More at CES 2023).

Toyota

The MX221 model of Toyota transport features an autonomous, self-driving taxi service, planned for delivery into global markets by 2030. An amazing set of service and entertainment features operate — again, like so much in the consumer technology world today — only because of data and interconnectivity. But one single example, is the spectrum needed to send a drone that drops lunches through the sunroof while the vehicle moves. In-car safety and health monitors, and maintenance and repair, are centered, too, around fog-type interchanges of properly delivered and distributed data. This innovation, too, homes in, like the Sony-Honda vehicle, on capabilities for the disabled.

Peterbilt

The giant U.S. long-haul truck company brand from Denton, Texas, mixed at CES 2023 with partner truck makers and truck ecosystem supporters, PACCAR, Kenworth, and DAF. Working hand-in-hand with mobile-cellular applications aimed at different functions dependent upon whether moving or not, fixed wireless is the other side of the wireless coin that makes these newest machines work, and work better and better, it seems (See, Peterbilt Showcases Advanced Truck Technology at CES). Peterbilt’s focus on autonomous vehicles will necessarily involve both mobile and fixed wireless applications.

John Deere

A huge, fully autonomous, self-driving tractor. How could that possibly exist without reliable broadband connectivity of the highest order? The challenge then becomes getting the best signal for the best value to these rural- and agricultural-based users. After all, how much sense does it make to try and install a wire into a moving combine? The answer is obvious: wireless connectivity is necessary and likely will be a huge part of the foreseeable future. While moving in the open fields, that signal would likely be mobile-cellular based; yet, while parked overnight in the rural barn or warehouse, the software updates in more cases than most would be best delivered via fixed wireless (in large part because installing fiber to singular remote farms and ranches is most likely remaining impractical for a long time to come!) (See, John Deere; and see, John Deere Keeps Revolutionizing Farming).

And a Bonus CES 2023 Presentation: The U.S. Health Industry

A last session of day two delivered the ultimate and perhaps most important and impactful version of the CES 2023 “Ubiquitous Connectivity” message. At the end of the hour-long session, each on-stage session participant was asked: What was the key takeaway for the audience vis-à-vis medicine and technology heading into 2023? To a doctor (there were five on the stage), digital health technology will change medicine primarily in the form of “data,” each opined. This meant not only data creation, but data management, and their closest sibling, distribution of that data.

In Sum

The obvious common CES 2023 thread: broadband connectivity.

The bottom line: If you can, hang onto your fixed wireless and/or hybrid fiber wireless business. Or, if you are not yet in it, consider becoming so, in some related fashion (See, e.g., Big Ambitions: Oregon Co-ops Buy Majority Stake in Data Center). The data fixed wireless and related businesses will soon distribute is moving toward the center of more and more broadband connectivity. Why? Because every business is morphing to data; and most data only makes sense if it can be efficiently and affordably exchanged; in more and more instances, wireless will be the only way to exchange that data; and not all of that will be mobile/cellular wireless; fog will pervade — frequently involving fixed wireless and hybrid fiber wireless combinations, and eventually change the way we do just about everything. The future of data will never be limited to just wires or satellites. ■

Fifty years ago this month, mostly on September 5 and 6, 1972, the remarkable people I worked with at ABC Sports in Munich, West Germany, tried their best to tell a horrible, and indeed horribly difficult, story (See, Jim McKay’s Sixth Olympics: Munich 1972).

What made it so tough to tell was that it was actually a millennial-long, multi-part story. Its challenging seeds germinated in the earliest centuries of recorded human history. And its chapters are still being developed today by the disreputable likes of a worldwide cast of today’s racists, bigots, dictators, autocrats, and too many greedy, closed-minded, actors.

For near the capital of the southern German state of Bavaria, each approximately 12-20 miles in a western and northwestern arch from Munich’s town center – and the iconic Marienplatz, home of the cherished Schafflertanz (See, Marienplatz) -- lie two sites synonymous today with man’s truest inhumanity toward fellow man. One became famous during the timeframe of 1933-1945 and leading up to today; the other became famous during the long dark hours, late in the night, of September 5-6, 1972.

And for the two weeks of August 26 to September 11, 1972, ABC had the exclusive broadcast TV rights in the United States, to telecast the XX Summer Olympics in Munich.

First Dachau Visit

A few months before being hired that late summer by ABC, when I was 20 years old, living in Germany for a year abroad with my aunt, I felt compelled to visit what is perhaps the world’s most prominent reminder of man’s inhumanity -- indeed, the shamefulness -- of man-to-man, of woman-to-woman, and even of child-to-child.

A small group of friends from the German language school I attended in the spring of that Summer Olympics year urged me to join them in what was a must-attend crusade for them. It was a site of humankind’s utmost folly and fear. That was the semi-bucolic town along the banks of the Amper River, named Dachau (See, Dachau Concentration Camp).

My takeaways from that late spring afternoon?

Shock and disbelief that it ever happened. Gloom. Depression. Confusion. Grief. All to a degree I had never felt before. The wheels just would not stop turning in my head, and they continue to spin today.

And yet I was so glad that I went there and witnessed it.

That Late Summer Day

Some of what got me to thinking 50 years later about the first of the main Nazi Concentration Camps was my former ABC Sports colleague, a supervising film editor at the time, Kemper Peacock. Kemper had been hired by ABC to work with on-air ABC News Middle East correspondent, Peter Jennings, producing daily Summer Olympics “Up Close and Personal” film vignettes, focused on local Bavaria’s people, places, and culture (See, Peter Jennings' First Olympics). Including having one of the all-time great birth names, K. Peacock was a true talent, when it came to what a skilled craftsman like him and an old Steenbeck film editing machine could do for storytelling -- even for an Olympics broadcast, when the edited segment had nothing to do with sports (See, Steenbeck).

Out of the blue, recently, Kemper magically reached out to reconnect, reminding me of that first day our film unit visited Dachau, to film a piece about that tragic piece of humankind’s recent history. I also remember being joined by our Jewish film photographer for that segment, Don Shapiro, and his assistant cameraman and soundman that day.

We arrived late morning, Germany had brought us a warm late summer day, and driving the eleven or so miles to Dachau from Munich’s Olympic Center was like most drives through the low hills that march up to the Bavarian and Austrian Alps, 60 or so miles to the south. Lots of green, lots of farms, cows, cobblestones, and a patch work of towns and larger towns along the way.

The Dachau Camp itself is rather bleak (See, Dachau, the “Model” Concentration Camp, 1933-39). Of what I remember, there were three basic building units, inside a gate and surrounding tall, wired fences held up by concrete stone posts. One was the barracks, where the concentration prisoners were stored at night; another was the administration buildings, where the memorial museum today stands; and the third was the paradigm of the horror there, the gas chambers.

In some of my research for Peter Jennings' voiceover, I ran across a German saying that told so much of what the German people allowed during those dozen years from 1933-1945. In German that was, “Lieber Gott, mach mich stumm/Das ich nich nach Dachau komm.” The English translation was “Dear God, make me dumb [or silent]/That I may not to Dachau come.”

The other haunting sentence framed high on a wall in the museum seemed to capture it all, and seemed to identify the true importance of that painful reminder along that complicated Bavarian river. It was the famed Spanish author and philosopher George Santayana’s globally known and oft-repeated lesson, “Those that cannot learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.” I will never forget that line and what it says about learning from history. And telling the truth.

As we finished our filming and several of Peter’s usual camera takes, a noticeable silence fell over the last we saw of the place. We somberly and silently drove back to the village, our real home for most of each of our days spent at those Summer Olympic Games.

I clearly recall Kemper saying this past summer, “It’s so very telling, fifty years later, that a man just a teenager in 1972, is now inflicting the exact same inhumanity on another people, not hundreds of miles from that concentration camp.” Of course, he meant Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine, and the lessons Putin never learned from the Nazis and Dachau and Furstenfeldbruck.

The “Up Close and Personal Segment” Kemper and Peter and the crew created the next day, which aired two days before the events of September 5-6, was one of the most memorable and rock solid poignant segments I can ever remember being involved in, during hundreds of “Up Close & Personals,” and my more than 15 years with ABC Sports. The irony, too, was that it took a veto by ABC Sport’s president, of a lower-level production executive’s decision not to air it, which got it on the telecast, at all, that week. Like he often did, Roone Arledge was able to see the far greater and more important angle. Indeed, another lesson for us all.

That Late Summer Night in Furstenfeldbruck

Further down the Amper River from Dachau is a similarly ancient and rural town, named Furstenfeldbruck (See, Furstenfeldbruck).

Indeed, on top of their proximity along the same river, the two medieval towns are remarkably similar. Through the years leading up to the Munich Games, the German and American militaries had selected the Furstenfeldbruck site for one of their smaller local air bases. Because it was remote, could accommodate larger jet aircraft, had a tall control tower looking directly down on the helicopter landing pad, and was completely fenced in from the outside world, it was chosen by the Munich, Bavarian, German and Israeli decisionmakers during the 16 hours 11 Israeli athletes and their coaches sat kidnapped in their Olympic dormitory at 31 Connally Strasse in the Olympiagelande. 

When the two German helicopters departed the east side of the athletes’ Olympic Village in the early dark that evening, they rose and turned first south and then west, over the ABC HQ, “dubbed “Barnathan’s Bungalow,” headed for Furstenfeldbruck. Twenty miles and 10 to 15 minutes later, those two aircraft, their pilots, the nine surviving Israelis, and the eight terrorists landed. Two or three of the terrorists walked over to inspect the waiting jet that they expected to carry them away from Europe, and a few minutes later the tower sharpshooters were ordered to snipe the killers, which they should not have done, in some large part because the sharpshooters could not see clearly to shoot accurately enough. Then, in part because the snipers missed, one or more of the terrorists made it back to the two awaiting helicopters, pulled a pin on a hand grenade and pulled the triggers on their guns, and seconds later all eleven of the kidnapped sportsmen were dead. Five of the terrorists and a Munich policeman were also killed.  

Thus, less than 20 years following the end of the terror in nearby Dachau to the northeast, yet another version of that terror had invaded the small river town to the south. People with power were still using other innocents to exact their evil goals.

After Furstenfeldbruck

Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, recently made comments strangely -- and bewilderingly, roughly 90 years later this year -- akin to the same kind of subtle antisemitism that drove the implementation of Dachau, Auschwitz, and scores of similar WWII German Death Camps. Orbán has been accused of elevating the concept of a superior white Christian race, to the exclusion of almost all others (See, Orbán Urges Christian Nationalists in Europe and U.S. to 'Unite Forces' at CPAC).

That kind of thing is why reminding people about Dachau is so important today.

All too often in life, we do things that the good side of our souls regret. And often regret forever. If I may presume, quite humbly, on behalf of a Collective Mankind (if there were such a thing), I’d say Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau are examples today of that very same regret. And a lesson.

I recall while in Germany a distant relative, call him Albert, introduced himself, which has led to some really joyous and rewarding exchanges over the decades. When I spoke of Dachau long ago, he reminded me of him growing up in yet another nearby medieval town. For school children there, learning about first, and then visiting in-person the Dachau Memorial, is a standard requirement of every student’s curriculum.

I could not help but think that such a requirement should be a part of the basic education for every student in the world. Literally. Maybe not to have to visit such a place in person, but to have that student permanently and forever taught this lesson, lest our offspring be condemned to repeat either event at any place – including Dachau or Furstenfeldbruck -- ever again. Or to never repeat anything even similar, anywhere in between, or afield. And to keep telling the story of the world’s Dachaus, even during a sports television show, telecast from a foreign land.

Like the men and women of ABC Sports often taught us, an unusual story (like Dachau and Furstenfeldbruck during the 1972 Olympics), when given context, makes more sense, is a better educator, and has greater impact than even the most obvious stories (such as the scores of sports events aired by ABC, late that summer). 

That was 1972’s best TV.

That is today’s best TV. ■

Right now, in the case of a particular executive department of the U.S. Federal government, that agency has made a first-ever fact-missing determination that damns one of the industries tasked for decades with delivering reliable broadband to nearly 10 million – mostly rural – Americans, in every state and jurisdiction. More importantly, by what will soon be multiple tens of millions, that agency-level decision damns that industry's constituents, and their constituents' clients, in the form of everyday broadband consumers. Now, that story – and its impact – needs telling. Clearly, it needs fresh support. And it needs significant change. By way of presentation below of the problem, its impact, facts, a couple of comparisons, and a resolution, a clearly better way is urged.

The NTIA Conundrum

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is a part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The NTIA is tasked with improving the understanding and distribution of broadband, information, and telecommunications services to Americans. 

The NTIA is different from the FCC, in that the latter is conceived of as an "independent" administrative body. The FCC is controlled and administered by its five commissioners, two of which are typically chosen by the party out of power. In today's context, that means two FCC commissioners and the chair are Democratic appointees, the other two commissioners are appointed by the Republicans. Today and since the start of the Biden Administration, the fifth commissioner is an open and unfilled seat. Conversely, the NTIA is directly controlled by The White House and its appointed secretary is part of the President's cabinet. Thus, the NTIA is, therefore, far less "independent" from politics and lobbying, than is the FCC.   

Somewhat unsurprisingly then, the more easily influenced NTIA was tasked, unilaterally, with the responsibility of assisting the proper distribution of billions of broadband dollars, as authorized by Congress' 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) (See, Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program).

After some gathering of information and viewpoints as to how to best distribute the all-important broadband funds, the NTIA appears to have unilaterally acceded to the demands of a couple of core lobbyists: one being a part of the broadband distribution industry; plus another set of the industry's vendors. Those, respectively, were the wired providers, and specifically, the fiber providers, and their constituent fiber users.

The Real Problem

Strangely, the U.S. fixed wireless broadband companies who rely entirely on unlicensed spectrum to serve residences and businesses were, essentially, intentionally excluded. This is because the NTIA stated incorrectly that broadband networks relying entirely on unlicensed spectrum were not "reliable," and thus should not be funded. Moreover, by not funding fixed wireless access provided via entirely unlicensed spectrum, the NTIA instead also determined that other funded broadband distribution forms – like cable, fiber, and telco – shall receive NTIA funds and thus an unfair competitive advantage. 

Specifically, the language of the NTIA's principal guidelines on the distribution of the IIJA Broadband Equity Access and Development (BEAD) funds, stated that if a provider used only unlicensed spectrum to deliver broadband to end users, then that delivery was, in turn, not reliable. At the same time, the NTIA guidelines mandated that those same Federal infrastructure funds could be used to overbuild – or build in the same geographical footprint as – the existing providers. That's correct: a local competitor could use Federal funds to wipe out another existing competitor's local business. 

This, in turn, either weakens or eliminates the growth of fixed wireless providers, and it strangely restricts the tools they can use. All of the broadband grants are scheduled to focus on either wired services only, or those grants will focus on a fraction of the real-world wireless industry, yet in the form of broadband distributed via only licensed (or exclusive) spectrum. Just one or the other. 

The true problem with the latter is that most of licensed spectrum is derived from FCC auctions, which are expensive. If something is unduly costly, it is mostly inaccessible to small and medium sized broadband operators. 

The additional expenses from the NTIA's new requirements are then typically passed on to the consumer; or likely worse, they cause the consumer to have delays in getting service, or perhaps not getting service at all. That is one of this issue's key bottom lines.

More specifically noteworthy here, are two points: 1) unlicensed spectrum's use in delivering broadband – especially to un- and underserved areas – has been and is proven to be quite reliable, by those that know, i.e., the FCC*; and 2) deploying licensed spectrum is often either very prohibitively impractical and expensive, or totally unavailable. Or worse, licensed spectrum is simply not the right choice for many geographic areas (See, Unlicensed Wireless System Offers High Reliability).

Thus, to make clear, overlooking lobbying to the contrary by the main U.S. fixed wireless association, which is the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), the NTIA decided in its decision dated May 13, 2022, to exempt primarily unlicensed spectrum providers from the receipt of IIJA Funds. And that means several tools in the solution kit that solves the Digital Divide are instantly removed. To emphasize, the action unfairly favors specific market providers without proper due process and rationale. The losers – thousands of  U.S. WISPs and hybrid fiber wireless operators, who use mostly unlicensed spectrum – are simply locked out. They are locked out without ample evidence, proof, and decision-making. That is wrong.

*Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), whether using licensed or unlicensed spectrum or in combination, is "reliable" broadband. The FCC, other federal agencies, and states and their subdivisions have long recognized it as a reliable and effective technology for their various broadband support programs. Numerous federal, state, and municipal projects, among others, depend in some measure on unlicensed FWA to realize their specific broadband-related goals.

The marketplace, too, recognizes the reliability of unlicensed FWA. Millions of Americans get their service from 2,800 WISPs, the majority of which use unlicensed FWA to deliver internet access to their customers. Banks, private equity, and other lending establishments have loaned FWA providers billions of dollars to grow their businesses. A $10 billion+ FWA hardware, software and services industry has emerged as a result. That is because WISP customers like and depend on unlicensed FWA to stay connected (See, "Lift-off" report, accessible for free by going to the home page of The Carmel Group, at www.carmelgroup.com). 

The Impact of The NTIA Decision

The NTIA's recent decision might remind many, clearly, of the cable industry's initial response during the early 1990s, to the deployment of Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) pay TV, by operators such as U.S. Satellite Broadcasting (USSB), DirecTV, Dish, AlphaStar and PrimeStar. DBS opponents derisively – and incorrectly -- labeled "DBS" as an acronym for "Don't Be Stupid." Another of those specific inaccuracies was that DBS rivals claimed that rain interference was so severe that it made the DBS service either significantly unusable or inferior. That was soon shown to be false, and wrong to the point that these days no one hears much about "rain fade," at all.

Today, by comparison, the antiquated and truly inferior Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology of the telephone industry has been deemed "reliable and future proof," by the NTIA**. This is an embarrassment. It ignores facts and assumes others that are not true. The allowance of DSL in place of proven wireless technologies is absurd.

Further, The Federal Register, vol. 85, No. 118, page 36785, shows the unlicensed bands that were determined authorized to be used to bid in the RDOF program.  Reliability is determined here by implication – the FCC would not allow such bands to be used if they were not reliable (See, 2020-13216.pdf (govinfo.gov).

The point: new technologies regularly face incorrect claims, assumptions, and determinations. It is up to those on the right side of truth to say "that‘s not true." Otherwise, consumers and policymakers make improper decisions based upon improper information. 

The majority of fixed wireless operators in the U.S. distribute broadband mostly using only unlicensed spectrum. And that works. And it especially works for the intended audience, which today includes a couple of scores of millions of rural Americans who otherwise do not receive even the FCC minimum of 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3/Mbps upload delivery capability.

**In its January 2022 Request for Comments, NTIA made no indication that it might exclude broadband networks using entirely unlicensed spectrum to serve last mile locations.

Fact: Unlicensed Spectrum Is "Reliable," Affordable, and Works

WISPA's National Spectrum Adviser, Richard Bernhardt, Esq., recently penned a very credible description of the facts supporting unlicensed fixed wireless. I strongly recommend reading it. (See, WISPs – Technically, Operationally Competent Purveyors of Reliable Broadband;
Unlicensed Spectrum Does Provide Reliable Internet Access). 

His core messages were that fixed wireless spectrum use:  

-Already works, and has been providing reliable broadband service to millions of customers for decades;

-Generates vital jobs and drives sorely needed economic growth, mostly in rural and suburban America; 

-Via thousands of providers, it delivers a responsive and consistent local presence, with enviable customer service and affordability; and 

-Those operators' services meet the needs of their clients with speed, regularity, and minimal latency; plus

-They operate with very little customer loss (or churn).

Rather than merely accepting his message at large, I of course looked at other objective recent points of view as to the "reliability" of unlicensed fixed wireless. Mr. Bernhardt's depiction of the actual technical capability and reliability behind decades of unlicensed broadband distribution is backed up by these additional experts and reports:

• See, Why Wireless Systems Operating in Unlicensed Spectrum Can Offer High Reliability; and
• See, Reliable Broadband Service Today and Tomorrow.

Another recent example: just look at the Navajo Nation, centered in Arizona at the confluence for the "4 Corners" that include Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, where we can make this comparison (See, NTIA unleashes $1B in IIJA funding for Tribal broadband): Ten fiber installs at $40K and a wait of 3 years, or 90 fixed wireless installs at roughly the same capital outlay, and a wait of just a few months, at most. This would be the likely choice (See, page 19, graphic 8, Liftoff: Comparative Economics of U.S. Internet Access Solutions).

All of these make one wonder what the NTIA was thinking when its executive leaders decided that unlicensed spectrum is "unreliable" now and in the future. The simple truth is, unlicensed spectrum in the U.S. today is not only NOT unreliable. Conversely, in every state, it typically serves scores of markets, plus an estimated 8.5 million U.S. broadband subscribers (See, reference and link to "Liftoff" report, above). That's a lot of broadband.

Reliable Metaphors

The NTIA funding builds tomorrow's broadband highways. Yet, metaphorically, before they even start, the NTIA is explaining to the states and smaller jurisdictions that every highway can only be an ultra-expensive one, made only of concrete. Indeed, that highway has to cost 8 to 9 times as much as reliable alternatives. And it has to be three lanes in each direction. And the cars that drive on it have to all travel at speeds of greater than 200 mph. With those parameters as its base, realistically, most places will never get roads, or, at minimum, most construction will be intolerably delayed. As such, the very purpose of the infrastructure program is thwarted. 

The NTIA seems to have completely forgotten or intentionally overlooked the fact that not every road needs to be built in the form of a four-lane 200-mph freeway, in order to transport commerce, people, products and services. Concurrently, the NTIA has excluded slower, yet entirely capable vehicles, and far less expensive and easy-to-deploy alternatives. The result is thus skewed for only certain "favored" projects. And do those funded alternatives work for just about everyone in a rural audience, with unserved areas, or places where there is little or no competition? 

They don't.

Resolution

Simply, the NTIA needs to go back and obtain more information. It needs to reopen its Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) process.  

Noteworthy in this regard is that no apparent public input was provided as a basis for the NTIA's damning declarations. The NTIA needs to unplug for 30 metaphorical seconds, and plug the process back in. After all, the word "information" is a core part of its very title. And "information" connotes truthful description, which the current NTIA definition of "reliable" clearly is not.

Specifically, the NTIA must in its NOFO reexamine and be more realistic about how it reviews and defines projects and applicants. Additionally, NTIA should provide principles and guidance for the individual states. These would be ones that give the greatest necessary latitude needed to get the job done effectively. Then, press the reset button. 

For emphasis, NTIA has violated its tacit duty of properly distributing truthful data and determinations, by missing this foundational fact and message: unlicensed spectrum is reliable, as is fiber and other delivery modes. Give applicants and projects the funding they need, and let each industry vertical deliver the products and services that fit the objective. 

When the government itself unilaterally determines what technologies are reliable, or futureproof, or effective, it makes the wrong determinations, and it discourages new ideas. It also knee-caps small and medium sized businesses, thousands of which have struggled for decades to provide and invest billions into services in locales where nobody would go. Furthermore, without allowing the commercial marketplace to do so, NTIA effectively tries to choose its own "winners," based upon politics, not facts. This is not the role of the Federal government…no matter which administration.  

The NTIA must not seek only its own self-ordained "perfect" solution. Rather, it should stimulate industry to provide excellent service everywhere. Compromise, and equity – the hallmark of healthy politics – works here, too.

Summary

The current administration learned earlier this month the importance of compromise and of accepting lesser victories as actual real victories. This was seen in the bi-partisan, successful legislation to assist taxing, health, infrastructure, and climate change initiatives. In the case of the NTIA, the agency needs to remember and repeat that effective lesson. Work with the FCC, and come up with a compromise solution, where lots more Americans can be served, well. 

Ultimately, there are many instances when the most expensive and most difficult-to-access solutions are simply the wrong ones. In a dream world, they work. Yet, in the real world, they do not. That is true in every community. Just ask any mayor or city council representative how they come to decision-after-decision in their respective locales. In the case of much of rural America, that is certainly the case. 

For this NTIA funding decision, one broadband pipe, fiber, is one of those expensive and frequently impractical solutions. Its real-world use is limited. As noted above, in addition to its costs, fiber is subject to outage from underground digging, and damages from storms when fiber is hung above-ground on communications lines. Fiber's bottom line: in many cases, it is just not practical for deployment when other options – like fixed wireless using unlicensed spectrum -- are available. This is especially true in low density, high-cost areas. By requiring something very costly, it means broadband solutions will be slower to deploy, or often will never be deployed at all. If that's the only choice, then that community is either lesser served, or not served at all. Conversely, the mission of unlicensed internet service providers (ISPs) is to serve the underserved, serve the unserved, and provide a good solution for all clients. ISPs have a motto: don't make clients wait. 

And to drive -- pun intended -- the above metaphor just a tiny bit further: what the NTIA did is like GM lobbying the DOT to only subsidize the building and distribution of 200-mph electric powered Chevy Corvettes, and convincing the agency to accept the rationale that figures, "We can only move forward with something that is really fast, really expensive, favoring particular parts of the vehicle industry. We can thus all only drive really costly and fast Corvettes, only on high-speed freeways. Plus, in the interim, we can't wait by using other types of roads and by using slower, and non-electric cars!" Such a determination and decision today -- by any governing body -- would be almost laughable. 

Unlicensed spectrum used by thousands of fixed wireless operators is simply a means to a broadband end. Unlicensed spectrum works the same way as licensed, but each have their own constraints (See, "Liftoff" Report, page 8, Figure 2). Applying the metaphor above, fixed wireless operators are the actual vehicles. Spectrum is the type of road they travel using. And unlicensed spectrum is but one of several very effective and affordable types of road. Those small-to-mid-sized U.S. operators are the bulk of the U.S.'s unlicensed providers, and their extremely value laden and efficient spectrum is what they use to deliver something that works well today. Unlicensed spectrum is readily available, its interference can be mitigated, and its quality signal can be readily managed. The technology is constantly improving. In short, for emphasis: today's equipment using unlicensed spectrum is very reliable. 

An old adage has it, "perfection is the enemy of good." Right now, America needs, and needs badly, significant, and timely "good" broadband distribution, so that everyone has access. It does not need a "perfect" distribution method, perhaps lasting into the decades or scores of decades, yet limited by reality. And America does not need a "perfect," where far, far fewer subscribers will ever be served (at many times the cost).

In conclusion, the current statements, and principles in the NTIA's IIJA BEAD NOFO are not proper. And they make no sense. The current Administration and NTIA can do better. The NTIA decision harms the very objectives of the Congressional legislation to fairly and reasonably develop broadband for, and deliver broadband to, everyone! 

It's time for a reset. A real reset.

Post-Script

For nearly a quarter of a century, advocating on behalf of the nation's telecom trade groups has been a core concern for The Carmel Group, especially if that support involves a truthful, positive, and compelling story (always best, in that order). For five decades, we have done that for consumers of first, broadcast, then cable, telco, fiber, cellular, and satellite.

(See, New Carmel Group Study Shows Competition Exclusive to Satellite Radio Market; Carmel Group: XM/Sirius Merger Would Result in Less Choice, Less Diversity, Higher Prices; ACA: The American Cable Association’s Amazing Bandwidth; and see, scores of copies of The Carmel Group's DBS Investor and Phillip's Publishing's Satellite News, upon request).

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of The Carmel Group, a west-coast-based consultancy founded in 1995. He can be reached at jimmy@carmelgroup.com. He has not been compensated in any fashion for these views. They are independent and his alone. Further information about The Carmel Group can be accessed at www.carmelgroup.com.

At the Ancient Olympics in 396 BCE, the ceremonies commenced with a musical competition. The cornets competed for the prize of being chosen the best heralders, and thus entitled to signal events, such as leading the processions of the best athletes and the best coaches into and out of the games. Similarly, in so many ways during the summer and early fall of 1972, many came to Germany to compete as the best announcer and storyteller. Yet one clarion voice -- and character -- stood out.

The 50th anniversary of the Munich Games -- including, horribly, the terrorist massacre of 11 Israeli team members -- is less than five months away. Regrettably today, because of those colleagues since deceased, I find myself among a dwindling and rarer crowd of those who were actually a living part of both those events. Yet, conversely, the Games of the XX Olympiad also meant a first of many opportunities to meet and work with some of the best sports-to-news-to-sports journalists -- while also being just good, decent people -- the world has ever known.

“Sports” Personalities

These include ABC Sports characters and personalities like the late Roone Arledge. Arledge was the president of ABC Sports, whose leadership inside that Olympiapark broadcast center known as Barnathan’s Bungalow, lead five years later to his concurrent appointment by parent ABC Network as the broadcaster’s news president, as well. Another was John Wilcox, who, to this day, I am proud to say is still a close friend and one I reach out to fairly regularly for advice. John was a multi-decade ABC producer and one of the directors of ABC Sports' films unit that third quarter of 1972, using his exploits there to catapult up the executive ladder, at one point becoming Roone’s executive assistant. Yet another was one of the first people to qualify for the moniker I learned from my German-born father, Willy Schaeffler, that of a “mensch,” this one in the form of ABC’s Munich operations planning head, the late and beloved Marvin Bader. Plus, for her work ethic, due diligence, wisdom, and kindness, I became one of thousands who met and respected her from that point on. She was Antoinette “Toni” Brown, the manager for ABC Sports' films unit in Munich. These were my all-time favorites.

Nonetheless, two people stood out for me even above those four. That is because those two had more reasons to not focus on me and instead stay laser-focused on themselves and their sole duties. Yet, both still focused on me. One was the late Peter Jennings, the then head of Middle East reporting for ABC News. Jennings was instead “borrowed” by Arledge to serve for sports in Bavaria, traveling that central European region with a film crew to complete ABC’s iconic “Up Close and Personal” (UC & P) vignettes. I worked for Jennings in Munich for 5-6 weeks as a “production assistant,” which meant I did everything from order beers, sandwiches, and coffee for the crew, to actually direct a film segment in the Munich town center, and later described and arranged footage together with the film editors back in “The Bungalow,” as each piece got rushed to air. I had the good fortune to be able to tell some of that remarkable story of working with Jennings in these columns almost 10 years ago, titled "Peter Jennings’ First Olympics" and "Olympics, Munich '72, Jennings: Post-Script # 1"

McKay the Man

The other iconic personage who excelled because of who -- in his heart -- he was, and the way he displayed his amazing character, was the late James McManus, also known by his stage name Jim McKay. Not long after I first accidentally helped him in the main ABC Munich studio in August and September 1972, he coined a nickname for me, “Shamus,” which matched his Irish roots, but was actually quite a Leprechaun’s leap away from my combined English and German DNA. My father had a saying about someone who “had time for the little people,” and I will always admire Jim’s skill in this area, which most around him were often not very good at. Why, until now, I have not written about Jim McKay and my admiration for him as both a professional and a human being, I do not know. Yet, as the five-decade anniversary of that convergence arrives in the next several months, I know now that if I was ever going to write this tribute, this is the time. And I got some help…

McKay Junior, Mary

In the late summer of 1972, Jim and Margaret McManus’ daughter, known by her married name today as Mary McManus-Guba, was a 19-year-old soon-to-be college sophomore in New York State. She already had a solid friendship with ABC Sports announcer Frank Gifford’s daughter, Vicki, and together they reveled in the relative freedom to move around what the Germans called the Olympiagelande for all the time up until the late, late night of Tuesday, September 5. That even meant near “walk-through” access to the athletes’ Olympic Village, just to the east of Barnathan’s Bungalow… as long as they wore one of the team jackets they were lent by some energetic young members of the Canadian Olympic swim team. 

Reflecting ever-so-fondly on her late dad, she gives great credit for his successes to her late mom, Margaret McManus, who was ever-so-strongly supportive of and tuned into her husband, for 60 years of marriage. “She was his greatest cheerleader. Together, they practiced a humbleness, a humility and a groundedness, that kept them from getting into that stratosphere of conceit,” said Mary. 

Moving to Jim McKay’s on-air performance that day, Mary concluded, “He was there to tell, not be, the story, unlike too many announcers today. He was especially reflective of the thought that he might actually be the one to tell the Berger Family, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, that their son, David, was not coming home.” "He once told me," she explained of her dad, "'I thought all day that day, How might I tell these parents their son is dead?'" 

Taking that one step further into her own experience that day, Mary remembers vividly watching in the early evening hours of what some call the “Hostage Day,” the departure of the two helicopters just above her head to the south turning west toward the military airport 10 or so miles away in Furstenfeldbruck. “Today you couldn’t get within a mile of a spot like that, because of security, but I was at the Village Gate, right there with hundreds of others. It still haunts me: I could see their faces, prisoners in those helicopters! They were right there! We all felt so helpless!” 

"The Germans tried so hard to offer a different Olympics, to erase the stain of 1936 and Nazi Berlin. They didn’t want a military presence, instead we were enveloped by an upbeat, celebratory, spirit of a safe, welcome, hospitality, and the Hofbräuhaus," she said. "It was a really good time, until it wasn’t. With Munich, security globally, but especially the Olympics, became a whole new game. I especially remember how serious and focused the ABC Sports team instantly became. How hyper-focused."

Summarizing the dual topics of her dad's character and how he best displayed them that Tuesday, September 5, 1972, Mary gathered these words: "He didn’t have to be, but he still was: James McManus really was a genuinely good man. He studied his subjects and knew his audiences. And he treated both with great compassion. The fact that people still seem interested in dad at all is a tribute to him and all those qualities."

McKay Junior, Sean

Sean McManus, Mary’s younger brother, was also interviewed for this article. He was a 17-year-old joining his family in Europe when they accompanied their father to his job as the lead announcer for, first, swimming, then track and field, during those Munich 1972 Games in August and September. Today, Sean is 67, chairman of the sports division at CBS, and certainly still deeply involved in rights and other pivotal business affairs for the network. From more than one recent interview, Sean poignantly reminded me of his father’s overall gravitas. 

“As we drove back in the car so late that night, after the tragedy, dad’s thoughts were on the effect the killings would have, not on him or his career, rather on the good that the Olympics might always achieve. The Olympics of Germany’s revival was now the Olympics of the massacre,” Sean said.

“So much of what that day became was because of Roone Arledge,” Sean said. “Roone knew in his gut, that because of dad’s background in news at CBS, his storytelling, and his journalism, his calmness and relatability, that he would be the best in-studio anchor that day.” And, that would be instead of the impressive talents of both ABC Sports’ assigned studio announcer, Chris Schenkel, and ABC News’ Middle East Correspondent, Peter Jennings. Yet, at the break of the news, Arledge instinctively selected his new live, on-air talent for the next 16 hours, before the latter even got out of the sauna at the Sheraton Hotel that morning, around 8 a.m. local time. Featuring a rare all-day trip with Margaret to nearby Salzburg, Austria, September 5 was to be Jim McKay’s one “vacation” day of the entire Munich Olympics.

"In a few hours, we went from the wins and losses of the various teams, to life and death, and from captivating sports to tragically important news, almost miraculously," Sean continued. "Dad got progressively more emotionally and physically drained, and yet he got better in the last hour of his work that day and night, than he was in the first."

When McKay arrived back at his hotel room at 4 a.m. Munich time September 6, Margaret woke and mentioned her relief that the hostages had survived. Jim’s lament, however, was enhanced, because he now had to tell his wife that the German TV she watched when she went to sleep had not yet revealed: that all the hostages were dead. As McKay had had to infamously fashion a couple of hours before for a late-night U.S TV audience of many scores of millions -- and which Margaret could not witness at her hotel in Bavaria -- in his inimical wording laced with such stunning grace, he again paraphrased, “They’re all gone.” It was at that point, late night on Wednesday 19 hours after leaving the Sheraton Tuesday morning, that McKay finally had a chance to absorb the fact that he was still wearing his damp swimsuit from the morning before in the pool.

The Games’ Impact

Back at Barnathan’s Bungalow Wednesday daytime, with 3-4 hours of sleep, McKay pulled a telegram envelope from his Bungalow letter box. Inside was a congratulatory message from his own news idol, CBS News’ Walter Cronkite.

Jim and Margaret McManus waited months before they were able to witness the on-air telecasts of the Munich Games, and specifically September 5. Moreover, it took the many, many bags of mail McKay received after those competitions, to start to develop a decent understanding of the impact his work had on the American public, on his own career, and on ABC. McKay, personally, won two TV Emmy Awards for 1972, one for sports announcing and one for news. And because of their foundational work in Munich, Arledge a half decade later added head of ABC News to his resume. Plus, as Arledge himself later explained decades later during a tribute to him at Central Park’s Tavern On The Green, the risk taken by bidding a then-astronomical $25 million for the Munich TV rights, backed by the actual performance of the producers and announcers and other talent in Munich, had finally put ABC on the map as a telecaster of national status. ABC’s founder Leonard Goldenson would perhaps one day compete admirably with his counterparts, William Paley and the CBS he founded, as well as the NBC David Sarnoff created.

“Whenever someone came up to him at an airport or a sports event, they would always say, ‘I’ll never forget you at Munich.’ Not another Olympics or the Indy 500. Munich had such an incredible impact,” Sean said.

ABC Sports in Munich’s Producers and Directors

Five key production people are alive today and made time to speak with me about our idol McKay. He is one of those rare people who very few in life speak ill of, so the remainder of this project remained a joy. Those producers and directors are Jim Jennett, Jim Spence, Doug Wilson, Dennis Lewin, and Howard Katz.

Jim Jennett was inside the Bungalow for much of September 5, 1972, serving as sports’ control room associate director. His job was to be a “traffic cop,” as he words it, coordinating all the video and live elements, and the timing -- especially with the main studio at ABC HQ in New York City -- for the two weeks’ worth of Olympic telecasts. The rather tall -- even by today’s standards -- 1966 graduate of University of Missouri’s school of journalism, remembers Munich much for his work directly with Arledge. Subtly merging this article’s subject matter with himself and Arledge in the earliest morning of September 5, 1972, upon word of the terrorist attack, Jennett said, “When the story broke, Roone knew he needed someone with real chops, someone with the most heart, and he had to step on some toes to get there.” Of course, Arledge chose McKay. “What a brilliant and gutsy thing to do,” said Jennett.  

Jennett’s memory of the day of the Munich Massacre was seeing his colleagues lift and place a huge studio live telecast camera on top of the 15-foot-high berm just east of Barnathan’s Bungalow. It faced the Israeli delegation’s rooms that had been attacked on Connally Strasse. He said, “That was the first time I realized the true significance of what was happening. Before that, it was just ‘get to the studio on time and coordinate the feeds and timings.’”

Of McKay’s character, Jennett most remembers McKay’s “love of what he was doing…he so admired the sports, the athletes, and just the storytelling of it all.” Not surprisingly, when asked about what made Jim McKay’s soul click, what made him work so well as a human being, he insisted, unprompted, “Margaret was the answer. She was a spouse like none other, they were so close and perfect for each other, the way they treated one another, that affection, the admiration. Whenever you saw them together, it brought a smile to your face.”

Jim Spence, the No. 2 executive at ABC Sports for eight years, also recently shared a tale or two about Munich 1972 and the diminutive announcer (in height only) from Maryland. Approaching Barnathan's Bungalow that fateful midday after a luncheon meeting where he discussed the forthcoming Montreal Summer Games with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1972's sports VP of program planning asked his driver to let him out at the entrance to an adjacent indoor arena. Already having learned about the terrorist attack from a very troubling phone call that morning with the aforementioned Marvin Bader, Jim Spence, Arledge's "right and left hand man" is, to this day, captured by the contrast of the fans still cheering the ongoing Games that day. Meanwhile, several hundred yards away, two Israelis had already been murdered and some of the worst of human evil was rushing forward like a badly oiled Frankensteinian timepiece. "In front of me was a friendly volleyball competition; a short walk to the east, the worst in the way of hate and terror, and a horror," Spence. The reflection was amplified when Spence reflected back: he -- accompanied by McKay and others -- had six or seven hours earlier exited the broadcast studio and control room in the dark at 6 a.m. local time, to head back to the hotel, very likely having been noticed by the terrorists themselves, as they were staging nearby to break into the Olympic athletes' village, and then to attack the Israeli delegation.

As for his views of McKay, "He was the face and voice of ABC's Wide World of Sports", Spence said. "He really did get to the substance of an event, making the competitions feel important to the audience and causing the viewer to care about the participants -- not only through his delivery and articulation, but so importantly through his writing, Spence said. "Jim McKay was just brilliant in capturing the essence and excitement of the events he covered, with the words he wrote and spoke on the air."

Being admittedly rather television-geekie, Spence concluded his admiration of the man from Baltimore, extolling his on-air ability to both listen to producers via an ear-piece, while concurrently reading from a script or printed announcement or speaking to an audience of millions while looking directly into a huge metal box that was the camera. "It was seamless, he was amazing the way he could do that," said Spence. “He had great respect for athletes -- both the stars and the unknowns. He had absolute integrity. I have often said he was the Walter Cronkite of sports television."

Doug Wilson, yet another icon of ABC Sports from the earliest to most of its later days was, in 1972, working as a 30-something producer/director, who would by most accounts eventually become one of McKay’s best friends. Wilson had started at ABC in 1958, a college graduate of Colgate University in upstate New York. He likes telling sports stories of his Garden City High School in Long Island beating Arledge’s Mepham High School in Merrick, Long Island during the 1940s-1960s. Mepham was known nationally as a wrestling powerhouse, and Arledge managed its wrestling teams.

Wilson’s fondest and strongest memory of McKay in Munich was his reliance on A.E. Houseman and the poet’s iconic poem, “To An Athlete Dying Young”, to summarize the tragedy of Munich during the nighttime funeral and tribute held by the IOC on Thursday, September 7, 1972. McKay even being familiar with the magic words was indicative of his love for knowledge, and to almost always, ahead of time, research the people, places, and event and sports he was covering.

Yet, likely my favorite was Wilson’s tale of McKay characteristically placing his first and middle fingers together by his eye and nose, which the few who really knew him meant he was really angry. The cause of his ire that day? It was his WWOS producer/director colleague, Doug Wilson, very late at night, who tried relentlessly to identify the perfect woodwind music to accompany a voice-over, making a tired and restless McKay redo the piece over and over, at which point McKay complained to Arledge, “What’s with Wilson and his damned flutes?” 

“Whether it was grand prix auto racing, barrel racing, or the Olympics, Jim McKay never took the event nor the people for granted. He was always grateful for the role he played, which is why so many people say the Olympics coverage -- the history and what it was like to be there -- will always have something missing, even today,” Wilson said as only a good friend can.

Dennis Lewin grew up in a sports-centric family in New York City, went as a 16-year-old to Michigan State University, and started as a 21-year-old production assistant for ABC’s WWOS and ABC’s other sports programming in August 1966. He arrived for ABC Sports’ Olympic coverage in Munich, six years later, as a full-fledged producer. Among his responsibilities by then was coordinating the production of WWOS and producing Monday Night Football. Lewin had a ton of both accurate and fond recollections of McKay, who was the on-air host of WWOS. “He became a great friend, I would do anything for him,” said Lewin.

In Munich 50 years ago, the 27-year-old who grew up in Queens was the ABC Sports producer for the dominant trio of water sports during the Games’ first week: swimming, diving, and water polo. That meant that even though McKay had been assigned to gymnastics, the two still had many interactions inside “The Bungalow.” On that Tuesday, those sports had ended, thus during the intensity of the day, Lewin sat in the control room next to ABC’s Games’ coordinating producer, Geoff Mason. Lewin recalls at that point his contributions were minimal. He was always there to help, but there was “not much” he could add. Others inside and outside that control room had the storytelling well in hand.

Lewin’s main memory of time with McKay, comes from Thursday, September 7, the day after the actual shootout at the Furstenfeldbruck airport. He remembers them both being so troubled by the insensitive, shallow, and inappropriate words of the then-president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Avery Brundage, at the public “memorial” inside the main Olympic Stadium.

As for McKay, Lewin said, “Jim McKay was the best, both as a friend and a talent. I always looked forward to that production schedule with his name on the same line as mine. His humanity, knowledge of the world, history, his way of communicating. He never talked down to you. You would want him to be both your best friend, and your favorite uncle. One of a kind…” were his words as they trailed off into a mutual, respectful silence.

Howard Katz was, like me, one of the youngest among the several hundred shown in the “ABC At The 1972 Summer Olympics, Munich” photo below. Katz was the Olympic film unit’s lead production assistant coming into and during those Munich Games. His was a position I later assumed after graduating from Cal Berkeley in 1975 with an undergraduate degree in communications & public policy. I am honored to say we have stayed friends since.

McKay memories abound for the now 72-year-old former president of ABC Sports and NFL senior VP for scheduling. They start with the voice-over narrations McKay did for most of the UC & P athlete vignettes ABC Sports prepared leading up to the Munich Games. Katz helped Jim prepare, gathering research, taking notes during global filming expeditions, and other aides. Katz vividly remembers, too, being, coincidentally, in the same passenger van that fateful September 5, 1972 morning, as a last-minute passenger with a wet swimsuit on under his slacks hailed the driver. That extra rider was, of course, McKay. They were headed to the broadcast center.

As McKay was to me, so was he to Katz: “A special person who cared about people,” are his quite-ample words. “P.A.s [production assistants] were treated like dirt. Jim was kind, decent, and understanding to the P.A.s. That did a ton for morale. He was amazingly approachable. A man of conscience, decency, in a business that was all-consuming and demanding, he still managed to make his family a priority. He understood folks, what made the world tick. He understood the human spirit.”

“And then, as a professional, he could look into a camera and see millions of people, yet he saw them one at a time, you thought he was talking directly only to you and your family. He had this incredible knack to say and do the right things at the right time,” Katz said. As president of ABC Sports during the Salt Lake Winter Olympics timeframe, Katz broke all the rules of fierce internecine network rivalry by granting NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol’s wish to employ McKay as “ABC Sports’ Jim McKay, Special On-Camera Contributor.” Katz sums up, “After gaining Margaret’s blessing, it was just the right thing to do.” Like me, Katz didn’t just admire McKay, he learned from him.

A final thought from Katz: “I had planned to visit the German concentration camp near Munich, Dachau, but after the tragedy, I could not. Conversely, 30 years after, when it came time to authorize and support a 'Munich 1972 Commemoration Co-Narrated by Peter Jennings and Jim McKay’ -- which was awarded an Academy of TV Arts & Sciences Emmy Award for 'Best Edited Special' -– that was the award that made me proudest! We told the best story!”

For the record, efforts were made to reach out to former ABC Sports operations or production leaders Bob Iger, Roger Goodman, and Jack Gallivan. For various reasons, each was unavailable at press time.

Summing Up McKay, Munich, and 1972…

Where was the world in 1972? For context, The Godfather was released by Paramount Pictures and popular songs included Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” Roberta Fleck’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now,” Bill Withers’ “Lean On Me,” and Looking Glass’s “Brandy.” President Richard Nixon visited and began opening the U.S. to China; the Committee to Re-Elect the (that same) President (CREEP) broke into the Democratic National HQ in Washington, DC; the U.S.’s Bobby Fisher defeated chess master Boris Spassky; and the Dow Jones Industrial Average first went above 1,000.

No doubt -- and always a great loss to the world -- history and legacy will forever first associate those XX Summer Olympic Games with the Israeli Massacre. I cannot help but to image the huge pool of blood beneath one of the helicopters, their terrified faces, and the dozens of grandchildren of those 11 Israelis and one German police officer who will never be.

Yet, in the end after Munich, there was some victory. The Olympics survived. Many athletes excelled there, as they always do, and their careers took off. When I try to balance, and think of the positives of what Peter Jennings said remained, “a successful experiment in human relations,” I think of those who seized the moment and showed what they were made of. Those men and women became the future foundation of the American Broadcasting Corporation, and of many more entities, included among those many CBS, NBC, ESPN and the NFL. Among the top two or three was one James McManus, AKA Jim McKay.

Indeed, in the battle among thousands or more to be that lead clarion, none will ever doubt for Munich 1972, it was McKay. As well, when it came to his own and others’ character development, toward a man of character and worth, Munich, ABC and McKay are synonymous. 

McKay and I once talked between U C & P takes and voice-overs, oddly perhaps, about William Shakespeare. Along with A.E. Houseman, the bard from Stratford-on-Avon was another one of McKay’s favorite literary heroes. We talked specifically about Hamlet, Polonius, Act 1, Scene III, and McKay pointed me to these words, which he took to heart ever so well, indeed, mostly just by sharing that balance with the others who filled the world around him.

“This Above All:/To Thine Own Self Be True/And It Must Follow/As The Night The Day/Thou Canst Not Then/Be False To Any Man!”

Nor, did I ever see, was he, Jim McKay. ■

Jimmy Schaeffler (AKA “Shamus Schaeffler”) is chairman and CSO of The Carmel Group, a west coast-based telecom consultancy founded in 1995. He can be reached at jimmy@carmelgroup.com.

At a March 15 WISP America 2022 trade show session held in New Orleans, Louisiana, titled “Not Your Father’s WISP”, the transitional data supporting and describing hybrid fiber wireless providers was first unveiled to WISPA show-goers by the trade group behind the event, the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA).

This comes six years following the first study in 2016-17. The second survey and report were completed in 2020-21. The delay meant the excitement was obvious; the attendance was strong. Post-show response has been receptive. Businesses want to learn how to use the data to improve their inner and outer workings. 

The audience, who was mostly operators, with a sprinkling of vendors, analysts, and policymakers, was eager to hear, consider and implement information that – in the words of one of the presenters – can be business life-changing: contacts, trends, projections, predictions, estimates, mood analysis, survey-over-survey comparisons, and scores of other ways to keep molding a telecom-related entity toward perfection. Both operationally and via profits. The data points come from two surveys each involving hundreds of operators, and two each involving hundreds of vendors, each set answering over 70 questions, and various additional online and related research and analysis, plus thirty 90-minute interviews of relevant executives.

Key Datapoints

From the one-hour session, various random yet very helpful reports’ data highlighted:

• A 2016-17 vs. 2020-21 growth in systems of 100,001 subscribers and more is over 100%. Consolidation is coming, yet many more new operators are emerging, which is why, nationwide, the overall number of hybrid fiber wireless operators grew from 2,000 to 2,800 in those five years.
• The 2016-17 vs. 2020-21 reasons why customer sign-up rated the tried and true, age-old, “word-of-mouth” as the strongest reason and fastest growing, when the almost 800 most-recent survey recipients told us of their best new subscriber motivators (See, chart below, entitled “Why Subscribers Sign-up”). 

• The five-year trend among perceived opportunities tops “Enhanced Spectrum Access.” This was the sole item that showed an increase during this timeframe.
• Margins approach 75% for the highest-rated ancillary profit-making service, which was “Home Information Technology Warranties.”
• Within the ever-more-popular Business/Commercial/Enterprise sector, 28.8% more in 2020-21 than in 2016-17 indicated “Health Services” as a new growth area.

LEOs Lurk

Yet, perhaps the “newsiest” new data was the focus by operators not just on future competition, but importantly on just one form thereof: satellites, but especially low Earth orbiting satellites (LEOs). More than a quarter of survey respondents specifically called out LEOs in 2020-21 versus 2016-17. Yet, as mentioned in the descriptive text, this trend also has a silver lining for land-based operators. Franchisees are going to be needed globally to help sell these new LEO systems. Why Not Hybrid Fiber Wireless Operators?, one speaker asked (See, e.g., Space Crowding in LEO is a Challenge, But Improvements in Design and Traffic Management Offer Hope, for a further look into the new pipe).

Additional Datapoints

The Carmel Group’s co-panelists were Dale Curtis Communication’s CEO, Dale Curtis, and WISPA’s director of communications, Mike Wendy, who also served as moderator. Mr. Wendy also brought along a short video that made two focused points. One was that hybrid fiber wireless broadband pipes come in many forms, one of which is likely to be either pure fixed wireless or a hybrid fiber wireless combination. In essence, whatever the need, hybrid fiber operators have the tools needed to “get it done.” Mr. Wendy’s other point was that going forward, a lot more fiber will integrate into every hybrid fiber wireless system, and at least for denser ex-urban well-to-do areas. If an operator has not aggressively deployed those optical fibers, viability can be expected to be a true concern. 

For Mr. Curtis, the core message was his current efforts on WISPA’s behalf to create 1) a new WISPA tagline, 2) a refined logo, and 3) “a new messaging framework that reflects the industry’s new realties and desired evolution.” Key mood-testing captured early-on recommends WISPA industry emphasis on a) the concept of “Connectivity,” b) also, as above, the “these operators get it done, no matter the tool” message, c) a local, consumer focus, d) and again, as above, less of a wireless and more of a fiber emphasis going forward, plus e) the industry needs to use the “small business” and “rural” traits, but do not let those limit its growth.

Additional Data

For that sometimes elusive answer to the frequently asked question, Where Do I Find More?, these links below begin a good primer:

WISP Marketplace Podcast

WISP Marketplace Webinar

WISP Magazine Marketplace Article

From a recent Las Vegas visit to the fixed wireless and hybrid fiber wireless association’s 2021 WISPAPALOOZA convention, a couple of fascinating new pieces of information arose (or were reinforced).

Profitability of IT Home Services

First, was a growing confirmation among wireless internet service providers (WISPs), AKA “operators,” that the top grossing among ancillary services they offer is the provision of Internet Technology (IT) services on a regular, repeating basis. Provided by WISP installers, this mostly residential service is delivered typically in the form of a monthly warranty and broad IT coverage charge of less than $10/month. This added offer is also considered the most profitable among others, such as 1) security and monitoring, 2) voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) and 3) virtual private networks. The only so-called “added service” that is consistently more profitable — and is not yet regularly provided by most hybrid fiber wireless operators — is that of a so-called “upgrade” basic broadband connectivity, delivered as a business service to a new business customer.

And although not tested, one guesses that since most hybrid fiber wireless operators are locally based and trusted, most customers would feel more comfortable letting those technicians and installers regular access to their homes than they might for a distant-based, large Midwest, Southern or East Coast-based incumbent cable or satellite provider. 

Data from The Carmel Group’s two 2021 independent surveys of both vendors and operators shows further that a handful of the other services provided for the purpose of customer acquisition, retention, satisfaction and revenues are the provisioning of local and cable and other video programming, as well as web hosting, and repair and maintenance of consumer computers and other tech equipment not provided by the operator. A new offering mentioned by a greater number of respondents this time around, is that of provisioning services around the technology and software that makes up the Internet of Things (IoT).

WISPA’s Name Doesn’t Work Well

And what was second? 

For years, even when speaking at a prior WISPAPALOOZA event in 2018, I have joined many among WISPA’s leaders and decisionmakers in lobbying for the WISPA organization to change its name. 

For one, the word “wisp” is, well, weak. It‘s very definition intends so. Formally, according to Merriam Webster, “wisp” means frail, slight, fleeting, light and impliedly insignificant. Additionally, the acronym, WISP, stands for “wireless internet service provider.” Yet, in contradiction, it has long been clear that for now and well into the future, the huge majority of fixed wireless operators already include and are implementing more or deploying fiber. Today, our data shows that few systems do not include measurable connectivity via fiber. Indeed, the formal title of The Carmel Group’s most recent industry report is The 2021 Fixed Wireless and Hybrid Fiber Wireless Report.

Furthermore, The Carmel Group’s question number 82 from its 2021 WISPA-affiliated independent survey of hundreds and hundreds of both operators and vendors showed that by year-end 2023, 20% of the infrastructure that makes up every system will involve fiber. Far smaller percentages were offered by respondents for systems that will add GEO satellites, LEO satellites, cable and independent third-party fiber services, for example.

So what would the new trade group name be? Many names, such as “Competitive Broadband Provider“ (CBP), “Broadband Wireless Access Provider” (BWA), “Fixed Wireless Access” (FWA), and “Wireless Local Loop” (WLL) were offered in the past. Yet, of late, the best I have heard is plain and simple: just call the broadband industry served by WISPs “ISP.” ISP is, of course, short for “Internet Service Provider.” Thus, the new name for WISPA would be ISPA, short for the Internet Service Providers’ Association. Or even BISPA, short for Broadband Internet Service Providers’ Association?

That way, the focus is always in the future on what they provide, which is the broadband content. And in turn the focus is never again on how they provide it, e.g., whether wirelessly or via wireline or via satellite. 

This presents a very elegant, logical and positively emotional solution. The Carmel Group truly hopes this name and identity change happens soon.

Meanwhile, see you at the next WISPA/ISPA/BISPA show, “WISP/ISP/BISPA America 2022.” It is scheduled to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, March 14-17.

Periodically, this "Mixed Signals" column includes interviews featuring some of the telecom industry’s more dynamic and change-making contributors. See, e.g., 1) Stanton Dodge, Esq.; 2) Matt Zinn, Esq.; 3) Doug Gaston, Esq.; and 4) Michael Fricklas, Esq. 

While listening to him speak about other issues recently during an industry business call, The Carmel Group’s principal, chairman and CSO Jimmy Schaeffler, inadvertently discovered a refreshing set of views about doing broadband in Middle America. The other side of that dialogue was OK-based AtLink Network Services’ CEO and principal, Samual Curtis, a decades-long innovator and leader within the U.S.’s fixed wireless and hybrid fiber wireless ranks. Here, below, he offers his thoughts and experiences for our “Mixed Signals” audience.

Q: 1

Mixed Signals: Tell us about the basics of your OK-based business, AtLink Services?

Samual Curtis: I like to parse AtLink’s description into the four categories below (See, https://www.atlinkservices.com).

Overall: AtLink is registered as a Limited Liability Company in Oklahoma, founded in 2005. Most importantly for your audience at Multichannel News, AtLink is the largest wireless internet service provider [in] Oklahoma. The Company offers fixed wireless broadband services, fiber broadband services, wholesale broadband services, telephone, plus voice and video VPN (i.e., Virtual Private Network), as well as related system installation services. AtLink is a CALEA-compliant service provider and a Trusted Third-Party Administrator, as mandated by the FCC for all broadband service providers. The Company serves approximately 12,000 residential and business accounts in rural Oklahoma. AtLink has successfully expanded its business through continuous innovation centered around its broad spectrum of broadband network solutions. In addition to receiving Phase II funding from the Connected America Fund (CAF), the company was also awarded several U.S. Department of Agriculture Broadband (USDA) Initiatives Program grants, aimed at providing internet service to unserved and under-served regions in Oklahoma for the next 25 years. 

Stemming from its broad in-house capabilities, our AtLink team is committed to providing the best and most cost-effective wireless internet services to our customers. The customers and markets AtLink targets are residential (77% of 2020 revenue) and business (23% 2020 revs) in rural Oklahoma. Overall, the Company maintains a base of approximately 12,000 active subscribing customers, and over 90% of revenue comes from recurring active customers. AtLink’s established customer base is a strong asset, one that contributes the most to its stability, and presents significant opportunities for revenue growth. 

Employee Base: AtLink employs 90 full-time and 2 part-time personnel, including me, as its active owner. The company’s team has a diverse professional background, depth of experience, and an unwavering commitment to excellent customer service. 

Facilities: To support ongoing uninterrupted operations, AtLink owns approximately 47 towers, network equipment, support vehicles, and cable and wire facilities, as well as other support accessories. AtLink operates through six internal profit centers: fixed wireless broadband services (81% of 2020 revenue), grant and other government funding (10%), wholesale broadband services (5%), installation (2%), and fiber broadband services (1%), as well as telephone services and tower rental (1%). Our facility comprises 17,800 square feet, and is utilized for office purposes (8,000 square feet) and warehouse purposes (9,800 square feet). The facility is leased from a third-party, at fair market rates. Early planning has meant that the company can accommodate significantly higher revenues without major facility improvements or capital equipment expenditures. 

Success Drivers: Success in the industry is driven by access to technologically-advanced solutions, technical expertise, optimum capacity utilization, key vendor and customer relationships, tower coverage, strong customer service, and a good reputation. AtLink works hard to excel in each of these areas, and we believe strongly we are well-positioned, for growth and success. 

Q 2:

Mixed Signals: Which companies are your key vendors, on both the hardware and software sides? 

Samual Curtis: AtLink has strong vender relationships with American Tower, SBA Towers, Lumen, Telrad, Nokia, Ericsson, and Cambium.

Q 3:

Mixed Signals: What have been some of your greatest career and AtLink achievements?

Samual Curtis: AtLink has completed six USDA RUS Community Connect Grants. In each grant we have created a broadband community center and expanded broadband service to students in rural unserved areas of Oklahoma. I have witnessed the difference this has made in overall community relationships, student retention, and overall academic success. It is very satisfying, and very rewarding.

Q 4:

Mixed Signals: What have represented some of your greatest recent successes?

Samual Curtis: AtLink secured a large debt facility with Live Oak Bank necessary to upgrade our IEEE 802.11 AC network to LTE. AtLink successfully participated in the Connect America Fund Phase II reverse auction.

Q 5:

Mixed Signals: What have been some of your greatest challenges? 

Samual Curtis: The Rural Development Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse auction greatly influenced the realities surrounding Fiber-to-the Household (FTTH), and certainly as a cost-effective last mile technology. In my opinion, the temptation in the auction overpowered the requisite discipline in bidding, in that multiple Census Block Group (CBG), those CBGs went for a rate of support that we believe is unsustainable. Unfortunately, this RDOF auction result has miscommunicated the realities of feasibility that surrounds FTTH in rural America. It seems as though this auction might be shifting broadband monopoly powers from traditional carriers, to rural power cooperatives, which, incidentally, are intended to be non-profit.

Q 6:

Mixed Signals:  What are today’s major threats and weaknesses?

Samual Curtis: Today’s greatest threats are heavily subsidized power cooperatives, monopolizing their last mile by leveraging their existing electric power infrastructure. Today’s greatest weakness is that the WISP industry does not yet have the lobbying power to counteract the heavily subsidized power cooperative’s message, insisting that FTTH is the only viable last mile technology. It clearly is not!

Q 7:

Mixed Signals: What are tomorrow’s most worthy opportunities?

Samual Curtis: Tomorrow’s best opportunities are staying the better broadband providers, we hope always like AtLink, staying the course and filling the upcoming broadband gap. This will be further developed by the potential failures surrounding heavily subsidized and under-thought out and under-planned endeavors. I see a future where the incumbent telephone companies work closely with incumbent WISPs. Together, we jointly combat the heavily-subsidized new competition, noted above.

Q 8:

Mixed Signals: Are you still wedded to the idea of hybrid services, mostly as in fiber and fixed wireless?

Samual Curtis: AtLink see FTTH and the WISP infrastructure as tools in our broadband toolbelt. At the end of the day, we are primarily broadband service providers. Thus, we may use FTTH (or Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP)) or fixed wireless to extend that service. I see a future where the only remaining viable tools are FTTH and fixed wireless for broadband delivery.

Q 9:

Mixed Signals: What are your thoughts about satellites, in general? 

Samual Curtis: I believe that LEO satellites are potentially a good last resort broadband solution; however, I do not see LEO satellites as a viable competitor to FTTH or fixed wireless. Physics and gravity and economics are simply working against them…and will win.

Q 10:

Mixed Signals: What are your thoughts about Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, like Starlink?

Samual Curtis: I love the innovation; however, I am concerned about the potential of polluting earth’s orbital planes with thousands of access points that only have a five-year workable life. I like the potential of using LEO satellites for disaster recovery, and redundancy for terrestrial services. If our tax dollars end up subsidizing terrestrial service, as well as satellite service, we are, in essence, competing with ourselves.

Q 11:

Mixed Signals: What about other, not-yet-ready-for-prime-time innovations?

Samual Curtis: I think the high frequency millimeter wave fixed wireless service is an interesting last mile solution, but the cost has to be significantly lower than FTTH to make it ready for prime time. I do not believe we are there today. I would imagine this technology would parallel free space optics.

Q 12:

Mixed Signals: How would you define the Sam Curtis vision of Middle America’s telecom future?

Samual Curtis: I see a future where companies like AtLink are able to sustain their business of boldly going where the larger carriers failed to serve. Middle America’s telecom future still belongs to the local small business. These small businesses have local ties to middle America and will ultimately respond to middle America’s needs with much more passion, relevance, precision, and attention than the large, multi-state carriers, that focus on shareholder needs.

Q 13:

Mixed Signals: Describe a typical day for Sam Curtis, CEO at AtLink Services.

Samual Curtis: I am fifty years old, so I am getting around with less urgency, but with more focus, than in my younger years. We live in an Information Age and we are all learning how to be more judicious in how we consume information. I have learned to not sweat the small stuff so much, as a I get older. So, I am able to rely more and more on my senior management, with the confidence that everything will work out if we focus on our customer needs and I listen to the needs of my people. I spend a lot of time and effort listening to the needs of my staff. I feel that it is my job to meet their needs and do what I can to help them succeed. So much of my day is consumed with staff meetings and Zoom calls.

Q 14:

Mixed Signals: How do you spend the majorities of your time?

Samual Curtis: As stated previously, since I see my role as meeting the needs of my staff, I spend the majority of my time meeting with staff. I try to meet with them on an individual basis as much as I can. YouTube has become my best friend, as I have found a tremendous library of technical curriculum, regulatory guidance, and industry-related news at my fingertips within YouTube. I really appreciate the Artificial Intelligence (AI) element of YouTube, as it learns my patterns and predicts what I need to learn. This is a wonderful tool. Of course, my retreat is my family, so I try to spend as much time as I can with them.

Q 15:

Mixed Signals: What, in terms of day-to-day activities, are your favorites?

Samual Curtis: Easy. Seeing my staff succeed.

Q 16:Q 17: 

Mixed Signals: What duties are not so pleasant?

Samual Curtis: Dismissing a staff member is the most unpleasant of my duties.

Q 17:

Mixed Signals: What duties are the most important?

Samual Curtis: After taking care of myself so I have what it takes for others, being a good husband and father first and foremost. Then listening to our customers. If we become mute to our customer needs, we are headed for failure.

Q 18:

Mixed Signals: What are the big controversies or issues ahead for you and AtLink? What trends?

Samual Curtis: Again, for emphasis, I am concerned with the results of the RDOF auction. I am of the opinion the support was underbid and the ripples of RDOF failure will propagate for years. I see trends in smaller providers combining or merging to meet the needs of tomorrow.

Q 19:

Mixed Signals: What has been the best event or occurrence in your professional life that has taught you or impressed a lesson on you? 

Samual Curtis: The best event of my professional life was winning the USDA RUS BIP ARRA loan grant in 2010. This event cemented AtLink as a utility. It ultimately taught me how to see a project through to its ultimate completion. As an engineer, I have been involved in multiple similar projects, but I had never had the opportunity to see every aspect of a project of that nature.

Q 20:

Mixed Signals: What has been the worst event or occurrence in your professional life that has taught you of impressed a lesson on you? 

Samual Curtis: Post RDOF, AtLink was, in some cases, the incumbent provider and losing a customer to FTTH was, by far, the worst event. It taught me that you can never rest. We have to stay aware of our customer’s satisfaction and always provide for their needs.

Q 21:

Mixed Signals: Who in your background impressed you professionally?

Samual Curtis: I have multiple instances of this. My partner and our board chairman, Kenneth Doughty, has taught me patience and focus. I have learned a tremendous amount of business sense from him. My friend, COO, and attorney, Pat Castleberry, has taught me how to resolve conflict with honor. My industry colleagues, Nathan Stooke, Jacob Larson, Matt Larson, Jeff Kohler, Jason Guzzo, and many more have taught me how to share wisdom and experience.

Q 22:

Mixed Signals: What would be the best advice you could offer an existing fixed wireless and hybrid fiber fixed wireless operator today? 

Samual Curtis: Invest in a senior management team that works. Cultivate relationships with other leaders in your industry and share your successes and failures. Be mindful of the pace of your growth and cash flow. I have seen growth bankrupt a company. Do not let your political views or your personal beliefs impact your business decisions. 

And, in all seriousness: thoroughly read The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association’s new fixed wireless study from The Carmel Group. It was written with both beginners and the most-advanced in mind. Through the years, it has helped me quite a lot, especially with policy and financial matters.

Q 23:

Mixed Signals: What would be the best advice you could offer a would-be/wannabe fixed wireless and hybrid fiber fixed wireless operator today?

Samual Curtis: Spend time installing the service. You need to understand the most mundane and fundamental aspects of the business. This is more important than acronyms and raising money.

Q 24:

Mixed Signals: Any final comments, suggestions, recommendations or otherwise, Samual?

Samual Curtis: Plain and simple: Onward and upward!

A couple of decades ago, Multichannel News’ editor, Mark Robichaux, asked me to use a couple of words that would best describe the overall message and mission of my new column. I said straight away, “Mixed Signals.” That’s because I sensed from my earliest days of closely observing TV, back in the 1970s, that it was a business where consumers did not care if the content arrived via satellite, wire, or wireless. Rather, they just wanted a sound and video product that offered value and quality. Indeed, my conviction then was that supplementing a core delivery method with another was THE future. In short, a combination of those delivery methods would work…and/or would eventually be preferred.

To use just one distribution method seemed to be amazingly short-sighted. Yet, even today, that’s what most providers of broadband, broadcast, and pay TV content do.

Nonetheless, as they always tend to, things are changing.

HughesNet’s Gaske

Paul Gaske and I first ran together along a Tennessee river back in the mid 1990s. I will never forget two things: how badly he outran me, and how sweaty it was that day before our first satellite conference together at Opryland.

Recently, Gaske, as the decades-long general manager and executive VP at EchoStar and Germantown, MD-based HughesNet, conducted a video interview, conducted by Light Reading’s Nicole Ferraro. HughesNet champions its moniker as the “largest provider of satellite broadband services in the world.” The interview/podcast is about a new $600 million HughesNet orbiter, capable of delivery speeds of 100 Megabits/second. Near the end of the 14:28-minute query, Gaske concluded that as far as he saw it, the future of HughesNet’s geostationary Earth orbiting (GEO)-delivery of ones and zeros was together with fixed wireless. “Keeping up requires that flexibility of systems,” meaning, clearly, that yet another telecom deliverer had determined its strategy based upon the concept of “Mixed Signals.” In HughesNet’s world, eventually low Earth orbiting (LEOs) satellites are expected to blend into that mix, as well. Fiber already serves to access towers and satellite uplink/downlink gateways, he explains.

To drive home his emphasis, Gaske adds, “Business Enterprise is a perfect example. More and more they cannot, ever, afford to be down.” That means these businesses can easily justify spending on a huge full-time pipe that may include 24/7/365 access to wire, satellite, and wireless, all at the same time. “A well-performing back-up is essential,” he adds.

Gaske further and more broadly summarizes HughesNet’s strategies, rather aptly noting, “The technology at both ends of that fiber has to change constantly for you to be future-proofed. And that’s the next proposition.” 

I find it satisfying that Gaske, like me, also has changed: today he, too, has added regular bicycling to his exercise mix.

AtLink’s Access

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma-based AtLink is a broadband provider with more than 11,000 subscribers. With a current base of 90 employees, it has been focused on subscribers in the lower-middle part of the country for 16 years, since 2005. 

In a recent text exchange, CEO Samual Curtis and I discussed the future of broadband delivery strategies, based upon my sending him a message about the future of LEO-based content distribution. LEOs are a particular interest for Curtis and AtLink.

Curtis: I’m curious of what your take is on this [linked] article about Musk’s Starlink…

Schaeffler: As to your question: smart guys like you will reach out to Musk and Company early. You’ll figure out how to mold your business toward the greater realm of things: as a broadband provider with many pipes, fixed wireless being just one of those (i.e., along with sat, cable, and fiber, and …?). Because at the end of every day, the end customer doesn’t care about how they get the signal or content, they just want the signal and the content! (emphasis supplied).

In a more recent discussion, Curtis reiterated the same goal, but tweaked the aspects of implementation. He explained that AtLink is indeed currently working toward incrementally adding fiber, but is doing so in a most cautious and prudent manner. Some of that has to do with fiber’s far slower return on investment (See, page 19, Figure 8, “Comparative Economics of U.S. Internet Access Solutions,” from The Carmel Group’s 2021 report, the homepage and log-in are found at www.carmelgroup.com). It also, however, has to do with several of the essential positives attributed to fixed wireless, which represents the lion’s share of AtLink’s current broadband distribution system. Fixed wireless’ efficiency of installation and maintenance, plus the industry’s relatively rapid innovation cycle, were highlighted.

Midco’s Match

Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based cable operator Midco purchased 4,000 fixed wireless subscribers and the business of Grand Forks, North Dakota-based InvisiMax in early 2018, which today represents approximately one percent of the joined company’s total 460,000 subscriber base. Fiber-to-the-Household (FTTH) makes up another 5,000 customers. 

Jon Pederson, Midco’s chief technology innovation officer, describes a future growth strategy built around what he calls a “multiaccess fiber network.” At the ends are either fiber, wireless, or coaxial cable. Which gets placed in which locations depends on the geography, the demographics, and the economics. Thus, for Midco, fixed wireless works well in rural areas; fiber or coax are typically used in urban areas. Another factor is whether the subscriber represents a new build or an upgrade. 

“Our choices today are like a Swiss Army knife: I don’t often use the screwdriver, but it’s nice to have it there,” he compares. 

Midco’s current footprint is focused on states ending in OTA, which would mean North and South Dakota, as well as Minnesota, as well as Kansas and Wisconsin. 

Also tweaking his message and strategic philosophy, Pederson supplements, “We have what we call an ‘Edge Out’ strategy. We ask not just if [it] makes sense to put up a tower for a given area. We want to know not just does it work here alone, but is this location on the way to somewhere else? That’s part of a ‘Message of Ubiquity.’”

So the Future Is?

Because the collective and individual demand – and eventually the need – for broadband will continue to grow so very exponentially, not any one delivery form will be capable of single-handedly delivering that value and quality nearly all actual and potential consumers demand. For example, for a fiber network in a given geographical area, often the presence of geographical features and the cost of laying fiber takes that player out of the mix for remote customers in that part of the country. Yet, add an alliance with a low Earth satellite or a tower-to-home-and/or-business fixed wireless alliance, and suddenly that fiber player is back in the mix for that town limited area, broader county area, or more. 

In addition, although many advocates in Washington, DC and elsewhere are arguing that laying fiber is the only future-proof solution, that singular solution is flawed. That is because, as noted above, fiber can be a far from practical delivery form in many parts of a landmass. 

The Carmel Group recently completed its second global report for the U.S. fixed wireless industry trade group, WISPA, referred to above. In that, we championed a form of “Mixed Signals.” That is because we termed and wrote about what we called the “2021 fixed wireless and hybrid fiber-wireless report” (See, the homepage and log-in at www.carmelgroup.com). 

What is important to note, finally, is that in our strong and measured opinion, most future successful content delivery products and services will be based upon a variation of this “Mixed Signals” strategy. For many, fiber will be the trunk service, and wireless will deliver more granularly to the last mile. For others, satellite will be the trunk service, accompanied by both or either fixed wireless and/or cable. In another variation, a cable and fiber base will share access to customers with fixed wireless and LEO satellites. 

Whatever the mix, more flexibility and more revenues will come to those who can successfully (i.e., that value and quality thing) reach the most customers in a given area. That “area” typically includes signal delivery to urban, suburban, and many shades of rural.

Figure out how to get to them all -- or most of them -- and you are ready for the future.

P.S. - What is also fascinatingly strategic is to see where data gleaned by satellites globally will eventually (or even soon) be available to ALL content providers, so that they can better and more readily figure how to use that data to better serve their customers (See, https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/07/20/a-machine-learning-breakthrough-using-satellite-images-to-improve-human-lives/). For example, if you can use that data to determine where to lay roads, you can use it to determine where to string (or lay) fiber or cable. Or where to place towers to reach more subscribers.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of west-coast-based The Carmel Group, a streaming/broadband, broadcast, and pay TV/video consultancy. He writes about telecommunications, entertainment, and media.

In this Mixed Signals post, The Carmel Group reveals details of an 18-month long study and resulting report, delving into the U.S. fixed wireless and hybrid fiber-wireless industry. 

We break this out into three bullet points covering three main areas: key findings, key growth drivers, and key challenges. For our readers, the “2021 Fixed Wireless and Hybrid Fiber-Wireless Report” by The Carmel Group can be accessed, for free, with the accurate entry and  inclusion of four important data points at www.carmelgroup.com. The first report by The Carmel Group, completed and published five years ago is also accessible on the home page of the same URL, and is called the “2017 BWA Report.”

The foundation of both the 2017 and the 2021 report, is two separate surveys in each cycle conducted by our company, one of the operator community and the other of the vendor group. Impressively, also indicating growth within the sector during the past five years, in the 2017 version 169 from a listed total of 555 operators responded. Whereas in the 2021 iteration, that operator number grew to 244/700. For vendors, the 2017 response number was 24/44; for 2021 it came to 55/200. For the operators, even measured against The Carmel Group’s estimate of 2,800 total U.S. operators, that 2021 response rate of 244 comes to almost 10%, which is far above the typical results for an “external survey” of an industry. Additionally, thirty 90-minute executive interviews were conducted by The Carmel Group, further cementing the ideas, analysis, and conclusions of both the project and the report.

Key 2021 Findings

• From the report’s “Executive Summary,” determinations were made that growth is there, and its continuation is predictable based upon a handful of important trends and competitive observations. The estimated list of U.S. network providers includes 2,800 operators. Nearly 13 million subscribers or a market share approaching 10% comprise the base that is expected by 2025. Core industry revenues are projected to reach nearly $11 billion in the next five years.

Key 2021 Growth Drivers

1) Fixed-Wireless and hybrid networks cost less: One good chart is worth 10 thousand words! Isn’t there a saying along those lines? The figure below captures the breadth of this message. Fixed wireless is a better value.

2) Consumer demand is robust: Subscriber growth is the dynamic here. It is robust. And more and more competitive, even in urban America. Just ask Starry.

3) Favorable Spectrum Trends: The U.S. industry is leading the way with better equipment to better utilize scarce spectrum resources, and the U.S. government and its lawyers and economists appear to be better and better tuned into this concept as well.

4) Tech is helping ISPs: A realization of the value of standardization has become an accepted part of U.S. broadband, and that certainly includes the fixed wireless and hybrid fiber-wireless subsectors. Spectrum efficiency techniques are assisting greater and greater bandwidths and speeds. And more and more vendors are making fixed wireless and hybrid fiber-wireless strong revenue units within their businesses. 

5) Growing capital and government support: Six sources of financial support are behind this clear trend, each is identified at length in the report itself.

Key Challenges

• The old adage has it, “know your friends well, your enemies better.” Thus, for those of the pay TV multichannel world, and those of the broadcast and rival broadband industries, having an idea of challenges faced by the opposition is important.

In that vein, The Carmel Group’s 2021 report identified five main challenges. That said, it should be noted that there are more difficulties the industry faces (as is true for any similar competitor), but this handful is deemed the biggest of the trees inside that forest. At least for now.

1. Competition: Competitive dynamics include ultra-entrenched and immensely powerful competitors, especially in the wired and broadcast realms. Competition from Low Earth Satellites (LEOs) is also raising new interest. (See, StarLink article: https://www.telecompetitor.com/space-x-notches-another-win-at-the-fcc-for-improved-starlink-satellite-broadband/)
2. Vertical content: A key element of the generic “Competition” listing immediately above, the U.S. fixed wireless industry will be looking to create accommodations and handicapping that ensures its consumers are treated fairly in the marketplace.
3. Spectrum challenges: Especially as long as unlicensed wireless spectrum dominates the domestic marketplace, operators will constantly be seeking out interference mitigation efforts and devices.
4. Government process: Education, education, education. Those are this fixed industry’s short-term and longer-term incentives. That means getting policymakers and funders to appreciate and act upon the opportunities, especially like those displayed in the “Comparative Economics” chart above (which is Figure 8, page 19, in the actual 2021 report).
5. Funding: See above. 

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of The Carmel Group, a streaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy based in Carmel by the Sea, California. He writes about telecommunications, entertainment, and media.

Mark Radabaugh owns and operates Amplex, an 8,500-subscriber competitive broadband provider/operator. Amplex is headquartered in a rural residential area just west and south of the western end of Lake Erie, in – we love this! – Luckey, Ohio.  

Recently, as part of a renewal project to research and write a report for Radabaugh's broadband industry trade group, the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), the author interviewed a handful representing several dozen of the industry's top fiber and wireless competitive broadband distributors. Only in small part because he is a member of the WISPA board of directors, that esteemed grouping includes Mr. Radabaugh.

One of the more topical and interesting observations Radabaugh provided -- together with another competitive broadband distributor, plus one of the industry's largest equipment providers -- was on how well competitive broadband systems like his were faring. This query becomes especially topical in light of our country's battle against the coronavirus, known as COVID-19. Put another way, with so much bandwidth usage shifting from outside and inside U.S. businesses and anchor institutions, to inside and around homes, How are the nation's competitive broadband distributors holding up? Also, importantly, this means, How are the subscribers of those operators holding up?

Ample Networks

Amplex provided the chart below. It shows the collective use of bandwidth from March 6, 2020, to March 19, 2020, by its subscribers. All of the green is downstream (i.e., that coming from the internet to subscribers), while the blue and purple below the straight horizontal line in the chart is traffic from the customer.

Radabaugh makes the following observations:

• Changes in the downstream flow of bandwidth are small compared to the upstream changes.
• Yet, that said, the upstream changes are maybe not where most would expect them to be, considering the radical changes in lifestyle in the Time of Pandemic.
• Daily peaks in usage occur nightly around 10 p.m.; lowest usage occurs around 5 a.m.
• Typical of any day is Monday, March 9, 2020: morning traffic rises and levels off around 8 a.m. Around 2:30 p.m., traffic use rises tied to children returning from school and logging onto the internet from devices at home. That usage climbs steadily until around 10 p.m.; and the cycle repeats. 
• Tuesday, March 10, 2020, was the day Xbox announced a new release of its “Call of Duty” video game. That event creates the higher traffic that continues through Wednesday, March 11, 2020.
• By Saturday, March 14, 2020, the influence of stay at home recommendations and other guidance appears to have clicked in, as much heavier daytime and overall use is evident.
• Monday, March 16, 2020, shows about double the normal daytime traffic.
• By Tuesday, March 17, 2020, it is clear that more people are working at home, including students.
• The last two days on the chart above, Wednesday, March 18, 2020 and Thursday, March 19, 2020, are probably the new normal traffic levels, at least for weeks to come, in this Age of The 2020 Pandemic.

“The network has no problems handling the increase," said Radabaugh. "It has to be able to handle the peak traffic – which it does – not the average traffic. It's like a highway: if you build it to handle rush hour traffic, and it does so without congestion during rush hour, then at 5 p.m. it doesn't matter at all if the traffic at noontime is twice the normal noontime average. It's still well below rush hour.”

Relatedly, much recent talk and messaging around providing all of America with broadband, turns on the message that in order to satisfy the majority of customers' broadband needs, each subscriber needs to receive upwards of a gigabit (or more) of bandwidth. The reality, according to the experts above, below, and elsewhere, and according to recent observations of customer usage, is ample operation of broadband networks using far less bandwidth. 

In fact, most subscribers don't use anywhere near the bandwidth they pay for. This means a lot of unnecessary dollars go into broadband providers' accounts, to pay for bandwidth that is not used. 

Indeed, as Radabaugh's fellow broadband operator, Jeff Kohler, co-founder and chief development officer of Englewood-Colorado-based Rise Broadband, has said for years, “25 megabits per second (Mbps) can deliver an awful lot of video. 100 Mbps is wasted on most customers.” 

Bigger POV

Depending upon your perspective, Rise Broadband is both large and small. Compared to Comcast's nearly 25 million subscribers, Rise is a small ISP. Yet, compared with the average size, approaching 1,500 subscribers, of a U.S. competitive broadband provider, Rise is way larger and many times over. Thus, whenever data from Rise Broadband is accessible, it is typically worth noting.

Rise Broadband reported that:

• As of late March 2020, total bandwidth usage among Rise's subscribers is up, at least 10%.  
• Noteworthy, though, is that new usage is not happening during the core evening, “prime time” viewing hours, of roughly 6 p.m.-10 p.m.
• Instead, an increase is occurring during the “non-busy hours,” with more kids and folks using internet during the day, outside of typical usage patterns.
• Rise expected its peak hours to increase 5-10%, but that hasn't yet been seen in the data.  
• As for 4K usage, it's not something Rise worries much about. Streaming codecs are so good these days, that based on capacity, content delivery will seamlessly scale without the vast majority of viewers ever noticing.
• Worth repeating, Rise finds that increasing customer premise speed rarely yields any difference in usage, yet customers are often lured into buying higher speeds -- that go unused -- by cable and fiber providers.

Vendor POV

Cambium Networks, housed in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, has also noted the recent spikes in the bandwidth carried by its antenna and radio equipment that is focused on the nation's fixed wireless providers. Its director of product management, Matt Mangriotis, pointed out that traditional traffic in the business realm occurs during the daytime hours of 8 a.m.-5 p.m. The typical business use is as much up as down, and typical residential use occurs in the early-to-mid evening hours of 6 p.m.-12 a.m., he said. Home use is tied strongly to typical over-the-top (OTT) downloads from providers like Netflix and Hulu.

Nonetheless, during the pandemic, Cambium has seen its operator clients report business subscriber use has declined. Meanwhile, residential use all day long has gone up, in some instances and with some subscribers as much as 60% in overall use. “The peak is all day long,” Mangriotis adds. He also understands that more of his ISP partners are getting calls from subscribers to increase the quality of their packages, and asking for more types of services to subscribe to.

Cable and broadcast research entity ComScore predicts big increases, as well.

Other articles grappled with the same (or a similar) message:

• Comscore: US In-Home Data Usage Surges
• HBO Now Streaming Has Ballooned 40% in Past Week, WarnerMedia Says
• How the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic Is Impacting Rural America
• How Broadband Inequality Complicates COVID-19 School Closures in Rural Areas
• Daytime Video Streaming Up 40% During COVID-19 Crisis: Conviva
• Comcast Claims Video-on-Demand Is Hitting Record Highs

Proper Bandwidth Messaging

Ultimately, today's competitive broadband distributors appear to have the spectrum, the equipment, and the resultant bandwidth to more than amply supply the basic needs of 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) downstream and 3 Mbps upstream, a speed ratio that is quite adequate for the vast majority of broadband users in America today. Moreover, fiber access by every user is a long ways away from being a required element, in order to obtain quality video and data service, even if such a thing were less pricey than it is today. Finally, for the vast majority of users, fixed wireless requirements of more than 25/3 are a long ways away from becoming a value, which stands a good chance of being a more important message, for some time to come. 

All of this is another way of saying that guys like Mark Radabaugh (and their subscribers) have a lot working for them. That's because their networks appear quite capable of adequately serving most rural and other subscribers. And because of that network resiliency -- despite our current coronavirus dilemma -- it's a good time to be lucky, especially carrying broadband to today's and tomorrow's rural America.

Within the last several calendar quarters, the U.S. fixed wireless community has been extensively researched, written about, and analyzed. That resulted in a ground-breaking 23-page study, titled the “Broadband Wireless Access Report” (“2017 BWA Report”).

Fixed Wireless Graphic

As depicted in the accompanying graphic, the infrastructure basics of the U.S. fixed wireless industry usually involve the following:

• Delivery via a trunk, or “backhaul,” of content, typically in the form of a satellite, fixed wireless, and/or fiber optic pipe;
• Termination of that backhaul at a tower or other elevated point;
• Further distribution of that content from the tower to another tower, further away (also known as point-to-point distribution of content);
• And/or further distribution of that content from the final tower to the actual user/subscriber (also known as point-to-multipoint);
• Installation of consumer premises equipment (CPE) at the user end-point, e.g., a home or business;
• Such CPE typically involves an outside antenna, plus wiring from outside to inside, and an inside modem to distribute the signal in a wired or wireless fashion within the dwelling and/or office building; and
• Finally, a central office monitoring point for storage and management of those signals and content.

Relevant Data Points

The Carmel Group research offers some fascinating data, most of it remaining relevant, and some highlights bullet-pointed below. As the comparative graphic below suggests, the essence of the fixed wireless message today is that in many instances it can deploy more cheaply than competitors, and with more than ample quality and bandwidth. Those rivals include cable, fiber, satellite, and mobile/cellular. The proprietary data points listed below are grouped first for operators; and second for fixed wireless vendors.

Two huge underlying surveys of several hundred WISPA operators, and several dozen manufacturer vendors reveal data points that include the following.

Operators

• One quarter of fixed wireless operators deliver services in areas that “pass” (or access) more than 10,000 homes.
• Half of operators see year-over-year subscriber growth rates of 10%-20%.
• There are more than 2,100 fixed wireless operators in the U.S. today.
• There are approximately six million U.S. fixed wireless users today.
• Estimates of fixed wireless industry revenues approach $4 billion for year-end 2019.
• The fixed wireless subscriber base is growing; meanwhile, the bases of other users, including broadcast and pay TV, are declining.
• Most WISPA operators remain relatively small. Today’s average system size is between 1,000 and 2,000. One half of all respondents have less than 1,000 subs.
• Fixed wireless churn rates are low. More than half are at less than 0.5%; slightly less than three quarters of all operators display less than 1% annual churn.
• Three quarters of all respondents declared Average Revenue Per Unit (ARPU) of greater than $50 for residential users, and rising at a solid rate. Commercial, governmental and institutional users report typical monthly ARPU of greater than $500.
• Residential Subscriber Acquisition Costs (SAC) are above $51/month and rising for three quarters of the fixed wireless WISPs reporting.
• Almost six out of ten of all new subscribers are truly new subscribers, whereas almost four out of ten are subscribers coming from another broadband provider.
• By year-end 2021, more than twenty percent of survey respondents expect to have a subscriber base of between 3,501 and 6,000 users.
• Nearly nine out of ten WISPs use unlicensed spectrum at access points, while slightly more than one out of ten in the same sub-category use licensed.
• Most respondents saw great future potential in the areas of 1) business/enterprise, governmental and institutional customer growth, 2) building redundant back-up fixed wireless systems, and 3) creating “hybrid networks,” i.e., typically adding fiber, but often even cable and satellite side-businesses.
• Operators expect the greatest future growth to come in the areas of 1) equipment capability, and 2) spectrum improvements.
• The four top challenges WISPs reported were 1) lack of spectrum, 2) noise and interference, 3) excessive governmental regulations, and 4) increased operating costs.
• The top three competitive advantages surveyed, in order, were 1) network technical capability, 2) local presence, and 3) customer service. 

Vendors

• Half of all vendors, on average, are seeing three-year sales growth rates of between 16% and 45%.
• Approximately 80% vendors describe their WISP industry products as hardware-related, while three out ten list software-related (acknowledging a handful who manufacture and deliver both).
• Three quarters of all vendors look to provide technology improvements that deliver more value/unit, and two-thirds list both improvements in speeds/throughput and reliability. Six out of ten feel delivering more quality is important.
• More than ninety percent of fixed wireless vendors state that email is the most important form of customer support. Roughly sixty percent also utilize/prioritize 1) online community forums, 2) 24/7 phone customer service representatives (CSRs), and 3) social media.
• The top four fixed wireless vendor competitive advantages reported were 1) customer value for the payment, 2) customer service, 3) network technical reliability, and 4) network speed/capacity/throughput.
• More than half of the fixed wireless vendors estimated their own future three-year growth at between 30% and 100%.
• More cable operators are buying fixed wireless systems; and see, discussion below of and with D. Giles, new GM of the fixed wireless and multiple cable system operator (MSO), Midco).
• This creation of new “hybrid networks” lines up with the title of this column/blog, “Mixed Signals.” The author has felt for decades that the merging of operators like cable and satellite, or fiber and cellular/mobile (and many other combinations), has often been the preferable way of delivering telecom content to all users.

Key Fixed Wireless Industry Participants

As part of this column, three prominent members of the dominant trade group for the U.S. wireless industry were consulted for their wisdom, experience, and insight. This included Wireless Internet Service Providers’ Association (WISPA) board members Jeff Kohler, co-founder and chief development officer of the Englewood, CO-based operator, Rise Broadband; Mark Radabaugh, CEO of the Luckey, OH-based operator, Amplex; and Dave Giles, General Manager for Fixed Wireless of the Sioux Falls, SD-based operator, Midco.

Recent Key Challenges and Opportunities

All three WISPA board members honed in on spectrum, when asked their opinion of top current challenges. Relatedly, several trends were also highlighted, and worth grappling with, they said.

Spectrum, Economics, Etc.

Note was made by Midco’s Giles of the challenge faced by WISPA’s mostly rural and often small operators of communicating spectrum needs to legislators, especially vis-à-vis competition from bigger telecom providers. The cable-fixed wireless company GM also spoke pro-actively of his board’s efforts to “shop the idea of a spectrum inventory” as a way to better manage spectrum resources, including unused spectrum. He offered the idea of spectrum sharing of C-Band, as an example. As yet another example, Giles suggested that Ku-Band spectrum is not especially good for use by mobile providers, yet “great for wireless.”

Rise’s Kohler stated that his company sees “the ability to offer faster speeds.” Using millimeter wave spectrum and technology is proving to offer up to gigabit speeds,” he added. “It is early stage, but it is being proven.” Yet, that said, a strongly felt message of Kohler’s for years has been balancing that potential against what speed consumers think they need, relative to what is actually needed in their average day-to-day usage. Pointing to a recent technology study by a company called Preseem, Kohler used an example of the average fixed wireless subscriber using just over four Megabits Per Second (Mbps), suggesting instead that delivery of speed in the range of twenty megabits down and five megabits up is more than sufficient for the average user, and that “consumers need to be educated that they don’t need anything close to a gigabit of speed down, consumers do not need to buy the hype cable and fiber providers are selling.” Put another way, Kohler believes that “companies are artificially driving up the ARPU, by convincing consumers they need something that they don’t.”

For his part, Amplex’s Mark Radabaugh was perhaps more pithy, instead focusing directly on the hype around the new 5G technology and its effect on content delivery. He noted that a huge mobile industry focus on 5G comes years after fixed wireless providers began offering similar bandwidth capabilities. “Fixed wireless hybrid providers have been providing alternatives to telco and cable models, using high-speed wireless broadband, and doing that for years,” he adds.

Beyond spectrum and regulatory concerns, Giles noted the challenge of changing economics as most WISPs get bigger. “Adding staff, financing…every layer of growth adds complexity,” he commented, “the challenge is understanding the technology.”

Giles also tried to dispel a myth he sees of WISP newbees, who get the idea that fixed wireless is simply a matter of “buying a radio and consumer premises equipment, and plugging them in.” Reality for Giles suggests every WISP operator needs to understand at least 1) the competition, 2) the bandwidth, and 3) the environment. He concludes, “If you use the right technologies, your opportunities are awesome. But the bottom line is that many decisions can have a huge impact, so it’s a really good place for the strategic mind.”

Trends

Fixed wireless networks becoming “Hybrid Networks” is a clear trend. That is to say, fiber has already been deployed, or is being looked at, by a large number of fixed wireless operators. These operators realize that fiber is more and more a superior pipe, usually dependent upon installation costs and the number of users accessed. The trend of fixed wireless operators also becoming cable operators (or vice versa), has begun. Moreover, many fixed wireless operators mix in a side business of DISH and DirecTV satellite TV installation, with strong doses of revenue-sharing to make it work for all participants.

Midco’s Giles highlighted the trend of more consumers using more bandwidth, on more devices, in more places, and during more hours of the day. Giles notes, “Today the average consumer has four to five devices, ranging from laptops to ipads to cells to thermostats to security to more and more of everything. That demand is far from peaking.” 

Another trend highlighted by Rise’s Kohler involves education. As noted above, he is intent on making subscribers wiser, by getting them to understand and accept that not every pipe into the home needs to deliver a gigabit of speed in order to serve that subscriber’s needs. Kohler added Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology to his list of new tech examples that offer huge opportunities to new and established WISPs and
hybrid operators.

Like Giles, Kohler further opines about the importance of good strategy and management techniques. “In the absence of a great deal more spectrum, Rise finds that expertise in managing tower-to-the-home and tower-to-the-business is becoming critical. We find network deployment skills can overcome the constant need for and contention over spectrum.”

And even though he notes that most consumers don’t need the speed that is being pitched them, for those that do, Kohler points out technology improvements that offer affordable bandwidth in the range of 200 Mbps of speed. Changes such as “getting infrastructure closer to the customer, and microcells are making these a reality,” he notes.

A recent Telecompetitor article highlights hybrid operator Redzone’s capabilities over those of Fiber To The Household (FTTH) operators, in more parts of rural Maine. From significant study, the author has found Redzone to be something of a model wireless Internet service provider, or WISP. This is due to a great combination of factors, including being on the favorable side of
many of the data points studied and highlighted above.

Several of the trends noted above were also described as opportunities.

Jimmy Schaeffler is the chair and CSO of The Carmel Group, a broadband, broadcast, and pay TV/video consultancy. He has spent nearly five decades producing, studying, writing, researching and analyzing, and working with every type of player in the space. If you are looking to expand or better understand the industry, feel free to reach out to him atjimmy@carmelgroup.com, or go online towww.carmelgroup.com.

Human nature inevitably involves a few bad people doing lots of bad, and a few good people occasionally doing some bad. It’s no surprise then that we have now – and will likely always have – safety and security concerns when it comes to using our electronic devices.

Thank goodness, last week I received the notice below from a friend who subscribes to a well-known pay TV service, known as Dish Network. The written warning is that good, and good enough that I wanted to share it with everyone who reads this and perhaps also pass it along to a friend or family member. That would especially include a dear one who is not as sophisticated as the sender, when it comes to avoiding losses coming from evildoers and their hacking/thievery.

The notice below succinctly and professionally notifies not just Dish subscribers, but really everyone how to avoid bad pay TV actors.

As easy as it is for some hackers/thieves to get into your computer, financial account, or similar electronic service, this kind of Consumer Protection 101 cheat sheet is essential.

Pass this along! It will help everybody to use their computers – be they PCs, laptops, set-tops, smartphones, or tablets, for example – better and safer!

“Webmail –Main Link:

Periodically, Dish gets reports from Dish subscribers regarding suspicious calls in which our subscribers are asked for their account information or to make additional payments. This is an annual protection reminder intended to keep you and your personal information safe. No action is required at this time. Never assume the caller ID is correct for any call you receive. Scammers can easily spoof (i.e., incorrectly alter) their caller ID.

Scammers use a variety of tactics:

· They will give you a sense of urgency. For example, you will lose your service if you don’t act now, or what they are offering is for a limited time

· Scammers may ask you to help someone in need or a loved one

· A scammer may offer some kind of incentive or something of value in return for your personal information

· Scammers impersonate government agencies. The scam may include saying your taxes are past due, or you are violating some law

· Scammers commonly reference computer vulnerabilities. They may say things like, “your device needs new software”, or “your computer has a virus”

Scammers have two main goals. They try to persuade you to:

· Make a payment by providing a credit card number or bank account number. Typically, these payment methods are different from your normal payment method

· Give up a piece of information: password, PIN, date of birth, social security number, account number or a device number - like a number from your receiver, computer or telephone

If you receive a suspicious call:

· Do not give out any information

· Do not make any payments or give out any of your banking information

· If you were left a voice message, don’t return the call

· If you have doubts, contact the company you’re doing business with directly. Get the company’s contact information from a separate source. Don’t use any number or email given to you by the caller.

For additional information and tips for protecting your information visit my.dish.com/support/consumer-protection or click the button below.”

Thank you, Dish.

And be safe!

Jimmy Schaeffler is the chair and CSO of The Carmel Group, a broadband, broadcast, and pay TV/video consultancy. He has spent nearly five decades producing, studying, writing, researching and analyzing, working with every type of player in the space. If you are looking to expand or better understand the industry, feel free to reach out to him at jimmy@carmelgroup.com, or go online to www.carmelgroup.com.

From a dozen interviews earlier this year, The Carmel Group was able to garner a strong set of data points and insight into the basic business dealings of small-to-mid-sized cable operators, focused this time on their overall and individual financial needs. Not surprisingly, core access and assistance was provided primarily by ACA Connects’ CEO/president, Matt Polka.

Respondents ranged widely from ACA Connects’ board members, to operators whose main data point is their mid-size subscriber base, to the very smallest of cable operators, in the most rural of locales.

Questions Asked

The Carmel Group concentrated on the responses to six key questions, all focused primarily on the capital and financial needs of ACA Connects’ hundreds of members and constituents.

1. What is your past experience with raising funds for your cable growth?

2. What is your cable experience with local banks?

3. Do the majority of today's banks "get it" when it comes to helping small cable operators grow and compete?

4. Are there any banks out there that do "get it" when it comes to funding cable?

5. How important are SBA/USDA/CAF funding sources to cable America?

6. What does the ACA community need when it comes to more banking and better financing?

Top Concerns

In two sentences, National Cable TV Co-op board member, Matt Weller, best summed up the overall situation. Weller is president of All West Communications, headquartered in Kamas, UT.

“You either have to have a deep relationship with a financial institute or find one that understands the industry. I have found that banks that understand the industry are really the best place for funds.” Both great wisdom and examples of practice reside in Weller’s responses.

A summary of responses noted that most local banks clearly do not understand the subscriber-based video and broadband telecom industry. Additionally, a too small number of mid-to-large-sized banks appreciate the value of a business model based upon cash flow.

ACA Connects board member, Bob Gessner, sorted the “funding” problem into three categories, each dependent on the size of the would-be or actual borrower. He noted that the “large” operators have what he called “sophisticated banking/financial relationships with no difficulty accessing capital,” and mid-sized well-run companies have “stable local or regional relationships.” Thus, the pressure to find funds falls on the smaller companies, “due to a “lack of understanding by both the operator and the local bank; a lack of experience and comfort.”

Of fascination, also, was Gessner’s and other’s emphasis upon every operator maintaining its system and investing in upgrades, no matter the subscriber size, over the course of many years and decades. “[Problems arise from] systems [that] slowly degrade over time, to a point where they were caught in a catch-22. They could not upgrade without debt, but the systems were insufficient to support the debt. Banks aren't going to do that. Private equity might, but not for tiny systems.”

In addition, getting any bank to transition from a lending model based upon collateral (e.g., trucks, buildings, and tangible items only) to one based on regular, reliable monthly cash flow, can be a challenge. But it is vital.

Top Solutions

Most respondents stated that they self-financed, typically based upon cash flow. This model was associated – positively -- with “slow growth.”

Firms like Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo were cited among large national institutions for possible lines of credit (LOCs).

Surprisingly, Denver/Greenwood Village, Colorado-based CoBank was the only institution that was mentioned, unsolicited, in a third of the responses. ACA Connects members felt it satisfied the requirement of that rare financial entity that both “gets” the traditional pay TV and broadband industries, and has the size and deep pockets to make it capable of funding a wide range of projects.

Other local and specialty funders mentioned were RTFC, M & T, and PNC.

The USDA, SBA, CAF, and RUS government programs received a mix of favorable and not-so-favorable opinions. USDA and RUS were touted for their low rates. Concerns about CAF funding were tied to facilities-based funding requirements. Overall, most ACA Connects’ members do not turn to government-backed financial solutions.

Capable Cable Care and Capital

Special thanks are worth repeating, aimed again at both Matt Polka and VP, communications, Ted Hearn, of the Pittsburgh, PA-based ACA Connects, as well as the 10 anonymous and two named members who participated in this survey and write up. For more information, feel free to reach out to the author at jimmy@carmelgroup.com, or go online to www.carmelgroup.com. 

This is the second in a recent series of articles researching and better understanding the role of telecom trade group CEOs. These articles also explore the make-up of the respective organization’s constituency, and how each leader best addresses the needs of those members.

Ilissa Miller is president of NEDAS (formerly the Northeast DAS & Small Cell Association, today just known as Northeast Distributed Antennae System, or NEDAS*). She is also the founding partner of the Independent Data Center Alliance. In her current role, Ms. Miller guides an organization that educates and promotes the joinder of wireless and wireline infrastructure, software, and technologies. The footnote below further describes the organization and its mission.

Future articles and offerings will emanate from the mouths and minds of the CEOs from among the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), the National Cable Telecommunications Associations (NCTA), the National Cable Telecommunications Cooperative (NCTC).

Telecom Trade CEOs: ACA Connects' Matt Polka

Below is the edited transcript of Illisa Miller’s answers to our 20 questions:

Jimmy Schaeffler: What, in bullet points, are NEDAS’ core duties and responsibilities?

Ilissa Miller: NEDAS is a grassroots community of business people, focused on educating the industry about the wireline and wireless convergence. Our responsibilities include the following:

• Education and outreach to the greater industry on the realities of trends.
• Facilitating conversations and opening dialogue about industry challenges.
• Bridging the wireline and wireless communities, so they can work better together.

JS: Within that realm, what are your individual core duties and responsibilities as NEDAS president?

IM: I oversee the strategy, direction, and implementation of our annual programs and events, along with co-chairing the NEDAS Advisory Council, made of up nearly a dozen leading and cutting-edge industry players. In addition to strategy, I am responsible for the NEDAS programming and topics discussed at our events, including conferences, webinars, podcasts and more.

JS: How big is NEDAS, and what are its core staff positions?

IM: We have a terrific team that includes a project manager, marketing manager, social media manager, and sponsorship sales manager. We leverage best-of-breed services from an organization called East of Ellie for event logistics, and digital marketing and public relations from my company, iMiller Public Relations.

JS: How much of your work time is spent on the road versus in the office?

IM: I spend about 50 percent of my time on the road.

JS: What are the places or types of places that you visit the most as part of the job of NEDAS president and CEO?

IM: I attend a lot of different industry conferences and events, from the wireless side to data centers, network operations, telecom, enterprise technology and more. The international travel gives me an opportunity to learn and hear about topical discussions, take part in the conversation and meet with executives to dive deeper into their problems, so we can create programs and offer opportunities that will help people solve their problems.

JS: What would you say, overall, is the most important role for the NEDAS president?

IM: The most important role is ensuring a holistic view of the market is clear, so that we can continue our mission to help companies learn and access information about technologies and solutions that are changing the world. I know that’s a bit pie-in-the-sky. However, this is the information needed to help set the strategy for the organization and its discussion points. I firmly believe that working on an industry is as important as working in an industry, and I take having the opportunity to do both very seriously.

JS: How do you spend the majority of your time?

IM: I spend a lot of time reading, researching, and writing. But most of the time, I am on phone calls or in meetings listening for challenges, and helping to solve problems. It takes interaction with the entire ecosystem to ensure we are on the right track. By keeping pace with, and driving conversations forward, I hope that NEDAS will make the difference in helping to accelerate network deployments, in buildings and out.

JS: Which duties would you deem the most important?

IM: Definitely listening to people. It’s important to understand what is important to the industry, so that we can capture the effects, and gauge how relevant each topic is in the market.

JS: What are your favorite experiences (and memories) of your role as the NEDAS president?

IM: When I first started with NEDAS in May 2013, I was very green on in-building wireless challenges. However, I was keenly aware of the opportunities. With a background in the wholesale telecom industry, very early in my career I had the opportunity to work for Ericsson during the trial period of Bluetooth technology. When I learned about the opportunities with NEDAS, I was truly interested, to help make a difference. The conversations between wireline and wireless were a lot more segregated than they are now, and the industry didn’t understand the importance, yet, of engaging “the other side.” So I set out on a mission to help integrate topics about fiber and in-the-ground network connectivity, and slowly introduced concepts to convey the importance of understanding how the industry all works together. While this still remains my personal mission, we have made tremendous headway. We now have conversations about the edge, connectivity to towers and within enterprise buildings, the importance of data centers and base stations, regulations, public safety challenges and much more. It has been truly rewarding to slowly help the industry listen to and hear each side of the industry more clearly.

JS: What are your least favorite experiences (and memories) as NEDAS president?

IM: Honestly? My least favorite experiences are waiting for our attendees and sponsors to make their decisions and register, or decide on a sponsorship to support our organization. The feedback in the market is so positive about what we’re doing, but the budgets and priorities for spending do not always support those interests. So, asking for the business is my least favorite experience, but a must-do to survive and continue on our mission. So, don’t wait for us to ask. Just do it!

JS: What are a few important bullet-point-type legal, regulatory and policy issues ahead for you and NEDAS?

IM:

• Certainly, data sovereignty across multiple carriers and platforms is a key issue.
• The true implementation of 5G is a hot topic.
• Understanding and identifying parameters for regulations between wireline and wireless communication systems, as we enter deeper in the digital age. I don’t think that will be truly ready for a few years.
• The conversation between municipalities and infrastructure providers needs to be better, to create and enable smart city solutions.
• So, the challenges in having conversations that make sense to one another, and then solving the problem together, is another key area that needs to be addressed from a regulatory, policy, and legal perspective.

JS: Looking back at your many years as NEDAS president, what has been your biggest challenge?

IM: Being the president of NEDAS, as well as the CEO of iMiller Public Relations, and having served as an elected official in the Village where I live, juggling all of these sometimes-divergent interests, that has been a challenge. Identifying people who can work independently, but also knowing how to escalate, and ask for guidance is not an easy thing to do. So hiring and firing are certainly, without a doubt, at least the latter, my least favorite experiences. It’s not just the disappointment that someone didn’t work out. It’s also the cascading results of the fallout on families and livelihoods. I take that very seriously. For someone who is empathetic and caring, setting a hard line for business acumen and expectations is not a natural thing to do. Ensuring the business needs comes first, and identifying the best fit to drive that interest is not easy.

JS: What in your previous life (before NEDAS) was the best, and conversely the worst, event or occurrence in your professional life that taught or impressed a lesson upon you?

IM: The best and worst experience of my career was when my former partner terminated me with no notice, and maliciously took my earnings and interest in our joint company. That was a challenging time, which propelled me to start my own company, and deliver on the promises I had made to my clients. The majority of my clients at the time followed me, which certainly spoke volumes for the work and results I was delivering. Looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. She made me CEO of my own company! But during that time, dealing with the hurt, stolen income, and negativity that surrounds such a situation was challenging to juggle. I had to make a choice to focus on my business and the positivity of the situation, rather than the negativity. Once I realized that was within my control, it was full force forward from there.

JS: Tell “Mixed Signals” about your schooling, focusing on important things you learned.

IM: I went to school initially to become an opera singer, and realized that making a living singing was going to be a challenge. I changed my major to English Writing and Literature, and graduated with a BA, 26 years ago. I think I learned the most important things after school, and in the real world. Highlights for me include being kind and nice to everyone, no matter what position they are in a company; responsiveness and expeditious follow-up make a huge difference; listening and hearing what people are saying is more important than talking; asking questions doesn’t make you stupid—it makes you smarter; having a strategy and an approach for meetings, conferences, events, etc., will help you set goals, and assure success. Those are just a few things that I have learned along the way.

JS: Who in your professional background has impressed you the most?

IM: There are so many people in the industry who impress me every day. It’s hard to specify just one person. But accolades go to the CEOs of the companies who make it look so easy, and to former colleagues of mine who have climbed the ranks to lead billion-dollar companies. The list of impressive people is simply too long to mention, and each one inspires me every single day.

JS: Who in your personal life has impressed you the most?

IM: I know it sounds really cheesy, but my parents. Through the years, just like any family, they faced adversity and challenges, and each time, persevered. The bottom was tough, and the climb just keeps getting harder, but I am blessed to still have them in my life, and admire all that they have done with their lives, and continue to do so.

JS: If you could do your professional life all over again, what would you change?

IM: I am really proud of the career path that I took, and ultimately stumbled upon to get me where I am today, and wouldn’t change a thing. From door-to-door sales and canvassing for the environment, to telephone sales for the NYC Ballet Guild, as a receptionist, recruiter, and executive assistant, I was able to build a career in a specialized industry, and lead a group of people to have conversations that are helping to change the world. I’ve had the pleasure of developing global products, selling data centers, building and marketing an internet exchange, and building not just one but two public relations companies, from the ground up. What could be better -- and more fun -- than that?

*DAS is the acronym meaning Distributed Antennae System. A DAS network of antennas sends and receives cellular signals on a carrier’s licensed frequencies, thereby improving voice and data connectivity. The DAS concept is best represented in a cellular environment, where it offers mass communications and enhanced bandwidth for in-building and large studio/venue amplification and bandwidth. One application for DAS would involve a visitor to a public stadium, seeking to stream the game to a hand-held device. DAS answers the questions: How is that best done, so that that it is done with the best possible video, audio, and data quality, and so that everyone else at the game can do the same?

For the next several articles, “Mixed Signals” reaches out to the Telecom Trade Group CEOs in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, to find out more about them and their constituencies. Not surprisingly, the longest-serving among our group of telecom execs is also the one to start us off this week. That person is Matt Polka, whose comments below will be followed in the weeks ahead by offerings from the CEOs of the National Cable Telecommunications (NCTA), the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), and the Fixed Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (FISPA).

Below is an edited transcript of Matt Polka's answers to our 20 questions:

Jimmy Schaeffler: What, in bullet points, are ACA Connects’ core duties and responsibilities?

Matt Polka:

• ACA Connects represents more than 700 smaller and medium-sized, independent companies that provide broadband, phone and video services to nearly eight million customers primarily located in rural and smaller suburban markets across America.
• ACA Connects actively participates in the regulatory and legislative process in Washington, D.C.
• ACA Connects’ members work together to advance the interests of their customers and communities, and to ensure the future competitiveness and viability of their business.

JS: Within that realm, what are your individual core duties and responsibilities, as ACA Connects President + CEO?

MP:

• Lead in the creation of public policy positions.
• Drive the effort to see that ACA Connects’ policy positions prevail.
• Lead the ACA Connects staff and outside lawyers and consultants.
• Consult with, and receive input from, all ACA Connects Board and Executive Committee members, and assure that there is a solid connection between public policy goals and their business priorities.
• Keep current with industry and business trends.
• Keep in touch with industry peers and other trade associations.
• Spend time across the country visiting with members and speaking to them in events for their companies and state associations.
• Work in the development of broadening ACA Connects’ digital and social communications to “Connect and Communicate” in every way on behalf of our members and association.

JS: What is the size of ACA Connects and its core staff positions?

MP:

1. Matthew Polka, President & CEO
2. Robert Shema, EVP Member Services & Finance/Chief of Staff
3. Ross Lieberman, SVP of Government Affairs
4. Ted Hearn, VP of Communications
5. Brian Hurley, VP of Regulatory Affairs
6. Stacey D. Leech, Senior Director of Meetings & Industry Affairs
7. Karen D. Yochum, Senior Director of Administration & Finance
8. Matthew Maraist, Manager of Digital Communications
9. Tomeika Slappy, Executive Assistant
10. Christina Fidrocki, Administrative Assistant

JS: Where is ACA Connects located and how best contacted?

MP: ACA Connects is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Our address and phone number are:

ACA Connects – America’s Communications Association
Seven Parkway Center | Suite 755 | Pittsburgh, PA 15220-3704
Phone: 412-922-8300 | Fax: 412-922-2110
Email contact: thearn@acaconnects.org

JS: How much of your work time is spent on the road versus in the office?

MP: I would say 30% in the office and 70% on the road.

JS: Which are the places or types of places that you visit the most as part of the job of ACA Connects President + CEO?

MP:

• I visit with many national and state associations and at members’ companies, which takes me all over the country.
• ACA Connects also holds about four or five regional meetings to update members in smaller gatherings. ACA Connects members enjoy those forums because they get a chance to speak to ACA Connects staff at several points during the day, on an issue-by-issue basis.
• We also hold our signature event, our ACA Connects Summit, in Washington, D.C., every March to take our members to Capitol Hill and at the FCC to lobby and share their concerns.
• Finally, every year we co-produce the Independent Show, with NCTC-the National Cable Television Cooperative, which is our joint annual members’ meeting and tradeshow.

JS: What are your typical duties when you get there?

MP: ACA Connects has a broad public policy portfolio. ACA Connects members place a high value on quality information. When I speak to associations and individual members who attend the meetings, my purpose is to describe what ACA Connects is doing in Washington, D.C., as clearly as possible and to explain why we take the positions we do and how we intend to achieve our goals. ACA Connects members are busy people. They are totally focused on their jobs, with little time to stay current with all the twists and turns that accompany policy debates in Washington, D.C. ACA Connects members trust us to act in their best interests and find the path to success.

JS: What would you say overall is the ACA Connects President + CEO most important role?

MP: My most important role is to represent our members in every way to emphasize the critical importance of their companies in solving the broadband and communications needs of their smaller, rural, and competitive towns and communities. Whether I’m speaking across the country, tweeting about our members, meeting with Members of Congress and the FCC, appearing on C-SPAN’s “The Communicators,” being quoted in an article or many, many other things, it’s ALL about our members and telling everyone how they are committed to their communities to meet their communications needs.

JS: How do you spend the majority of your time?

MP: “Connecting and Communicating” in dozens of ways to build and strengthen relationships that help our members and help our association win on policy matters on their behalf in Washington. Whether answering email and members’ questions, phone calls, webinars, in-person meetings, talking to reporters, conference calls on issues, or preparing for events, the job is all about relationships, and putting relationships first. That goes for our team, too, where it’s my job to lead, encourage, and coach them in ways that help them grow and succeed for our members. The job is not about winning first; it’s focused on putting people first. If you put people first and really care about relationships, the winning will come.

JS: Which duties would you deem most important?

MP: Not just for me, but I think all of us at ACA Connects would say that the most important duty we have is to demonstrate an undying commitment to our members above all else, and to have our work on their behalf reflect character, fairness, a willingness to work with everyone, integrity, openness, and thought leadership.

JS: What are your favorite experiences (and memories) coming from your role as the ACA Connects President + CEO?

MP: I love to be up on Capitol Hill lobbying and meeting with congressional staffs and their bosses. I’ve always been a political geek and walking around the halls of Congress has always been a joy. I also love traveling, flying, seeing new parts of the U.S. and visiting with our members. We live in such a wonderful country, and I am always so appreciative of this and seeing the “local culture” of Americans, whether from Alaska to the bayous of Louisiana, and to the rocky coasts of Maine. I also really enjoy communicating by Twitter. Digital media, in general, fascinates me, because as an old newspaper reporter, I know that digital is the way we must get out our message in every way if we are to communicate effectively and reach the people who need to hear our members’ messages. As for memories, there are too many to count, but what they all involve is people who made it a memory. People first!

JS: What are your least favorite experiences (and memories) as ACA Connects president and CEO?

MP: As in any position, there are definitely some, but there also is so much to do moving forward that I choose not to dwell on them much at all. The good FAR outweighs the bad, that’s for sure!

JS: What are a few BIG Time, bullet-point type legal, regulatory, and policy issues ahead for you and ACA Connects?

MP:

• Net Neutrality/Title II regulation of broadband ISPs
• Renewal of Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization Act of 2014 (STELAR)
• Reallocation of the C-Band spectrum
• Internet privacy
• Nexstar-Tribune TV station merger
• Apollo-Cox TV station acquisition
• Sinclair purchase of Disney RSNs

JS: What are a couple of BIG-Time opportunities for ACA Connects and/or the greater broadband industry?

MP: Key provisions of STELAR expire in 2019, allowing ACA Connects to include reforms to the broken retransmission consent rules, that TV station use to stage massive signal blackouts as leverage to drive up the cost of Pay-TV. In 2014, ACA Connects was successful in obtaining provisions from Congress, which banned non-commonly owned TV stations from jointly negotiating retransmission consent with MVPDs.

C-Band policy changes could result in the creation of a government-funded fiber network, that ACA Connects members will join to receive video programming from wholesale vendors that traditionally rely on satellite delivery.

JS: Looking back at your many years as ACA Connects President + CEO, what has been your biggest challenge?

MP: Lawmakers and regulators need quality information on which to base decisions. With that in mind, I have stressed the importance of ensuring that our members’ voices are heard in Washington, D.C., loud and clear. It’s very easy for a message to become diluted or drowned out in a crowded regulatory space. It’s a major challenge for the policy preferences of ACA Connects members not only to be heard, but also to be followed. And I think one other major challenge has been just to spend over 26 years to work hard every day to have a seat at the table in Washington and in our industry, where you can never take anything for granted. But, I think our work and our commitment have spoken for themselves, and we are still fighting! I have no experience whatsoever in running an association, but when I was hired I was determined for our association to succeed and increase slowly and steadily, planting firm roots, and being guided every day by doing what was right for our members. That’s still how we operate today.

JS: What in your prior life (before ACA) has been the best, and conversely the worst, event or occurrence in your professional life that taught or impressed a lesson upon you?

MP: The best springs from the worst, and that was working in places with bosses who had no clue how to lead and encourage people to do their best. I can remember bosses back in the 80s and early 90s who were screamers, and I vowed that if ever I had the chance to lead an organization, I would do everything OPPOSITE of what those terrible leaders did. Fortunately, I have been blessed to lead our team and association here at ACA Connects, and we have proven as I said before that when we focus on each other as people and build strong relationships and commitments together, we know we can accomplish anything, and that’s what we do every day. I also try for us every day to disprove the notion that you can’t succeed if you’re nice. We’ve disproved that silly notion and continue to do so!

JS: Tell “Mixed Signals” about your schooling, focusing on important things you learned?

MP:

• High School — I am eternally grateful to my Mom, who gave me no choice but to take a full year of typing, which was taught in high schools back then! Learning how to type (A S D F J K L ;, etc.) has been the single most practical thing I have ever learned that helped me and my career incredibly. I don’t know if they still teach typing today, but if you master it you will help yourself more than you can ever imagine.
• College — I was a journalism major in news/editorial (e.g., newspaper writing), and I learned the value of writing, grammar, the English language, and how to quickly and effectively express yourself in words, which is so sorely lacking in today’s business world. I have been amazed how so few people take time to master their writing, especially with the negative image it can project. I also learned in journalism school the incredibly important attributes of fairness, accuracy, impartiality and objectivity, which have helped me in my professional life to see and seek the truth.
• Law School — I learned among many other things how important it is to be organized in your thinking, how you can be an advocate in your spoken as well as written words, and what a difference critical thinking and argument can make in evaluating professional issues every day. I’m still trying to learn these things!

JS: Who in your professional background has impressed you the most?

MP: Our members at ACA Connects. They are the salt of the earth. They are why we do what we do. We know how much they appreciate our service to them, and we push ourselves even more each day to do more for them. As small businesses, they face incredible challenges every day, ones we can’t even imagine. They are true “plate spinners,” keeping everything moving forward. And it has been my honor to work with our team, to represent this wonderful group of people who are truly making life msrkedly better for their customers and communities.

JS: Who in your personal life has impressed you the most?

MP: In my personal life I have seen many who have truly and selflessly served others in Christian service without regard to their own needs and interests. Whether pastors, missionaries, or service workers in schools, shelters and community programs, I have been amazed by their ability to “consider it all joy” as it says in James 1:2. I believe we all can and should serve in whatever we do, and I try to do that, but I have always been so impressed by those who have been called in full-time ministry. The truth is that I am blessed beyond measure by the death and resurrection of my savior, Jesus Christ, and the salvation He has given to me through my faith and belief in Him. There is nothing I have endured that could ever match His love, grace, mercy and sacrifice for me.

JS: If you could do your professional life all over again, what you change?

MP: Nope, not a thing. The Good Lord has always been faithful to me, so that whenever one door closed, only one door opened, and I know that nothing I have done professionally as a reporter, lawyer, general counsel, and now trade association exec and lobbyist has been an accident. I have been incredibly blessed, and so much more than I have ever deserved.

Jimmy Schaeffler is the chair and CSO of The Carmel Group, a broadband, broadcast, and pay TV/video consultancy. He has spent nearly five decades studying, writing, researching and analyzing, working with every type of player in the space. If you are a small-to-mid-sized operator looking to expand or better understand the industry, and the financing and funding available, feel free to reach out to him at jimmy@carmelgroup.com.

When a vision of growth arises in the mind of a small-to-mid-sized telecom entrepreneur/operator, often the very next step is for him/her to ask, “How will I pay for it?”

Described below are four distinct types of small-to-mid-sized telecom providers. Each delivers broadband content as a core part of its network.

Why do they need money? How much do they need? Who do they ask for funds? When do they ask? What is involved in the process? Is it public funding or private financing that they ask for?

These and a plethora of additional questions are “must asks,” if success is to be expected. This article presents the basics to get there from a private financing POV, and a view at what comes next.

Succeeding articles will provide operators with additional guidance through the lending process. These will include focused looks at key players in each silo, as well as a look at public funding.

Cable Operators

Likely no better spokes group for America’s small-to-mid-sized cable operators exists than the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based trade group, ACA Connects – America’s Communications Association (ACA). Formerly branded as the American Cable Association, ACA has, for decades, been guided by top execs including Matt Polka, president and CEO, Matt Polka; , Ross Lieberman , senior VP, government affairs; Rob Shema , executive VP/chief of staff; and Ted Hearn, communications VP. Like its peers below, ACA is eager to put new funding options and thus new funds into the hands of its then, usually, much better-off constituents.

For example, many small-to-mid-sized ACA cable operators are looking to study and implement new wireless operations, on top of their current wired models (See, article about cable operator, Midco, buying a regional wireless provider, WOW Lawrence (Kansas)).

Moves like this place the cable ops in the realm of a new generation of wired providers, known as “Hybrid Operators.” Another version of these “Hybrids” comes in the form of fixed wireless operators, adding more fiber to their infrastructures.

Not unlike their usual rivals, i.e., WISPs and FISPs (discussed below), the next generation of cable TV and other broadband providers needs mature financial support from those other than sometimes-unreliable friends and family. All broadband providers are competing aggressively in more populated areas, most are reaching deeper into rural areas, and thus are constantly looking at development options.

For these growth and long-term development opportunities, fortune supports them: more and more banks are “getting it.” More financing is coming to these four broadband sectors, as more banks understand and accept—as a substitute for traditional, personal, assets-backed collateral—the relative steadiness of loyal subscribers, together with a new-found appreciation for the financial strength that monthly cash flow presents.

WISPs

Wireless internet service providers (WISPs) have been around since the early 1990s. They are also known as broadband wireless access providers, or BWAs. These operators’ growth as a U.S. industry has been sometimes slow, but steady, to the point where today they number well over 2,250 nationwide (See, “2017 BWA Report“).

Recently revised estimates by The Carmel Group suggest WISP/BWA 2023 U.S. subscriber growth will stretch to over 11 million in the next five years, from a current base of over six million users. Growth in overall U.S. industry revenue increases during the next two years from just under $4 billion currently, to over $6 billion. Concurrently and well into the future, churn and subscriber acquisition costs (SAC) remain the lowest in the industry (i.e., lower than satellite, fiber, cable, mobile, or telco). In general terms, return on investment continues to exceed that of the four major competitors.

Most BWA operator funding today is aimed at expansion. This expansion comes typically in the form of spending for new infrastructure, such as more fiber in the ground to connect the broadband pipe to towers and some neighborhoods. Other WISP development needs include next generation, in-home equipment (AKA: consumer premises equipment, or CPE), towers and antennas, marketing, operational purchases, supplementing government grants and loans, partner buy-outs, employees, benefits, spectrum acquisition, working capital, refinancing, and audits, as well as mergers and acquisitions.

Yet, traditionally, WISPs have been stymied by traditional banks and those maintaining traditional banking perspectives that base lending decisions primarily upon the pure collateral of the business, rather than a focus on the steadiness of cash flow and the loyalty of a growing subscriber base.

Recently, several bankers are beginning to investigate broadband and are finding new avenues to introduce those operators to better choices, having to do with terms and lending decisions. CoBank’s website notes, “CoBank customers form the backbone of the economy in rural America –- agribusiness, power, water and telecommunications.” iNet Capital professes, “Financing that provides secured growth capital to businesses in the fixed wireless and broadband industries.” Live Oak Bank claims, “Financing to acquire, refurbish, refinance and operate America’s small businesses.” And United Community Bank states, “We have small business financing options offered through the Small Business Administration that help your business grow stronger…loans for major fixed assets, payment of operating expenses, equipment purchases and more.”

The main U.S. WISP trade group, WISPA, assists member operators and vendors in their quest for a better financial basis upon which to expand their businesses. Non-members are encouraged to join WISPA, and members are recommended to reach out to WISPA communications director Mike Wendy, specifically within WISPA, in order to discover more about WISP funding choices. WISPA’s CEO and president Claude Aiken, transitioned to WISPA a year ago from then-FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn’s staff, where he served as that office’s wireline legal advisor. Before that, Aiken was associate general counsel and special advisor on internet law and policy in the FCC’s Office of The General Counsel.

FISPs

Newly appointed Fiber Internet Services Provider Association (FISPA) executive director Betty Burke has her work cut out for her on multiple levels, as she and her FISPA team try to grow a trade group of many hundreds, to many more hundreds of members, in the few years ahead.

FISPs are not unlike WISPs, in many regards. In fact, as noted above, many WISPs find that once they have created a wireless pipeline to profitably service their new wireless customers, that often the investment of wires into the ground or hanging from telephone poles is a good one, because of enhanced capabilities offered only by fiber. Those WISPs then become both FISPs and WISPs, in the true “hybrid” sense of the word.

As fiber continues to be generally regarded as the optimum form to deliver content to the world, the attractiveness of FISPs, to more and more consumers, will rise. Thus, as more and more financiers realize the trend of more broadband being delivered by more fiber operators, that financial playing field will become more fruitful and accretive.

Hybrids

These new “hybrid providers” (such as WISPs becoming FISPs, and cable ops becoming WISPs) then need additional funds to supplement their wireless with wired (and vice versa) growth. This is often because fiber can be so much more expensive to deploy than wireless (See, “2017 BWA Report,” page 12, figure 6, which notes on a relative scale that fiber usually costs five times more than fixed wireless to deploy, and cable costs typically three times more).

Taking Oklahoma-based @Link as a model, it calls itself a “Hybrid Wireless-Fiber Network.” Within its systems, @Link typically deploys fiber to its towers in the form of the trunk or backhaul of the content to that distribution point. Less often, @Link takes fiber right to the home, but only in rare cases where that makes sense. Adds @Link principal, Samual Curtis, “@Link still uses some wireless point-to-point backhaul wireless links, but when use increases, we often switch to fiber.”

More Money Moving

As noted above, in recently updated figures, The Carmel Group finds both the subscriber and revenue growth of just the WISP industry, to be substantial. Indeed, in a world looking inside the traditional pay TV industry and seeing significant shrinkage, there is on the other hand optimism among FISPs, WISPs, and “Hybrids.”

Much of this expansion comes as the wise money minds become more creative, making money not just for their institutions but, as importantly, working with and guiding their broadband lending clients toward making far more money – and thus “wise money” – in the process. That “wise money” will typically be the funding that comes from things like the lowest rates, plus less or no business collateral, longer payment time frames, and serving the borrower and its business after the loan closes.

It’s a good time – and getting better – to be a WISP, a FISP, a “Hybrid,” and/or a small-to-mid-sized cable operator in America. It’s also a good time to be a specialized SBA- and USDA-backed government lending bank, because those banks are increasingly jumping in, as well.

The money is beginning to move. And America’s broadband borrowers are delivering much better answers to that age-old inquiry: “How will I pay for that?”

Jimmy Schaeffler is the chair and CSO of The Carmel Group, a broadband, broadcast, and pay TV/video consultancy. He has spent nearly five decades studying, writing, researching and analyzing, working with every type of player in the space. If you are a small-to-mid-sized operator looking to expand or better understand the industry, and the financing and funding available, feel free to reach out to him at jimmy@carmelgroup.com.

Early in my career, I had the great fortune to do something amazing.

Like most young people, I did it enthusiastically, and without much knowledge of what I was actually doing, or what was really happening.

I spent literally scores and scores of hours working on important legal matters with Judge Anthony Kennedy.

And that truly captured my attention.

A Great Law Professor

Judge Kennedy of the Ninth Federal Circuit of Appeals was my Constitutional Law professor during my first year in law school.

Because of how good he was, I did a lot more than study. I had notes everywhere. I bought every supplemental resource. I read every case two or three times. I insisted that our study group spend more time on Judge Kennedy’s remarks than any other professor’s. He was my favorite law professor, for lots of reasons.

On the last day of class, he spent a few moments to write a special personalized dedication to me, focused on his favorite justices, into the inside cover of my Constitutional Law text. I still treasure that.

With all that as pretext, one overriding message I got from him, and that just about anyone who worked to understand Constitutional Law should invoke, was the need for balance. That was “Balance” with a capital “B” (and probably best repeated a couple of times, to make sure you got it, because it was real important and real easy to lose). He preached that “Balance” often.

Years later, I took it a step further when I wrote to President Reagan in the 1980s, recommending Judge Kennedy as an associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was something I was very proud of then and for a long time afterward, including the two-sentence letter I got back from Fred Fielding, acknowledging my input. I still joke that my contribution to the process was why Judge Kennedy became a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

When, in the 1990s, I was sworn into the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy was sitting at his SCOTUS bench in D.C.; he later wrote a kind note of congratulations, along with Justice Bryon White.

Flash Forward: 2018

Yet things have changed.

And so has that “Balance.”

Indeed, I truly wonder if “The Judge” believes it is still being adequately achieved?

Donny Deutsch, a Jew, a self-described conservative businessman, and a member of a minority group with a lot to lose, said it quite well when he decried a recent U.S Supreme Court decision that he said scared him quite a bit. He noted that the SCOTUS — led by Chief Justice Roberts and a retiring Justice Kennedy — had just given the U.S. president the right to do (I paraphrase) just about anything under the heading of the chief executive’s command over national security.

That also caught my attention.

As he often does, Deutsch did a remarkable job of clarifying the decision and its import. (Deutsch’s — and notable others’ — comments are certainly worth seeing online during an eight-minute YouTube video, especially at 1 minute 25 seconds.

Worrisome Times

As it relates to our democracy, and to our “Balance, with a capital B,” what is particularly worrisome right now are two things:

One is that the U.S. Supreme Court is losing that compass that aims unfailingly toward that “Balance.”

The second is that the U.S. media still struggles to remind its citizens, including all branches of our government, that re-establishing that life-saving Balance is a lot more important than allowing any U.S. president to ever do “just about anything,” by claiming it is done for the sake of “national security.”

Examples abound.

Prior presidents, from Republicans to Democrats, from Nixon to Clinton, have tried and tried to outduel the media, and the courts. Occasionally those presidents have won, but mostly they have lost, thanks in some real measure to that Balance applied by the judicial branch of the United States of America.

Thus, when Richard Nixon tried in the 1970s to squash a free exchange of information, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that he could not, and that he would have to produce “our” Watergate tapes. Similarly, when Bill Clinton some 25 years later tried to avoid a legal jeopardy in the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky debacles, again the U.S. Supreme Court found that Balance, in its decisions to hold him accountable to the people, through our media and our courts, during his presidency.

Our current president, Donald Trump, provides yet another example of trying to take undue advantage of his power, in part by firing and relentlessly attacking those who would investigate him, calling the media an “enemy of the people,” and suggesting to audiences that they be harmed (and that he be immune).

One must ask: Would Judge Kennedy have allowed Richard Nixon to hide his tapes based upon a Nixon claim of “national security?” Or would The Judge and Justice have permitted Bill Clinton to avoid regulation, simply because “being president takes a lot of time,” as the current candidate for SCOTUS associate justice has opined? Would he have found Balance in either of the positions maintained by those two presidents?

As for future presidents, they, too, must be constantly reminded of their infallibility, not vice versa. They, too, need to recognize, appreciate, and ideally, even practice that ever healthy Balance.

Broad Standards + Politics = Broad Imbalance

One reason why a “national security” standard is so problematic is that it is so incredibly broad. Judge Kennedy used to point out case after case that was either rightly or he thought not rightly decided based upon a standard that was too broad. “Too broad” meant “Not Balanced,” he taught us. It was hard to dispute then, and these days, it remains so.

With life and so many issues getting more and more complex, to have specific standards that address specific details and specific cases certainly means a lot more work, but more importantly (and making that work worthwhile), it means getting it right. It means “finding that Balance.”

When a current candidate for the SCOTUS states outright that a president cannot, under any circumstances, be told what to do or be prosecuted by outside authorities, that, too, creates more problems, because it creates a broad sweeping standard, which, again by Judge Kennedy’s definition, is Not Balanced. Then, to simply state that the sole solution is “impeachment,” creates a further problem with Balance. That is because impeachment, too, is a grossly inadequate solution, based upon a standard of unequal Congressional representative and electoral power, held by a smaller number of representatives, representing a smaller number of actual citizens.

Further, when current candidates for the SCOTUS are selected by our president, based largely, he has stated, upon a standard he selects of their willingness to overthrow just one established case precedent of 50 years, that two thirds of Americans strongly support, that, too, creates concerns for basic Balance.

Within a democracy, a relatively small minority telling a much larger majority what to do is not Balance.

Our country’s and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions show us we get closer to both keeping and achieving cherished individual freedoms — such as the 1st, 2nd, and almost all the other amendments — by achieving more Balance, not less.

Balanced Courts = Broad Democracy

Ultimately, in the 242 years of our democracy, alleged crimes are timely presented to juries. This clearly imperfect solution remains the most Balanced and just we have. Conversely, more today, crimes presented for judgment to Congressmen, Congresswomen, and Senators, or even to members of the U.S. Supreme Court, become less and less Balanced, again because politics are so deeply involved.

An additional lack of Balance arises from political interests trumping the truth, and our media’s coverage of that truth, taking us yet further from our democracy.

In short, in order for the system of democracy to work, the referee on the field has to exhibit fairness in the form of Balance.

This is the time we need the U.S. Supreme Court to return us to our Better Balance.

Indeed, this is the time we need more than ever a new U.S. Supreme Court associate justice who will help to give us back that Democracy (this one, similarly, with a capital D).

Summing up, we have a long ways to go — and, we hope, we will have to convince a limited number of courageous jurors, legislators, and executives, as well as voting citizens — before we reach that all-critical Balance that Judge Kennedy taught us all in law school.

It’s the same Balance modeled to Justice Gorsuch and Judge Kavanaugh, as Justice Kennedy’s clerks, and to thousands of others like us who were fortunate enough to have studied under, worked for, and learned from both the Judge and Justice known as Anthony Kennedy.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chair and CSO of The Carmel Group, a streaming/broadband, broadcast, and pay TV/video consultancy based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. 

In late 2017, after two years of research, analysis and writing, The Carmel Group published the first in-depth report about what we term the Broadband Wireless Access, or “BWA,” industry. Many traditionalists still call it the fixed wireless industry. The full 23-page “2017 BWA Report” is available for download here.

Yet, the lack of industry interest in the story and data behind the “2017 BWA Report” appears to say a lot about yesterday’s and today’s multichannel industry.

What BWA Means
For those unaware, BWA means the delivery of broadband Internet, via a tower and wireless spectrum, to small radio antennas mounted on the sides of buildings. The outside antenna connects to a router inside the structure. The router then distributes the signal to devices and monitors inside the home or business.

For the cord-cutting generation, BWA is Nirvana, because it delivers Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon and YouTube for a tiny fraction of the cost of a cable TV, telco, fiber or satellite package. BWA also delivers quality Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) telephone services. Traditional TV packages are not far off, we believe.

For the operator, it means delivering much of what people – especially younger generations – really want from video, at a tiny fraction of the cost and payback period.

Related: Fixed Wireless Pay TV: Understanding the New DNA

For cable, telco, fiber and satellite, BWA can also mean a chance to meld with and become a hybrid video delivery service, with obvious advantages. Indeed, this melding highlights the meaning behind the name of this blog, “Mixed Signals” (meaning, increasingly, silos break down and each industry combines with – and invests in – the others).

A First Call
On March 19 I received one of the first of its kind: a call from a Detroit-based investment firm that was interested in purchasing a BWA operator of several thousand subscribers, with decent multiples and very respectable cash flow, the partner said. The guy said to me, “This business seems almost too good to be true.”

His core questions centered around items such as the research and study behind the data points, the validity of the methodology, the competition and concerns about the future.

He was also concerned about how cable and telco will react, especially as new 5G technology and the BWA industry grow out. He worried further about a possible dearth of future unlicensed spectrum.

Why Not More?
What has occurred to me weekly since the “2017 BWA Report” came out five months ago -- and what triggered this article -- is something I saw quite a bit when I left Paul Kagan Associates in 1995 to start a rival telecom research operation (but mine focused in the beginning just on the newly emerging Direct Broadcast Satellite industry). That phenomenon was the real lack of serious interest by cable, other related industries and investors in a new technology and new business that challenges the old.

Today, because of the comparison of a handful of important technological and political concerns to those of DBS back in the early 1990s, the BWA industry is on the verge of a similar breakout. (Note that I’m not yet predicting the growth that DBS saw, reaching close to 30 million subscribers in a 20-year time frame, but the BWA industry is projected to nearly double to over eight million subscribers in five year’s time.) BWA is also on the verge of competing mightily with cable.

Yet, despite that promise, there is still very little interest from both within and outside the BWA industry in what the real BWA story is.

Know Your Friends Well
Some say the reason for this dearth of response is a lack of curiosity.

That may be true at a certain level, but I believe that the more important reason is one of fear.

Incumbents are often afraid to address the idea of a future involving a large loss of market share – as was cable with DBS in the 1990s, and cable is today with other technologies, including BWA. In response, they do little or not enough to address that future. I’ll never forget the first time I heard the adage “Know your friends well, your enemies better.”

Interestingly enough, the two companies that have purchased the answers and the data behind the BWA survey data we did are both based overseas. They both mentioned a unique opportunity to invest in and take advantage of a new U.S. (and global) telecom opportunity, involving new spectrum gains, new technology, new equipment and new investors.

Thus, I must again ask the U.S. contingent (and others of the foreign ilk), yet this time in a more complete version: Suffer, Curiosity? Suffer, Fear? Suffer, Knowledge? Suffer, Advantage?

Like DBS, there’s a real chance here not only to benefit financially, but also to improve the quality of life for millions of Americans and other global citizens.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chair and CSO of The Carmel Group, a streaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy based in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif.

Pay TV operators and equipment vendors are facing remarkable new changes, as TV consumers increasingly become “cord cutters” and migrate away from cable and satellite providers toward cellular/mobile and fixed-wireless providers. Understanding the latter two pay TV competitors thus becomes ever more critical to managing today’s cable and satellite TV landscapes.

Some very interesting data points have emerged within the last year by way of two 80-question surveys -- one of operators and one of vendors making up the fixed wireless or Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) sector.

The two surveys were conducted in late 2016 and well 2017 by my research firm, The Carmel Group, drawing from hundreds of members of the dominant U.S fixed wireless/BWA trade group the Wireless Internet Services Providers’ Association (WISPA), which was among nearly 20 investors that sponsored the findings. (The investors’ viewpoints had no effect on the surveys’ outcome.)

The study found that 169 out of 555 WISPA member respondents answered the operator questions, whereas more than 20 of WISPA’s 44 equipment vendors responded to their specific vendor survey questions. Both response rates are more than double the typical response rates for “external” and “independent” surveys done nationally by outside third parties.

Residential Consumer Broadband Comparative Economics
This section of the study compares five key Pay TV benchmarks, including capex per subscriber relative to BWA, speed, upgrade costs, broadband ARPU; and payback period.

Most telling perhaps is the payback period. In the case of cable, that timeframe is estimated at 38 months, or more than three years. Higher still is that of fiber, at 60 months or five years. Mobile/cellular payback is estimated to arrive after almost two years, while satellite and BWA best that metric by coming in at one year and 11.5 months, respectively.

However, for purposes of the relative analysis, the estimated average $250 million cost of launching a satellite was not included in the 12-month satellite return on investment (ROI) time frame. The surveys and the report confirm that the fixed wireless/BWA is the most cost-effective infrastructure for broadband and video today.

At the same time, typical and maximum delivery speeds are improving to the point where fixed wireless/BWA speeds are topping out at 100 Megabits per second (Mbps). Some can provide more than 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) to fixed wireless/BWA end users.

Survey Questions
The surveys also asked about expectations; vendor equipment and improvements; licensed versus unlicensed and “lightly licensed” spectrum; monthly churn; ARPU; and revenue. Additional questions about ancillary services, challenges, opportunities, access and transmission points were also included.

One particularly interesting question was, “What Kinds of Licensed and Unlicensed Point-To-Point Frequencies Each Operator Is Using And What Percentage Each Represents?”

The results said 5.72-5.85 Gigahertz (AKA: U-NII-3) was used by nearly 40% of the respondents. Next, with 25%, was 5.25-5.72 Gigahertz (AKA: U-NII-2), and then, with 20% usage, was 5.15-5.25 Gigahertz (AKA: U-NII-1). A number of spectrums being considered that will be opened up in the years ahead, some point-to-point and some point-to-multipoint, in licensed, unlicensed and shared spectrums, might significantly affect this.

The Citizens Band Radio Spectrum (CBRS) deployment is one of these. Among “opportunities” in the BWA ecosystem, the surveys respondents cited “new spectrum developments” as the most promising.

Seven Growth Drivers
The two surveys also identified growth drivers that are expected to help propel the industry forward:

• As noted above, Fixed Wireless/BWA costs less.
• Spectrum trends favor fixed wireless/broadband.
• Video is fueling overall growth in demand for broadband.
• Standards-based technologies give BWA providers more choices.
• Capital availability and governmental support are growing,
• New entrants are validating the business model.
• And new market and service opportunities are creating new opportunities.

Subscriber and Revenue Growth
The study also highlights the remarkable growth that is expected in terms of both subscribers and revenue. In light of expected declines during the same timeframe among satellite and cable operators, the rather conservative estimates show that today’s BWA industry is the fastest growing sector in all of broadband.

BWA Challenges
The BWA operators also identified several key challenges they foresee. These include: (1) competition from other broadband distributors; (2) yet-to-fully-develop access to financial funding markets; (3) inadequate and uneven governmental support in the areas of spectrum allocation and financial incentives; and (4) the BWA industry’s relatively small size, lack of scale and consolidation, which in turn affects the BWA industry’s ability to educate investors, legislators, regulators, media and the general public.

Other Survey Data
The full report is available free-of-charge at The Carmel Group’s website by going to www.carmelgroup.com (click on the title, “2017 Broadband Wireless Access (BWA)/Fixed Wireless Report”). The actual sets of questions asked of both the Vendors and the Operators are also available for download (via the link titled “2017 BWA Survey”).

An old adage has it, “Know Your Friends Well, Your Enemies Better.” Whether today’s cable and satellite operators list fixed wireless/BWA as a friend or foe, and whether today’s pay TV and broadband providers combine different infrastructures to achieve their distribution ends, it is high time to learn more about BWA providers in the U.S. and around the world. Indeed, the Philippines reports a system of more than 1 million users, and significant deployments of fixed wireless technology are seen today in Russia, Brazil, Italy, Canada and Australia.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of The Carmel Group, a streaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy based in Carmel by the Sea, Calif.

Following up on six trends driving the future of content, here are six technology-enabled developments that are driving how television content is distributed and consumed.

1. More (and Smarter) Devices

Both mobile and stationary devices will continue to populate the home, business and travel lives of Americans. That’s because we like it! The average U.S. TV household  has gone from one TV set to several, and from just TVs to other devices, and from just one mobile device to several. That’s a lot of screens, especially considering each home on average has just a bit more than two folks living in it. Most of these devices will also acquire more and more storage and computing power. Read more.

2. Data Use Grows

Data will come from many platforms, e.g., social media’s Twitter tweets will factor into comScore’s and Nielsen’s measurements of “total viewing audiences and their preferences.” Data will not just determine if people like programming, but as importantly, it will more and more determine what people will like, and thus what content gets made. This will include the advertisements consumers watch, which will be more and more targeted, based upon the likes and dislikes of that viewer, and that viewer only. Read more.

3. Internet of Things

A business colleague in Denver, Colo., tells of the audio speakers in his living room being run off of an Internet connection. This is but one early example of how more and more devices – including those in the video and TV worlds – will be connected to the Internet for the purposes of more viewing enjoyment and sophistication. Of course, this also ties in with the trend above, that of data use. Unimaginable information sources are just being developed today, which will completely drive the what, where, how, why and when of TV viewing, in no less than a couple of years. Read more here and here.

4. Distribution Migration

The transition of millions of former pay TV subscribers to IP-enabled devices is the paradigm of this trend. Another great example is that of wireless providers rivaling wireline providers in the delivery and distribution of content to America. And there will be more such transitions, as large, small, and medium-sized content-rights holders and distributors grapple with the best technology to deliver those ones and zeros. But a tiny example of this migration is the challenge presenting itself to cable and telcos by the upstart Alternative Broadband Providers.

5. Enhanced (and Advanced) Digital Media

For years, this side of the industry has also been known as Advanced Media Services or Advanced Digital Media. Examples include DVRs and VOD during the past couple of decades, and most recently Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality capabilities. Applying these two latter viewing options to just video gaming alone,opens up a multibillion-dollar industry subsector. And there will be more and more, as regularly as in the past there have been new TV shows introduced every September. HDTV, 4K, and UHDTV are additional examples on the picture-quality side of the ledger.

6. The Pie Grows

The knee-jerk reaction is to look at OTT/broadband/streaming video services and predict a sharp fall off in traditional distribution modes. But perhaps one of the best examples is that of the Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) industry and its influence on cable. Sure, cable lost subscribers, but cable found ways to enhance the most important benchmark, i.e., average revenue per unit (ARPU). Cable also found its way into a couple more technologies, i.e., telephone and Internet/broadband service, and made a huge investment in better infrastructure. Thus, the better measure was to describe the “Video World in a Post-DBS Era” as having increased the options, rather than one ruining the other. So, too, will most of these technologies and developments above, as well as the content trends in Part One, encapsulate the same theme: The Pie Grows. (And what could be better for “The Consumer Choice Culture” that is American TV today — and tomorrow?)

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO ofThe Carmel Group, a streaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy based in Carmel by the Sea, Calif.; he writes about telecommunications, entertainment and media.

An awful lot of  telecom, media, entertainment -- and especially video -- companies find themselves in a rather chaotic business these days. In Part One of a two part series, following are six video and TV trends affecting the content side of the business. (Next week’s Part Two will focus more broadly on trends such as data and its overall impact on the industry and its stakeholders.)

RELATED:Visit MCN's Next TV department for more stories about the impact of these trends.

(1) Bandwidth Consumption Increases

Just as choice means more content to more devices and places, so does the implementation of that process necessarily involve more bandwidth to get it there. That will be important for those in the Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) and various core distribution industries (e.g., DBS, cable, telco, fiber, cellular, and wireless delivery and distribution infrastructures). Read more here.

(2) More Video

Anecdotally, Netflix spending several billion dollars (in 2016 alone) on the creation of Netflix-only content tells a good part of the story that claims “Content Is (Still) King!” Fees paid to top actors and actresses -- no less athletes -- portend much in the way of celebrities on the video stage further hyping attractive pictures (and viewer interest). Sports TV rights fees are yet another indicator of a great demand for desirable drama. Business models appear to be uncertain, wide and open, when it comes to monetizing and thus proliferating new content.

(3) Video Transition to IP/OTT/Streaming/Broadband

Cord-cutting and cord-shaving are reflections of not just pay TV customer frustration with the high costs of programming bundles (including the subsidization of sports TV that the majority of viewers don’t watch). They are also coupled with the availability of an alternative quality distribution vehicle, i.e., Internet Protocol (IP)/broadband TV (Read more here.)

(4) Video to Mobile

As smartphones, tablets, and wearable technologies rise in popularity, the demand for mobile applications is growing and will continue to evolve. Smartphones are still in their earliest stage, and the demand for iPhones, iPads, smart watches, etc., will enhance the need for better distribution of bandwidth. The ability of most consumers today to select Video On Demand (VOD) instead of live or linear viewing, especially on mobile devices, further drives this trend. (Read more here.)

(5) Connectivity Grows

Choice has for a long time been an important part of U.S. (and global) culture. The emergence and growth of DirecTV is a prime example of our “choice culture.” Similarly, if device builders and content rights holders and distributors can bring their content fare to more people, in more places, more often, and using more devices, chances are that their content will get viewed, and viewed more often. (Read more here.)

(6) More Content Stakeholders

Recent newcomers to the ownership and control of video rights include Amazon and Facebook. Indeed, there is pressure today on nearly every large content producer to create more, and/or better, content. There is also pressure on video distributors to jump into the content production and ownership game themselves (if they have not yet already done so). There are strong arguments, including vertical integration, that support such moves. Moreover, with Netflix’s success with House of Cards, it is tough for many to not want to also gamble for that “Golden Ring of (Video) Success.”

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO ofThe Carmel Group, a streaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy based in Carmel by the Sea, Calif.; he writes about telecommunications, entertainment and media.

Few know and appreciate that one of the best examples of the power, indeed the magic, of modern data analytics is Netflix’s series House of Cards (HOC).

Indeed, HOC registers as one of the most successful TV and video programming introductions of all time. Yet, what is most remarkable is how HOC was developed and introduced. As HOC star Kevin Spacey explained in his iconic YouTube speech, “Netflix was the only network that said, ‘We believe in you…we’ve run our data, and it tells us the audience would watch this series’” (emphasis added).

Netflix replaced the traditional (and very expensive) “pilot” TV test process with intimate knowledge (via intensive data analytics) of the Netflix viewer. Netflix used its sophisticated data analytics as a basis to invest $100 million upfront in HOC; then, as a basis to green light HOC for at least four seasons (thru 2016), and for today’s 39 completed episodes. Today, Netflix producers envision a 12-season collection of HOC, through 2023.

Anther Example: AMC and 'Mad Men'

Other ways in which data about viewers is being collected are nearly as interesting. AMC, the network home of The Walking Dead and Mad Men, has also taken a fascinating lean toward data collection and analysis.

As noted in a recent, free IBM-New Bay Media whitepaper, Vitaly Tsivin, AMC’s SVP of business intelligence, used IBM’s advanced analytics to get a richer picture of who its viewers are, what they want, and how to keep their attention in an increasingly crowded entertainment marketplace.

“We need to know who’s watching and why, and we need to know it quickly, so that we can decide…whether to run an ad or a promo in a particular slot during tomorrow night’s episode of Mad Men,” Tsivin said.

Much of the challenge comes from having so much information available – hundreds of billions of rows of data from industry providers such as Nielsen and comScore; from channels such as AMC’s TV everywhere live Web streaming app and video-on-demand service; from retail partners such as iTunes and Amazon; and from third-party online video services such as Netflix and Hulu – and the need to analyze data minute-by-minute and viewer-by-viewer.

And CBS, Too

A recent article talked of CBS News Digital (CBSN), a free, ad-supported streaming news network, available on the Web, via mobile and on connected TVs. Providing 15 hours a day, typically, of news-related content, CBSN taps into its deep well of video viewer data and analytics, much of it via social media, to determine what  viewers want to see (or see more of).

The data analysis also helps CBS News strategize what content to promote on its social channels. Additionally, data influences CBSN content in the presentation itself, i.e., if the average age of the viewing audience is 40 years old, a subtle but important change involves dressing male news anchors without ties, and having all anchors stand instead of sit behind a desk occasionally.

CBSN is another prime example of how networks and others in the ecosystem are accessing data and analyzing it to drive better viewing and thus more profits in the making and distribution of content.

10 Lessons

The IBM white paper mentioned above spells out 10 key lessons that members of the telecom, media, and entertainment ecosystem need to consider and eventually understand and implement if they are to be successful in marketing and selling future content, including (1) Know Your Goals; (2) Know the Viewer; and (8)Realize the Vastness and Potential of Today’s Analytics.

A current telecom adage has it, “We will see more change in the next 10 years than we have in the past 100.” Data analytics in the media, entertainment and telecom worlds (especially the video part of those) is a perfect example of this very lesson.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO ofThe Carmel Group, a streaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy based in Carmel by the Sea, Calif.; he writes about telecommunications, entertainment and media.

It was one of those “Ah-ha” moments. It then turned quickly into an out-loud “What!!!???” moment.

The San Francisco Bay Area’s KGO radio station was talking over-the-air with an anonymous technology editor, labeled an “expert” on the topic of advertising. It was mid-afternoon last Friday, Sept. 18.

The topic was ad-blocking, specifically a new ad-blocking application offered on various devices, which was showing itself, at least on a short-term basis, to be rather popular.

Inaccurate Opinion

Unfortunately, at a point near the conclusion of the segment, the announcer gave the expert a chance to answer the question of what is ahead for ad-blocking. At that point, frankly, I believe the expert completely fumbled that opportunistic hand-off.

The expert tech editor’s view was that consumers will not like ads that are specifically aimed at them and their interests and passions, also known as programmatic media, programmatic marketing and programmatic advertising.

His words were along the lines of, “Folks are saying they don’t want [targeted ads].” And our expert said this in an unqualified way, not using any qualifier words, which we learned long ago in school were so important. Indeed, rhetoric 101 says that if you are not 100% sure, you should rarely state things inflexibly, as absolutes.

This is especially the case when it comes to the future of something as chaotic as today’s TV and radio.

Another Critical Option

Having written two telecom and media books deeply involved with the advertising business -- especially what advertising means for and to consumers (Digital Signage and Digital Video Recorders: Changing TV and Advertising Forever), the gentleman’s unqualified and unequivocal statement floored me. Here’s why.

To start with, this question of the future of advertising, which is a very important and ultimate future of all content, as noted above, just cannot be stated in absolute terms … by anybody. There are still too many unknowns and untesteds.

Thus, that ultimate answer cannot be, “They will like this type of content, they will not like this.” Rather, the real answer is much more nuanced.

The real point is: Consumers can be encouraged and even enticed, into watching just about anything. Yet, to do so, a content maker has to first make that content relevant, and then, perhaps, second, make it entertaining or intellectually satisfying.

In short, just one of the other options this tech editor left out was that of relevant advertisements.

In my opinion, that is the truest answer to the future of advertising, the world over.

The Future of Advertising

Relevant advertising works. What are now the concepts of “programmatic” and targeted ads are the first steps toward that mantra.

Indeed, in my opinion, they are the first steps toward what will work, and I say that very nearly unequivocally.

Combining intensive and even more sophisticated data analytics with the modeling of consumer behavior brings relevant advertising even to the most advertising- resistant video viewers.

Why is that? That is because everybody, yes an unqualified everybody, has something they are interested in, and most have lots of things they are passionate about. Indeed, this is one of the few places I am willing to stick my head out toward something like an absolute.

Relevant and entertaining and intellectually-stimulating content, including advertising, that captures each individual person’s passion, and tells them something about that topic that they want and are welcome to … well, that is what gets to that Holy Grail of Sales, i.e., the advertising that works.

And it is important to remember the importance of advertising in the world of marketing goods and products. In the content world, ads ensure those who do the work and the creating get rewarded for their efforts. Without that payment, the entire system breaks down, under any model. People rarely work for free.

In summary, advertising that works -- i.e., relevant ads that people will watch -- is coming, I say to all the tech editors of the world; indeed, to everyone I say: Relevant Ads Are Coming! To see that perspective, you just have to open your perspective a bit, and take in some other views. Relevant ads should be one of them.

P.S.: Perhaps recognizing the importance of respecting that ultimate ad model, the developers of the ad blocking app, “Peace,” withdrew its iOS app from the App Store over the weekend. It, too, will seek out those other perspectives to try to find the true balance between no ads at all and those that work!

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO ofThe Carmel Group, astreaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy based in Carmel by the Sea, Calif.; he writes about telecommunications and media.

The video images of the Hungarian photo-journalist first being bumped by fleeing immigrants, while she was outside in a field taping, was troubling. Her name is Petra Laszlo, and she works for the Hungarian TV station N1TV. She was just doing her job, and found herself caught in a panic not of her making.

Having been there myself, I tried to sympathize as to how she must have felt. She had this large group of “outsiders” quickly surging her way, while she tried to capture the event for her employer. She might have been trampled.

What really turned a rather minor event, though, into a global embarrassment for all journalists, was her reaction. Indeed, it turned the relatively minor occasion into an international embarrassment for Hungary as a nation, but as important, globally, and professionally, for journalists and journalism as a trade.

I feel shamed.

She pro-actively was filmed doing her worst version of multitasking. With one appendage, she continued to do her job of chronicling the event for history. Yet, with another rather malevolent appendage, she threw the image of the media into the dust, as she actively thrust her leg and intentionally tripped a running man in obvious fear, indeed as he tried to carry his infant from harm. Then she kicked a young girl half her size. It was pretty clear, as well, that the young girl and the man she tripped had not intentionally harmed her.

Indeed, it was scary to see.

Interestingly, perhaps this woman epitomized the collective angst and unfriendliness of the Hungarian people toward these Syrian, Iraqi and Afghani newcomers. I hope not.

Rather, what really burns -- and what I would like to apologize to these immigrants for (as a longtime and proud member of the journalist community), is what this act said to the world about journalists.

In doing this, I sincerely hope that the world gets what I have always said. I hope it gets what I still believe fervently is true: The profession of journalism is indeed a noble one. And it remains so.

I base this upon, and am comforted on this 9/11 by, the knowledge that 14 years ago today my profession did its job stunningly well, as it captured a truly world-changing event in New York; Washington, D.C.; and Shanksville, Pa.

Yet, just as is true with any profession, there are bad apples. There are those who let the bad side of their natures and their bad acts get the better of them. This was truly the case with this rather weak videographer this past week in Hungary.

But --I think I will be able to say this forever -- actions like hers will never be representative of the trade of journalism, nor journalists.

In conclusion, to the people of Hungary, and most fervently and importantly to the immigrants and to the rest of the world (as but one sincere journalist on behalf of our profession): I, and we, apologize. This woman does not represent us, and she is not representative of the great good our profession or what we do.

Thank you, in advance, for your understanding and continued positive attitudes toward us and what we do.

We journalists will keep trying to earn that.   

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO ofThe Carmel Group, astreaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy based in Carmel by the Sea, Calif.; he writes about telecommunications and media.

In reviewing most media coverage of AT&T’s $49.5 billion purchase of DirecTV, approved by the FCC late last month, it seems few have seen and discussed the implications of the new company. Indeed, it is a new entity that is truly worthy of respect and, for some, concern.

This new 1,000-pound gorilla in the telecom and media jungles carries a few new and enhanced body parts that none before it could claim. For one, the new AT&T market cap (with DirecTV’s roughly $17.7 billion  market cap included) is $180 billion. This equates to some pretty big (and deep!) pockets. These financial reserves, in turn, can buy and finance many items that DirecTV alone would never have pursued. It can also lose money on a project and still easily write it down, and then readily carry on with something else.

Also, in number terms, the combination of DirecTV’s 20+ million subscribers with AT&T’s nearly six million now makes it – with approximately 26 million video subs -- larger than the other huge player in the jungle, i.e., # 2 Comcast, at 22.3 million subs, by nearly 20%.

But there are several more parts that are worth examining, as well.

DirecTV Latin America

Another of this remarkable new creature’s huge body parts is that of DirecTV Latin America.

Recall that decades ago direct broadcast satellite (DBS) services were commenced competitively in the Southern American Hemisphere, by both News Corp and by DirecTV. Then, in the early part of the current millennium, News Corp (owner of rival Sky Latin America) bought DirecTV and merged the LatAm duopoly into a southern telecom monopoly. That today is called DirecTV Latin America. By itself, DirecTV Latin America is a juggernaut; add the size, scope, history, and seriousness of AT&T, and that juggernaut morphs into something much bigger.

Analysts state that the short-to-medium-term subscriber growth prospects might currently be limited. However, with nearly half a billion sets of potential eyeballs, and current statistics show the 22-country south-of-the-border service with about 17+ mil. subscribers…that’s a lot of upside. Moreover, unlike continents like Africa, Asia, and/or Europe, each with many regional languages and cultures, the southern hemisphere consists almost entirely of Portuguese and Spanish-speaking viewers. That helps plenty with costs and logistics, and especially with program negotiations.

Yaveo

Also linked to the Latin play, DirecTV has created a rather unique over-the-top streaming service that has remained somewhat under the radar. Called Yaveo, it is aimed at bicultural and bilingual Spanish-speaking audiences. Yaveo costs $7.99/month; plus, it is Internet-delivered, which means no satellite hardware and no DirecTV subscription is required.

Partners in the Yaveo venture include not only DirecTV (and now AT&T), but also Spanish-language programming powerhouses (and also rather heavy and powerful jungle gorillas), Televisa and Azteca.

Thus far, the Yaveo line-up of programming includes wide swaths of exclusive-to-the-U.S. shows, including novelas, live sports, music, movies, TV shows, and children’s programming. Many believe the U.S. Spanish audience to be both underserved and concurrently in rather high demand vis-à-vis advertisers.

Quad Play

Another new – and totally pivotal – appendage that many have overlooked is the new AT&T’s first and only true major U.S. quad play of telecom services. AT&T-DirecTV is officially the only creature in the jungle with all four limbs to battle with. Put another way, none of AT&T’s other peers can realistically claim a dominant position in each of the four significant telecom service areas that drive today’s business: land line phone, video, Internet, and mobile. Just look at how badly Charlie Ergen and DISH Network have worked to get into the Internet-wireless business, if you want to measure how important most parts of that quad play still are.

Adds Steve Symonds, managing director of Symonds Associates, and a frequent media and telecom project collaborator with The Carmel Group, “Initially ‘quad play’ was kind of a quaint notion that meant you get all your phone, Internet, mobile, and television services from a telephone company. I doubt anyone ever expected a Baby Bell to outstrip the ‘MVPD Goliaths’ Comcast and TWC in the pay television sector. A Quad Play operator – like the new AT&T-DirecTV -- that is dominant in three of the four sectors, moves the marketplace into unchartered waters.”

National Footprint

The pre-merger AT&T proudly claimed operations in 22 states. That’s a lot of jungle territory. The new AT&T-DirecTV video service claims more than 50 states, with a satellite footprint that extends into Canada, Mexico, and many other foreign jurisdictions. The overall domestic coverage is an important tool for marketing, financing, and software and hardware negotiations. Importantly, with far shallower pockets, and a far slimmer scope of service, DISH Network is the only other network provider with a true national footprint.

Interestingly in this regard, even compared to its next biggest video pay TV rival size wise, i.e., Comcast, not only does the new DirecTV-AT&T have millions more subscribers, but it now offers a much larger service area.

Program Negotiations

Yet another piece of the new force that will become AT&T, is the muscle it flexes when it comes to dealing with other big players in the jungle, such as the big programmers.

This is a biggie!

Being the biggest distributor in the business, with roughly a score and six million subscribers on the video side alone, puts the new AT&T-DirecTV-UVerse into a position where it will, presumably, negotiate the industry’s best deals. It’s almost as though this jungle creature took a weight-lifting class and gained twice, thrice, four times its mass (or more).

Being the biggest market force in this jungle means the best pricing, but as importantly, AT&T will now have superior leverage over every other operator to secure rights for the distribution of top shelf video content for “Internet Television” distribution: TV Everywhere (TVE) and OTT. Those are pending battles yet to be waged by the Dallas, Texas-based folks.

Particularly interesting here will be whether (or, more accurately, when) AT&T uses this leverage to negotiate expanded rights for mobile video distribution of channels that are currently restricted to “living room” TV-type viewing. Prior to the DirecTV acquisition, Comcast was the Multichannel Video Programming Distributor (MVPD) with the “whip hand” to negotiate the most favorable prices and distribution rights. That advantage now shifts to AT&T. But unlike Comcast, AT&T has a huge mobile business and the distribution of video-to-mobile users is the fastest growing segment in media and entertainment today.

In short, this depth, breadth, and scope of distribution gives the new AT&T-DirecTV-UVerse entity unprecedented programming negotiation rights and power.

Symonds also adds here, “As the #1 company in the video business, they actually do have the leverage now to acquire such rights (assuming they are available) on terms and conditions that Verizon would never be able to get (because Verizon is not sending checks to the major programmers each month for 26 million subs).”

OTT/Broadband/Streaming + Mobile Plays

As noted above, being able to envelope and merge the pay TV video side with the mobile and OTT/broadband/streaming elements of the video world may be the single most important gain of AT&T’s entire purchase of DirecTV. This is where the word “synergy” starts to blossom. The only question that appears to remain here: How long will it take before AT&T is able to use its mobile biz to truly grow the business?

Bundles and Outlets

Straight from the AT&T website is this pronouncement from earlier in the year: “The transaction enables the combined company to offer consumers bundles that include video, high-speed broadband and mobile services using all of its sales channels -- AT&T’s 2,300 retail stores and thousands of authorized dealers and agents of both companies nationwide.”

Indeed, last week, just days after the official FCC/DOJ approval of the ATT-DirecTV merger, ATT announced a new bundled package combining video and vide-to mobile.

Summary

All this said, some still seriously doubt the wisdom of Randall Stephenson’s new body building of the corpus corporata known as AT&T.

Recently, an article in Fierce Cable, highlighting a report from Evercore Partners, critiqued the folks in central Texas on the basis of poor strategic answers to OTT/broadband/streaming threats, and overall to an ever-more-competitive overall marketplace.

Further, who among the other creatures out there have to beware, and perhaps go to sleep a bit later, and wake up earlier , because of the new threat?  

Probably first would be AT&T telecom-media peers, such as DISH Network, Comcast, Time Warner, Chart, Cox, and Verizon, as well as the rival cellular carriers Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint. Big programmers are another threatened species. Plus, consumer advocates can make strong arguments that allowing all of the leading media-telecom companies these days to think that “merger-to-bigger is the only way to survive,” means the big simply get steadily greedier and less consumer friendly.

Indeed, everyone, welcome to the new jungle.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of The Carmel Group a Carmel by the Sea, Calif.-based streaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy; he writes about telecommunications and media.

As children, the concept of “free choice” is introduced to us quite early, in the form of the classic folk fairy tale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Yet, the simplicity of those “big,” “medium” and “small” choices belies the complexity behind the video viewing pastime enjoyed by most Americans 5-6 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Tackling that complexity, The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Flint wrote a remarkable study, dated June 8, that captured the essence of that paradox known as the “American Pay TV Bundle.” His article presented a rare description by big media of the dilemmas facing today’s video distributors, content rights holders, viewers and a lot of others inside the U.S. video ecosystem. The possible solutions to that bundle dilemma are no doubt fodder for a future WSJ story.

To assist that effort, I wish to address a similar concern: Is a la carte a fairy-tale answer to America’s pay TV bundle?

I would posit this answer: Yes, it is.

But, meanwhile, we are certainly headed toward many more ”medium-sized” bundles, of every imaginable form and iteration.

The Push to A La Carte

Four main reasons support today’s idea that the pay TV marketplace is headed quickly toward a pure a la carte motif where everyone chooses and pays for only what they want (on a single-show or single-channel basis, or both).

The first reason is based on a cultural phenomena that is quintessentially American, called “free choice.” Our very society and economics are so often grounded in the theory, indeed, the hope, at least, of having the right to free choice when it comes to goods and services. Indeed, if a consumer can go into a grocery store and purchase single items on a list of 12, without the purchase of one item restricting the purchase of another, then why not also in today’s cable, satellite and telco pay TV services? Why, in order to get my pure choice of 17 channels should I have to buy a package with 133 other channels of no interest to me? That’s weird, right?

The second reason supporting a la carte is the unraveling of the traditional Multichannel Video Program Distributor (MVPD) model. Year-over-year increases in Tier 1 content costs are clobbering operator margins and driving subscribers away.

Third is the steady and dramatic increase in the quality and quantity of video distributed over the Internet. This phenomenon gives pay TV subscribers an additional reason to defect to the so-called Over-The-Top (OTT)/broadband/streaming distribution infrastructure.

The final reason supporting a la carte, specifically (and arguably a smaller part of the third reason above), is the resultant decrease in the viewing of live, linear, “appointment television.” This loss is replaced by a dramatic increase in the viewing of on-demand content and the accompanying changes in behavioral viewing patterns. Indeed, “binge viewing” is but one example of the new dynamics that support the idea of singular-choice TV.

The Myth of A La Carte

Yet, in that endless momentum toward a business and marketplace equilibrium, there are even more reasons on the side of an equally important question, i.e., Why are a la carte channels and programs also challenged? These, I also posit, are today stronger than those above that support the notion of pure a la carte.

These half dozen reasons are positioned below as “realities,” because these are examples of the real world shining light on a rather idealistic and visionary world that is today’s a la carte. Indeed, this is where Goldilocks’s lofty dreams and visions of simple choice and pure viewing freedom – indeed, her feet, and those of almost every other American video viewer -- are forced to meet the ground.

Personal Realities

Studies show that most U.S. TV viewers regularly covet and watch no more than 15-20 channels from among a typical U.S. mid-level pay TV package of 150-200 channels. The pure a la carte logic is that each viewer should be able to simply select those 17 or so channels, and like selecting 17 separate items in a grocery store, those (and only those separately) are what you pay for.

Unfortunately, for the pure a la carte pay TV notion, the video grocery store is much more complicated than a real grocery store.

In order to provide the most choice for the most people at the best overall prices, U.S. TV has created a forced system of subsidization, which clearly benefits content rights holders and distributors. Yet, it also appears to actually benefit the customer.

That is because by compelling everyone to subsidize other viewers’ channel choices, the selection remains quite large, and the subscription fee wealth is spread to many programs and channels, which otherwise would not be funded and thus not survive.

In this manner, you get your 17 channels pretty consistently. Meanwhile, I (and just about every other viewer) get mine (and they get theirs). In American pay TV today, that’s around 95 million sets of 17 channels.

Furthermore, most people do not want to add yet another set of video viewing decisions to their list of concerns; call that laziness or “other priorities,” if you will. That lack of passion to actually seek out my favorite 17, as a personal matter, also gets in the way of instant a la carte. For many, to get the channels I want – regardless of that other “channels I don’t want” nonsense – is what counts, and thus most just get used to (and accept) paying that overage.

This, then, is major reality # 1 of today’s big bundle vs. a la carte war.

Legal Realities

The “legal realities” backing bundles is a big – and important -- one.

That is because just as we are a country of strong choice, we are also a country of strong laws (which often trump strong choice).

The length of the licensing term for most major program agreements today is typically five years. That is because programmers and their distributors want to make longer-term business decisions, as a form of good business practices.

Another legal reality involves programmers adding terms that require several of their programs and channels to be purchased and shown as a group. This also is seen as a good business practice.

A third legal reality is the restriction from Internet and other IP-based distribution involving the top tier, most popular, programming. Arguably, the basis for this in the past was insecurity as to the copyright protection and thus payments receivable via IP, much of which is now past tense. That said, it still exists.

In the end, outmoded attitudes die hard, and antiquated contract restrictions die harder. This is particularly the case for licensing agreements that typically run those five-plus-year terms. 

Yet, conversely, as the OTT/broadband/streaming market grows, the “old school” licensing deals will fall by the wayside. This includes changes in the top tier, linear, channels, as well.

Market Realities

Producing those top-quality television programs (or movies, or sporting events, or what have you) takes a lot of money.

Bloomberg View’s public policy, economics, finance, and business blogger, Megan McArdle, put this quite succinctly in her recent article “The Fault in John Green’s Cable Logic.” She pointedly observes: “You don't want your cable to be unbundled. You just want to pay less for it.”

So what happens when you unbundle? How much do you have to pay for your channels?

That's right: typically the same $150 as with pay TV. You aren't cross-subsidizing the channels you don't watch, but all those other people aren't cross-subsidizing all the channels they don't watch. So, you have to make up for that lost revenue if you are going to continue to pay for your favorite programs. Obviously, with fewer viewers to justify higher ad rates and subscription fees, that lost revenue has to be replaced in order to retain the shows and business models. That means higher subscription fees. The price for each channel goes up in the a la carte model, until you're paying about what you were before in your traditional bundle model.

According a not-so-recent-but-still-viable econometric study done by Harvard’s Dimitri Byazolov and printed by UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, households would save, on average, some thirty-five cents from their current monthly bills in that a la carte world.

Noteworthy is the fact that the 2008 Byazolov study cites a parallel 2008 theoretical study by Crawford and Yurukoglu that concludes unbundling substantially benefits consumers, however, the data, models, and assumptions are different enough to call it a wash. The point here seems to be that unless the “A La Carte Study” conclusion is clearly and consistently that consumers do better with a la carte, the industry is going to very likely continue supporting the bundled model.

Realizing this “market and business reality,” most consumers can more easily accept the 90% waste, 10% subsidization argument, and look for other ways to address video choice.

Thus, there is at least a valid argument that video cross-subsidization appears to work.

Economic Realities

Possibly the best way to define why the existing pay TV bundles work is to compare them to bundles offered by other industries.

In the hospitality world, for example, few, if any, hotels charge you by the towel, or bar of soap, or by the sheets for a multi-night stay. And fewer hotels now charge separately for wi-fi. Can you imagine a world where someone brings his/her own towel to avoid being charged separately for using those from the hotel? Sometimes the pure a la carte model doesn’t work.

The same holds true in the airline business, where most folks like me chafed greatly at the idea of paying separately for bags checked, use of the toilet, and even paying for access to food, entertainment, phone, Internet and food service.

Or in the car-buying world: one questions the ability to charge separately for tires, or gas caps, or bumpers, or in-dash systems. The American auto is a great comparison to the American pay TV bundle. Both support strong arguments that the bundle works (and will thus take a long time to significantly alter).

Plus, splitting things up often means much more effort and resources expended overall, because people have to be paid separately to do things and to purchase things separately, that make a la carte happen. This then adds an a la carte cost that then gets passed on to the consumer.

Business Realities

To put this in context, the global pay television market was about $269 billion in 2014 (ABI Research). Considered without context, OTT/broadband/streaming is doing gangbusters when you consider where it was five years ago. But OTT/broadband/steaming today doesn’t amount to 5% of the total pay television market. Thus, some moderation in the over-the-top hyperbole appears to be in order.

Stated another way, video providers today are unlikely to jettison big-to-medium-sized bundles that support traditional pay TV payments in big dollars, in place of OTT/broadband/streaming services that support payments in small pennies.

Viewing Realities

Perhaps one of the best measures of the current friction between traditional pay TV bundles and alternative OTT/broadband/streaming alternatives is Dish Network’s new Sling TV model. Some would say that it is good evidence of the weakness of traditional pay TV bundles.

But, most interestingly, the channels offered by Dish on Sling are not the same channels as those offered on the pay TV channels. Yet, per channel, consumers pay about the same for ESPN on Sling TV as they do on Dish. Nor can the SlingTV consumer buy only the five or ten or 17 channels that are his or her favorites. Is this then closer to the reality of a la carte – or merely an offer that satisfies the economic need to pay less?

Conclusions

The realities of the enormous business that is pay television make it practically impossible for each of us to realize our “a la carte” dream.

Until there is better proof that unbundling-toward-a-la-carte saves consumers real money, unbundling will proceed slowly and cautiously. Until businesses find viable business models that will hold up a la carte, they, too, will resist that change.

Conversely, there will be a few company breakaways, and rare contracts will be written that leave the established norms, during the next few years.

Indeed, we will get a lot closer to a la carte, but it will take many years. Instead, for now, at least, the logical conclusion is that most viewers will likely end up as Goldilocks did: choosing a bundle somewhere in the middle. This means a grouping of channels and shows not too big (like today’s bundles); not too small (like a la carte); but somewhere in the middle (like hundreds of new possible channels and shows, from old and new media, and a plethora of other new video combinations).

Jimmy Schaeffler writes about telecommunications and media. He is chairman and CSO ofconsulting firm The Carmel Group, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif.

Watching hundreds of middle- and lower-income citizens of greater Chicago while in town for INTX earlier in this month — often riding the ‘L’ train in and around the Windy City — I was pointed to a wonderful example of technology giving the greater mass of people greater power, and in turn, perhaps even greater government (among many benefits).

The source of my interest? The people I saw on the train.

While on the ‘L,’ I snapped a photo of a pair of the 20 or so commuters in that end of the car that evening (representing, I’m guessing, a lot of demographic categories), and everyone was again viewing his or her handheld device, all typically enraptured via cell technology.

The amazing thing about this “use” photo is that the scene might as well be an airport, a train station, a hotel lounge or a school parking lot. It doesn’t matter — wherever people congregate these days, they are congregating almost always first and foremost with their devices. And that says nothing about when they are alone or in small groups.

In addition, just this past week, during a local Monterey County, Calif., TV newscast about how attached people are to their smartphones, these five consumer survey messages were a core part of the segment:

1.) I would feel uncomfortable without constant to information through my smartphone.

2.) I would be annoyed if I could not look information up on my phone when I want to.

3.) Being able to get the news on my smartphone would make me nervous.

4.) Running out of battery would scare me.

5.) If I did not have my smartphone with me, I would feel anxious because I could not instantly communicate with my family and friends.

The amazing thing about the local news feature was the level of passion that the questions and data represented. The last bullet point is the most telling to the point of this article: “If I Did Not Have My Smartphone With Me, I Would Feel Anxious Because I Could Not Instantly Communicate With My Family and Friends.”

Indeed, perhaps a measure of the smartphone’s power is how much people miss their device when it is gone.

WHY PHONE POWER? THE THREE 'Es'

The reason why people universally reach for their smartphones is because the devices give them a very unique and very attractive power.

That power comes by way of: 1) escape, in the form of entertainment; 2) engagement, in the form of news; and 3) enlightenment, in the form of additional information. And those are just the most obvious, top-level content offerings.

As such, these “three E’s” afford smartphone users a tiny bit more power over their lives.

They can chose to be better organized, enthralled, frightened, educated — you name the emotion or state of mind offered by video. Today’s handhelds are getting closer and closer to that on-demand pure offering.

And that capability is incredibly addictive, which means it will grow and grow. That growth has also to do with the perception that such services and products are generally positive for society.

Even if there was nothing else to support the growth trend of handheld mobile devices connected to content everywhere (thus, even without technology improvements, for example), this phone power in the form of amazing live “push” and vast VOD “pull” type content would signal clear, remarkable growth of the mobile and Internet-connected silos (even more so than we are seeing today).

That points to wise telecommunications investments.

FINALLY, WHY DEMOCRACY?

If those gathering that information and building that entertainment do it well, people who seek answers and perspective will get really good versions of those things.

And good information leads to better decisions. Plus, in a democracy, that means folks will make better electoral decisions, which should mean better results. Politicians who “get it” when it comes to the power of mobile and the power of the Internet are much closer to success.

So, next time you are in one of these public gathering spots, don’t just think of everyone with their nose in a small screen as somehow troubling or disengaging from humanity.

Rather, think of that “game of phones” as a better, more frequent and more ubiquitous opportunity to provide people with more powerful content — content that makes the quality of their lives better! That, in turn, makes each user, individually, more powerful! (And voting is just the beginning: What about ideas for new businesses, answers to extreme technical and scientific challenges or solutions to social concerns?)

In addition, as more and more folks learn how to really use their phone devices (all the applications, calendars that sync, video and photo services, emails, etc.), smartphone use will mushroom further.

Lest anyone doubt this obvious growth and improvement trend ahead: Plain and simple, phone power proliferates!

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom/media author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif.-based streaming/broadband, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy, The Carmel Group.

Last week, the momentum behind the huge topic that has broiled through several Republican and Democratic administrations and decades, and has rarely gone anywhere forward, i.e., the Immigration issue, moved substantially forward, again.

Yet, again, it did so, solely at the hand of President Barack Obama. In that act, the more important political accomplishment by the chief executive was to capture another four years at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a Democratic administration.

That result also promised to extend the 3-2 Democratic commissioners’ current majority at the Federal Communications Commission from eight to 12 years, at minimum (along with the power base at just about every other administrative office at the federal level). Thus, judging the odds, if one were making important political and business decisions about the leanings of the FCC as we round the next decade, the folks whose mascot is the donkey might well get the nod. 

Walk The Walk

Some would say there is no basis for such a brash prediction, especially almost two years away. Yet, there actually is a huge basis, in common sense.

That is because President Obama no longer simply talked about continuing his support of foreign would-be citizens, he actually did it; and for a second time. (Recall, The President took similar steps in mid-year 2012.)

Thus, when it comes time for those tens of millions of illegal immigrants, their friends, their families, and everyone else who knows them, to express opinions about which political party actually moved to do something, at least a couple of times, to help their status, it will very likely stay the Democrats. That will, in turn, produce millions of decisive votes (especially if the Democrats can effectively exercise the “Immigrant” vote).  

Versus Talk The Talk

In my estimate, there is a good chance that younger brother Jeb Bush will become the best runner for the Republicans. He is moderate, and seems to hold a place in his heart for these people who so want to become Americans. Jeb is also great for this audience of voters mentioned in the paragraphs above, because he apparently speaks fluent Spanish, he knows the culture well, and he was governor in Florida, a state with lots of Latinos and Latinas there that will back him, as well.

Yet, very importantly, what Jeb Bush will lack between now and November 2016, will be the ability to say that he didn’t just talk about helping Mexicans, Cubans, and other immigrants in the U.S. today (and, again, their friends, families and those that know them), but actually helped them. Because compared to what President Barack Obama did for them in the third full week of November 2014, Jeb Bush could only promise; Jeb Bush could only talk.

Plus, Jeb will still get no more effective, first-level backing than that from a party that has considerably short-changed immigrants, for decades now. Moreover, Latinos and Latinas and other minorities, especially with efforts in their families and spheres to become citizens, know that difference between a politician who talks about great things he will do for them, and one that actually risks much to actually do it.

Best of The Bad

Please do not mistake my message here. I am not saying that the President’s act last Wednesday was all good, nor am I saying I agree with it entirely. I am the son of an immigrant who worked hard at a time in a country that did not want him, and waited a very long time for a green card, followed by a citizenship status that he was tremendously proud of. And like my father would, I do not like the idea of others coming into this country and getting his same benefits, without having to abide by the same laws and earn that privilege as he did.

But, the common sense and the practicality simply no longer permits the federal government to deport, and continue to seek to deport, so many millions of illegal immigrants, thus we settle on the lesser of evils, and make the best of a bad situation.

That is what Mr. Obama did last week, and in the process, it won the White House for Hillary Clinton or whoever the Democratic candidate will be. Plus, in that tortured process, it means that a more progressive influence will hold sway over telecom and media matters, all the way into 2020 and the next decade!

In the end, the Republicans will likely continue to exercise gnashing, gnawing, and ranting, even to the point of trying to sue and impeach and challenge President Obama with cancelling legislation, but they have -- via their inaction and other acts too often showing less than good faith toward these peoples -- let the Voting Genie Out of The 2016 Bottle, and He/She Will Vote For They That Helped Them Best.

It’s just common sense (and a bit of basic math), all liberalism and conservatism aside.

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom/media author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea-based streaming/broadband, broadcast, and pay TV/video consultancy, The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

My 10-day European excursion ended  a week ago Monday (following another horrendous experience with United Airlines), with visits for three days each to the International Broadcasting Conference 2014 in Amsterdam; Messe Frankfurt’s Automechanika 2014 in Frankfurt; and to one of the world’s largest (and best) fixed satellite services (FSS) providers, SES, in the tiny principality between Francfe and Germany, called Luxembourg.

The visits to IBC and SES were traditional ones, focused on media and telecom. Yet, as the world of mobility radically changes and gets much more complicated, so, too, does my itinerary expand, with visits to places where video and data signals to all vehicles globally is becoming a regular, and core, message.

IBC 2014, The RAI, Amsterdam, Netherlands

My focus this year was on the user interface (UI) and recommendation engines, such as Rovi, Pace, and TiVo. The EchoStar security entrée, titled Sage, was most interesting, as well.

Rovi offers up some remarkable UI demonstrations, with a bright new emphasis on the recommendation side of the “help the consumer find the content” world. In the past, this has been an area of concern for these type of companies, because consumers have been difficult to educate when it comes to helping them find desirable content. Highlights included:

• A booth demo exhibited a Rovi software and guide UI that presents a consistent, yet device-specific image across five common devices, i.e., TV, STB, laptop, table and phone, deemed to be of great value for the service provider.

• Recommendation-wise, Rovi claims a new intelligent profile-based search capacity, whereby the set-top computer function acts to understand individual viewing habits and “leverages implicit and explicit habits,” also favoring information gained from social media networks.

• A voice command allows viewers to speak to a device directly, in a conversational (and often colloquial) way, using a viewer’s “natural” language and commands.

TiVo had several IBC 2014 announcements, which included:

• Semiconductor/chipmaker Broadcom will supply TiVo hardware to enable Ultra High Definition (HD) content on TiVo set-top boxes.

• Spain’s largest cable operator, ONO, expanded its pre-existing TiVo capabilities in the areas of new TV Everywhere, mobile, search, browse, and discovery features, by leveraging TiVo's cloud service. This was said to greatly enhance viewers’ experiences on multiple screens.

Pace’s booth offered a partnership with Ottawa-based Youi.TV including:

• A 4K UI demo built on the You.i software, pre-integrated with Pace middleware.

• The UI offers a remarkably fast and seamless function, capable, they say, of steady and quality application across every imaginable device and platform.  

• A marked enhancement in the UI change process, which especially benefits software “artists,” as they constantly operate to change and improve the UI’s viewer functionality.

EchoStar, in the form of its soon-to-be-announced-big-in-the-U.S. product, titled Sage, was eager to show off how Sage adds to the security and control (talking heating/cooling) efficiencies of your average U.S. household, via:

•  A customer-installed, TV-centric, wireless, custom-designed service controlling thermostats, security cameras, sensors, locks, lights, doorbells and switches.

• A simple UI, and specialized applications, such as an automatic alert that notifies both parents, and shows live video, when their children arrive home safely.

• Roll-out in the U.S. (in certain territories), beginning in 2015.  

The IBC Show

Incidentally, like many shows of decades-long experience, IBC shows signs of getting a bit long in the execution phase. That is to say, I (and others I talked to) experienced too many examples of IBC management people getting quite quick to a “no, we can’t do that;” instead of responding first with a “yes, let’s try.” That kind of attitude has been a longer-term death knell of many a similar trade show event.  

So, with all due respect, IBC, you can do better.

Automechanika 2014, Messe Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

Since late last year, The Carmel Group has been working alongside the Atlanta, GA-based U.S. subsidiary of the world’s largest conference organizer, Frankfurt, Germany-based Messe Frankfurt.

Messe Frankfurt USA’s and The Carmel Group’s goal is to put on a stellar, almost three-day eMobility and iMobility event, called Connected Mobility 2015: The Future of Transportation, October 26-29, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley.

As conference chairman, I have been responsible for naming, locating, organizing, populating, and otherwise arranging and implementing an opening night tour at the brand new $1.4 bil. San Francisco 49ers football stadium, followed by a barbeque welcome reception. 

Day One of the actual conference sessions focuses on eMobility (e.g., items such as energy savings and efficiency, Tesla’s and others’ electrical cars…most of the “e’s”); Day Two focuses on iMobility (e.g., Internet-connected vehicles, municipalities’ and property-owners’ infrastructure, interconnectivity, and most of the “I’s”…which is where cable operators will most likely play in the future). Thursday, October 29, includes a press conference and vehicle and aftermarket product demonstrations at Monterey, CA’s world famous Laguna Seca racetrack, returning to San Jose by midday.

The three days at Automechanicka 2014 this year included introductory speeches, two all day booth representations, and a final day meeting with Messe Frankfurt’s global head, Director/CEO, Detlef Braun (who pledged his full support and involvement).

All said at this juncture in the almost two-year planning process, Silicon Valley will benefit from a world-class conference about The Future of Transportation in late fall 2015, which also involves the full support of (and a possible keynote from) Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. The logo and letter (at left) comes directly via Kish Rajan, Director of the California Governor’s Office of Economic Development. Other possible keynoters include Dish Network’s Charlie Ergen, Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk, and GM’s CEO Mary Barra, and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Secretary, Anthony Foxx.

 The website for Connect Mobility 2015: The Future of Transportation can be found here.

SES, At The Chateau  

SES headquarters in Luxembourg has to be one of the better environments in the world to house a corporate HQ. The core administrative building is a quite large refurbished country home, located squarely in the country, amid farms and a large forest of 10- to 30-meter fir trees, as well as a couple dozen satellite dishes of the same diameter.   

Having dealt with the world of satellites and its distributors for the past several decades, I can state firmly and clearly that SES has one of the best, if not the best, management teams in the business. The company leads not only in traditional distribution areas, but in “new media” deployment, as well.

But one key example of that lead is its jump into the Business-To-Business (B2B) world of underserved nations in locales such as Africa, in the form of its controlling stake in the company O3B (the acronym standing for the “Other 3 Billion” of the world’s population, that is underserved by telecom).   

This leadership commitment was supported once more during my meetings, when I mentioned the topic of future signals to the mobile world, and my just-completed visit to Automechanika 2014 (above) in Frankfurt, Germany.

The Pittsburgh-headquartered American Cable Association (ACA), and its sister organization, the Lenexa, Kan.-based National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC), have been, for many decades between them, advocating for and representing their hundreds of cable TV, phone, and broadband members in their business and governmental endeavors.

In the case of the NCTC, it stands as an amalgam of nearly 950+ small-to-mid-sized U.S. cable operators, typically negotiating with large to small programmers for mass-volume rates that are the core of multiyear programming distribution agreements. As for ACA, its home base staff of eight, together with its communications VP, Ted Hearn, and legal senior VP, Ross Lieberman, both in Washington, DC, run the ACA cable telecom and media policy show for its 850 cable system constituents.

Since 1997, the ACA has been lead by veteran policy influencer, Matt Polka, himself an experienced  lawyer (See, “Mixed Signals,” 12-10-2012, “The ACA’s Amazing Bandwidth), while the NCTC takes its direction from CEO and president Rich Fickle, whose NCTC tenure dates back to 2011, and who hails from corporate industry experiences with AT&T, Ascent Media, and Deluxe Entertainment.

ACA and NCTC today serve cable systems ranging from fewer than 100 subscribers to the largest, such as Mediacom, with roughly a million. As another example of the organizations’ scope is the roughly 7  mil. subscribers the ACA represents today in Washington, DC and in statehouses across the nation.

While serving July 28-30, in Kansas City, MO, as an opening panelist at the 2014 ACA/NCTC Annual Summit called The Independent Show, I had the opportunity to ask Matt Polka whom he recommended among the organizations’ up-and-coming leaders and as the better spokespeople for the two groups. Without hardly a hesitation, Matt barked out, “No problem, Gesner and Boyers.”

Robert Gessner, ACA Chairman; former NCTC chairman; and President, MCTV, Massillon, OH

The initial walk away I had from my half hour on the ACA/NCTC exhibition floor with Bob Gessner was that of a leader with fervent passion, unique articulation, and a tough competitive streak. When it comes to the ACA and small town cable in America, the guy can talk (which is meant only in a positive way)!

Gessner’s is a slightly larger than average ACA system, at about 40,000 current subscribers. He pointed out that for the ACA membership, the median system size is 900 subscribers, while the average size is about 4,000 subscribers.

Gessner’s initial focus was on the enhanced competition felt by ACA members these days. “Everyone these days is a competitor…Internet, TV, phone,” he mused. “So many of the smaller ACA and NCTC systems do not have the resources to be super active and aggressive,’ Gessner lamented. “Our industry must make the transformation from mere linear content offerings, and from being a tax collector for the content companies (who see the U.S. consumer as an annuity and a guaranteed periodic payment). Because that is unsustainable, and at the current rate, subscriber fees will double in five years, to $100,” Gessner challenged.

For the best future, the new ACA chairman believes that the proper transition for small-to-midsized cable operators will be one with an “infrastructure based on choice, and based on the subscription model; we will all get to a pure IP model, the only question is how soon.”

Yet, once that IP transition does occur, Gessner worries further about what he termed “the cable-ization of the Internet,” where the “content guys” quickly take over the Internet (just like they did in the 1970s with early national cable).

Finally, a few years down the cable road, Gessner – like his peers in this article – predicts the current cable content model will break, and “when it breaks, they will have to fix it,” he concludes. 

Patricia Jo Boyers, Vice Chairwoman , ACA; President, BOYCOM, Poplar Bluff, MO

The  current vice chairwoman of the ACA has been in the cable business in small town American for the past 22 years; she and her husband, Steve, still run BOYCOM together for their nearly 5,000 subscribers.

Boyers quickly reeled off four key small-to-midsized cable business challenges, when I asked for her list.

These are 1) industry consolidation 2) lack of choice 3) price increases and 4) subscribers having to pay for what they don’t want.

Her southeastern Missouri system has not yet fully upgraded from analog to digital, mostly due to monetary restrictions. That means today most of her system serves a broadband-only component. Although the Boyers’ BOYCOM has begun the costly upgrade process, which is well along, it has been tough, she says, because smaller systems, especially closely held ones like hers, do not have the access to financing that the larger ones do. Mrs. Boyers describes her home county as “perpetually impoverished,” which makes her task even tougher, she states.

When asked what she sees for her company five years hence, she believes her access into the homes of her customers will be lead by the Holy Grail of future residential telecom and media, that of the “smart pipe,” which offers a core Media Gateway-type product that vastly enhances access to content via multiple devices around the home. “Internet Protocol (IP) is about the future, and we have a bright future, because cable is best equipped to do that,” she concludes.

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom/media author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea-based streaming/broadband, broadcast, and pay TV/video consultancy, The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

Four years ago, the editors at Multichannel News asked me to create a title for my new column.  

Even back then, it seemed like “Mixed Signals” made a lot of sense.

I liked “Mixed Signals” because even back then, there was so much actual or oncoming overlap between cable, broadcast, satellite, telco video and other forms of video, including the then-burgeoning Over-The-Top (OTT)/streaming/online video sector. And that “convergence” (as in a “that vastly-overused word, but a word that tells the story pretty well”), is what I wanted most to write about.

That’s because it just made sense.

Today’s Mixed Signals
Add in a (real) fast forward to today, mid-2014, and there is more evidence than ever of silos invading silos, and the “Mixed Signals” and “Convergence” trends proliferating.

Indeed, a huge part of the rationale for “Mixed Signals” was the idea that consumers don’t care about the delivery system, rather, they just care about the delivery. That is a telecom maxim as old as Walter Cronkite.  The viewer just wants to watch the show, using the easiest and best valued video possible.

One obvious example from last month, is that of the wireless and fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) video provider, AT&T, deciding to step big time into the Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) sector, by purchasing the DBS pioneer, DirecTV.
Most recently, closer to my Northern California office location, Mountain View, CA-HQd Google revealed that it was delving deeper into the vast depths of Videoland, by adding a new satellite broadband delivery project to its pre-existing video entrees, ChromeCast and Google Fiber.          

Tomorrow’s Mixed Signals?
Ahead will be cable getting more vigorously into wireless (watch for Comcast to lead continue to lead the way), DBS getting further into wireless (as in Dish buying into and implementing its own mobile and wireless platform), and Verizon doing its own reach deeper into all forms of video and video delivery, a la its purchases in the past six months of Content Distribution Network (CDN) Edgecast and of Intel’s OnCue TV project, for example.

Look also as an example for Verizon to sneak a new peek or two at another possible prize: the content side of Time Warner (See, The Wall Street Journal, by Shalini Ramachandran, July 7, 2014, “A New Media Landscape in Sun Valley.''

On the traditional cable and broadband side, each and every content rights holder and owner, and each and every distributor worth its salt, is watching the scope and breadth being achieved (and likely) by Comcast’s proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable, and trying its best right now to strategize a significant response. That is because it is hard not to see a future where these behemoths controlling the industry pricing and other major dynamics is not the norm.

Not Just the Big Names
Yet these big names buying the other big names are not the only deep forays into the land of “Mixed Signals.” Several smaller name deals are also catching attention.

In addition to Verizon buying CDN Edgecast, witness for more the movement of big media players like CBS Interactive, Warner Brothers, Fox, and others into the online gaming business, picking off one after another of these hot new video providers. Perhaps the most noticeable of these new deals is that of Disney buying Maker Studios, so that Disney can obtain instant cache and presence in this specific division of the new online gaming and video worlds.

In summary: for the creators of long-term, solid video strategies, the real world demands that the projects never thought of before, might be thought of again, and again, and…like EchoStar’s and Dish Network’s Charlie Ergen recently discovered when he and team seriously reached out to acquire both Sprint and DirecTV…acted on with the hope that someone else doesn’t make that next deal first.  

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea-based streaming/broadband, broadcast, and pay TV/video consultancy, The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

Steve Jobs, quite a time before he died in October 2011, bragged about his interest in TV being something of a “hobby” in search of a real business. It was a good enough idea that Jobs’ successor and that team at Apple have continued that mission, albeit arguably without any of the true success that Apple would measure among the standards set by its iPod, iPhone, and iPad. (See, Mixed Signals, AppleTV: The Paradigm of Enigmas, May 24, 2013.

Meanwhile, Silicon Valley colleague, Google, and its teams led by Mssrs. Brim, Page, and Schmidt, have also seen the future -- indeed, their futures -- and there are strong indications that TV will be a measureable part of those. Google Fiber and Chromecast certainly get folks curious, most would agree.

Video, Not TV

But make no mistake, no one within an Internet connection anywhere in the world would think to see either Apple or Google roll seriously into TV as we know it today, or as we ever knew it before. Rather, AppleTV-In-Its-SERIOUS-Iteration and GoogleTV-In-Its-SERIOUS-Iteration -- when those dates and when those services one day arrive – will be about video, but actually it will be about video unlike any TV we have ever known!

(Huge) Money Talks

And although just about everyone looking at strategy and long-term TV and video business plans these days knows how substantially Apple and Google covet a real and serious place at this table, it may be worth reminding most lovers of media and telecom why the Apple and Google remains such a real threat to hugely powerful groups of content owners, content distributors, and related business owners: between them, Apple and Google are pushing a billion dollars in company stock value! Apple today has a stock value of roughly $530 billion., while Google currently tops out at over $372 billion.

That combination of Apple and Google stock value comes to more than $900 billion., which can buy a lot of content, and a lot of infrastructure, to carry a lot of video to every kind of consumer, on every kind of monitor/device, in almost every part of the world, at almost any time of the day or night (adding in a bit of DVR- and VOD-related time-shifting).

In summary, when planning for that TV Future -- really more of that Video Future  -- broadcasters, cable, satellite and telco providers, as well as movie and TV studios, and every possible related entity, including the U.S., state, and municipal governments -- need to think strategically of a new world where the input and direction of Apple and Google are not just occasional curiosities, but to-be-expected givens.

So, get ready folks…$900 bil. is a lot of money to keep tied up for such a long time. This is especially the case when 1) you have desired that remarkable video presence for so long, 2) you have been thus far so unsuccessful at achieving it, and yet 3) it remains so vitally important to your companies’ success!   

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea-based streaming/broadband, broadcast, and pay TV/video consultancy, The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

The scary headline a couple of days ago noted a hyperbolic plea by big time Aereo investor Barry Diller, to the effect that if the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) turns thumbs down on the Aereo service after oral arguments the morning of Tuesday, April 22, that the Aereo service is essentially “dead.”

Frankly, I find that ridiculous. Indeed, that’s just poppycock! (Maybe Barry D. thought it was April 1, and this was his version of an April Fool’s joke.)

Years ago, by way of explanation, former ABC TV vice president Rich Wolf, made a brilliant and quite perceptive comment about Aereo, which was to the effect of “Why didn’t a broadcaster unveil an Aereo-like service first, before Aereo did?” His implication was that such a move by a broadcaster would have worked, and would have been the “right way” from the beginning to implement a new technology like Aereo’s.

Wolf (now EVP of The Switch) made a very important question and implication, suggesting a very easy solution to the Aereo dilemma: Aereo needs to either sell its entire operation to a broadcaster or broadcasters (so that the broadcasters and their value chain can control the Aereo ecosystem); or Aereo, at least, needs to let the broadcasters become a part of the operation, and thus the revenues.

I am reminded of a meeting I was a part of years ago (before Aereo launched), when a broadcaster asked me, “Where’s my compensation when Aereo re-telecasts my content?” and I didn’t have an answer for him. But his Q also implied the obvious: make the broadcaster and the content owner a part of the mix, and you’ve probably got a great new animal, ready to range and roam successfully, in the hyper-competitive world of modern video!  

This is important, because, my best gut feeling is that Diller’s SCOTUS concern is well-placed: the U.S. Supreme Court is going to tell Aereo that it cannot operate as it is currently doing, which leaves the broadcaster distributors and content owners almost completely out of the loop, so to speak. And meanwhile, under the current scheme, Aereo takes the distributors’ and content owners’ copyrighted material and resells it to consumers at a profit to Aereo, and very nearly (depending upon how you measure the effectiveness of advertising these days) to Aereo only. That just doesn’t make sense.

But figure out a way to get some valid compensation to those TV distributors, and their partners, the content owners, and you are on your way.

Call it Aereo 2.0, post-SCOTUS, and Aereo survives, or perhaps, even thrives!

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea-based streaming, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy, The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

For a long time, CBS has been the dominant over-the-air broadcast network, in terms of long-term ratings, long-term profitability, and several other financial metrics. Indeed, even recently, CBS typically dominates the quarter-by-quarter metrics, based upon many pretty good shows, including some like Criminal Minds and CSI: Las Vegas.

Yet there’s some unique irony built into that CSI: Las Vegas scenario.

What is ironic? Well, because much of the popularity and contents testing for that latter show took place in the same place where CSI: Las Vegas takes place, i.e., Nevada’s largest and most recognized city. There is also confusion here, because there appears to be no comparative facility for any of ABC, NBC, Fox or PBS, anywhere I could discover.   

And having heard for years about CBS’ “TV City” operation in Las Vegas, this year, I finally ventured forth at CES 2014 this January to see just what  “TV City” meant. Indeed, this seemed a perfect time to finally do the standard tour, because my youngest son, Cory-- who entered "the biz” as a business analyst for Technicolor, and now works in sales for Content Distribution Network, Akamai -- was going to be at CES 2014, as well.

A request to CBS brought me quickly and surprisingly efficiently to CBS’ much-respected David Poltrack (pictured with the young Schaeffler at right), who not only designed and implemented TV City for CBS, but has been with the operation for 44 years with CBS, having started at Black Rock as a 24-year-old, in 1969, as manager, marketing services, CBS TV Stations National Sales. Poltrack today serves as CBS chief research officer and the president of CBS Vision, headquartered in New York City, but he services the Nevada unit with frequent visits west.

Poltrack’s full-time associate running the day-to-day operations is vice president Travis Szynski.           

Dynamic Data 

CBS’ TV City boasts some 35 million visitors a year, which sounds like good numbers for a facility that didn’t begin operations until the beginning of this century, i.e., April 2001, and is thus coming up on its 13th anniversary.    

The current daily average of TV City visitors is 14,000/day, and 35 states are typically represented in a standard sample of 225 people.

In addition, a fascinating PowerPoint I received from Szynski offers up these additional data points:

• Over 100,000 People A Week Pass Through the TV City Hallway

• TV City processed 72,276 guests In 2013
• 327 focus groups were conducted in 2013
• 244 one-on-one interviews were conducted In 2013
• 8,786 quantitative sessions were completed In 2013
• Processed 875,048 respondents, from June 2001 through December 2013

Public Power

CBS’ TV City is essentially many thousand square feet of board rooms, theatres, shops, offices, and technical studios, operations, and the like. TV City lies at the end of a long corridor of retail shops at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino (the MGM is the large green multi-story hotel and casino building, that if looked at from above, resembles a huge cross). Disappointingly, for many out of town visitors, they never even make it to the end of the walkway.

But they should.

It is one of Las Vegas’ best, truly free, visitor activities. And it is one of the few where a public visitor’s opinion actually influences what others see, think, and eventually do.

Indeed, if they decide to accept the free CBS invitation, Las Vegas’ visitors -- without any special qualification or skills (just his/her opinion and choice) -- get to see a lot of new shows before they have even become new shows. And that is fun.

In addition, these public opinion-makers get to actually participate in shows and scenes, in the form of watching them and voting on preferences, etc. Votes often mean “yea or nay” for certain selected video, such as a given program scene, a new pilot show, a new sports anchor, an actor or two, or even a new video game.  Indeed, I was told TV City is even working with Google to perfect many Google Glass eyewear applications and “2d screen” applications. 

From there, CBS collects and measures and analyzes that data to perfect its product, which is usually a new TV show. CBS’ TV City facility is open 365 days a year, 12 hours daily. In a given year, that is typically 4,380 hours of actual public operation. As noted, access to the facility is also free, and Poltrack and Szynski explain that that is one of the reasons it works so well as a testing ground, i.e., it provides great and easy access to a large and varied demographic,  from all over the world, also offering one of the better “free” attractions in Las Vegas . This variety and access, in turn, heightens the effectiveness of the measurements.

Fascinating, too, is the fact that, according to Poltrack, there are 44 facial muscles that involve reactions from all people and all cultures, based upon the viewing of certain content. TV City personnel also spend time measuring their audiences’ heart rates, and can also measure reactions by way of observing the pulsing of people’s blood veins.  Who knew?

Another fascinating example Poltrack personally exhibited was a small hand held remote-control like wand that measures how much (or not) a person likes a scene or part of a TV show. This can be especially useful if the audience is asked to make choices, regularly, throughout a program. Encouraged to watch the entire show, many shows end up very well received at their conclusion, but a stagnant part that otherwise might have caused a viewer to switch to another show, is then tweaked (or removed or replaced) by the producers, in order to retain that audience. Much of what CBS does in Las Vegas also involves partnering with Nielsen on various metrics, programs, methods, etc.

Limited Competition?

Half a dozen or so inquiries I made recently indicate that Disney/ABC/ESPN has a research and measurement facility in Austin, Texas. Yet, Poltrack and company are quick to point out that theirs at the MGM Grand is a fully funded, 365-day a year, full-time operation, whereas the competitive ABC facility is funded on a “project-by-project basis,” we were told. No similar facility is believed to exist for NBC, Fox, and PBS. See, for example, http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/nbcuniversal-opens-tech-center-media-lab/223475.

And that’s where I wonder if the success of CBS relative to its longtime over-the-air competitors comes in: TV City and what it does just seems so important to the success of the video CBS deals with, and one can’t help but wonder if CBS having TV City and its competitors not having a similar facility, is the – or at least a strong – reason for CBS’ long-term programming dominance?

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea-based streaming, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy, The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

Matthew Zinn has worked a long time for TiVo, dating back to 2000 and the early days of TiVo’s development, under the core tutelage and direction of TiVo founders Mike Ramsay and Jim Barton.

Mr. Zinn leads a handful of attorneys and helps hundreds of TiVo employees navigate the worlds of telecom, media, and technology, from TiVo’s HQ on the edges of South San Francisco Bay, in Alviso, Calif.  Zinn’s current titles include senior vice president, general counsel, secretary, and chief privacy officer.

Because the role of a telecom entity’s top legal officer is of such importance  – yet one that is so underestimated and in normal trade journals so rarely told – “Mixed Signals” chooses to present this four-part series, focusing segment spokespeople who both understand the importance of law and regulation within the industry, but to also convey some of their thinking, strategy, and passion for the job.

Additional snapshots in the weeks ahead will focus on general counsel from Comcast and Viacom. Last week’s part 1 “Mixed Signals” piece highlighted Dish Network’s top telecom lawyer, Stanton Dodge, Esq.

Here below first is a quick biographical look at Matthew Zinn, followed by a slightly-edited/slightly-corrected set of questions and answers. Questions for all four GC’s in this series were developed with an idea toward taking a look at the person behind the job, and his thinking, motivations, and goals, both on behalf of their companies and on behalf of their professions. Also, because long ago I, too, worked as a lawyer for a big telecom’s legal department, I thought I might be able to add a few unique perspectives and clarifications, where necessary and/or optimal.

Matthew Zinn, A Brief Biography:
Matthew Zinn has been with TiVo as a lawyer for 13 going on 14 years, when he was named vice president, general counsel, and chief privacy officer. Prior to that, he served as senior attorney, broadband law and policy for the MediaOne Group. From August 1995 to May 1998, Zinn served as corporate counsel for Continental Cablevision, which was then the third-largest cable television operator in the United States. Prior to that, he was an associate with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Cole, Raywid & Braverman, where he represented some of the nation’s biggest cable operators, including TCI, Continental Cablevision, and Viacom’s cable systems, in federal, state, and local matters.

During law school, Zinn interned at the Federal Communications Commission and at National Public Radio, which helped him land a job with one of the nation’s top communications law firms, Fisher Wayland Cooper & Leader (which has since merged into Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP), and where he represented television and radio broadcasters, satellite, cellular, and small cable operators.

Q & A:
MS:  Tell "Mixed Signals" about your schooling?
I attended the University of Vermont as an undergraduate, graduating in 1986 with a degree in political science (1).  After college, I attended law school at George Washington University in Washington, DC, graduating in 1989.  

MS:  What is your TiVo legal staff size?
MZ: We have seven total, six of which are attorneys.

MS:  How much of your work time is spent on the road vs. in the office?
MZ:  For 2013, as an example, I spent twenty-five percent of my work time on the road.
MS:  Which are the places you typically visit the most as part of the general counsel job?
MZ:  I travel to Washington, DC the most, followed by New York, Los Angeles and Texas (2).
MS:  Why is a general counsel important to a big telecom?
MZ:  In my twenty-five years of practice, I have found that most aspects of telecom broadly involve regulations. This often means dealing with agencies, such as the FCC and the Securities and Exchange Commission, especially if you represent a public company, such as TiVo.  A significant part of my job involves regulatory matters, which is not something that every business -- or every lawyer-- does. Plus, on the telecom side, we have important content rights issues, so typically that involves substantial contract and copyright matters. And a third concern would be the technology space, where patent and copyright licensing issues, and again contracts, abound.
MS: What are the core things you do?
MZ:  As corporate secretary for TiVo, the company, I have important regular interaction with the TiVo board of directors. As a member of senior management, I spend a good deal of time on service deployment and development matters. That includes many instances of advising senior management in questions involving various products, services, and relationships. As a lawyer looking at competing businesses, like those of TiVo (i.e., being a software service provider, as well as a hardware provider, and providing retail services/hardware, as well as servicing cable operators), often I have to navigate competing business segments and priorities. A company like TiVo looks to its general counsel to take a long view, and to explain how things may play out and to measure those effects in a business, policy, and legal sense, often all at once. Similarly, I need to be able to take a holistic view, and help business people make trade-offs. So, being a general counsel is more than just being a good lawyer, with a good understanding of the law; one needs to understand the company and the industry…the business you are in.
MS:  What duties are your personal legal favorites?
MZ:  I prefer to figure out ways to help the business expand and innovate, to expand into new areas, and allow TiVo to play offense, rather than just defense.
MS:  What duties are not so pleasant?
MZ:  Having to deal with internal investigations. Dealing with accounting issues (which is a necessary evil of a public company). Things that involve mundane, paper-churning kinds of things that can involve auditors or box checkers. That sort of activity is much less exciting than working on strategic projects.
MS:  What are your most important duties?
MZ:  Helping the business make money. That can include operator deployment agreements, retail products, and enforcing intellectual property rights. Also, advising our business on how to move the business forward, while avoiding litigation (which, of course, costs the company money). So, that would mean structuring deals, negotiating contract clauses, and architecting features in ways that allow for revenue generation with a reduced risk of litigation. 
MS:  What are the big legal controversies or issues ahead? FCC? Copyright? Etc.?
MZ:  Continued access to cable signals for retail devices remains a big issue for us. We rely on CableCARDs today, but the world is moving to Internet Protocol-based delivery and we want a card-less successor to CableCARD that can handle IP encoding and allows retail devices to access and display all cable channels in unique and innovative user interfaces. In this respect, the cable industry and TiVo want to move away from the current CableCARD standard, but retail requires a nationwide standard and what successor standard will replace CableCARD?  There are also interesting issues developing as more content is available via Over-the-Top services (3), yet the last mile is controlled mainly by cable operators. With virtual MSOs (4) being discussed, e.g., Intel’s OnCue, which some are saying will be bought by Verizon, tiered-pricing for Internet access looms as a big issue…will cable operators price their own content offerings in ways that tilt consumers away from purchasing competitive video offerings or will they be happy to make high margin revenue from their pipes, without being burdened by ever- increasing programming costs? Further, there is an IP transition going on…we’ve been through the digital transition and this is somewhat related to the CableCARD matter discussed above. The world is moving to IP delivery, and how long that will take depends on content rights, network upgrades, and a lot of other things. We will see the more efficient delivery of IP packets than that of the QAM standard (5), which makes available more bandwidth for additional services and functionalities. There is a lot of value to making that happen faster.
MS:  Can you talk about current legal trends? E.g., settlements? Fast tracking of cases?
MZ:  There is an undeniable trend toward the skewing of the patent system in favor of large companies. For example, there is an “Innovation Act” that passed the House [of Representatives], and any number of bills that are pending, as a result of non-practicing entities (NPEs) allegedly abusing the patent system. There is an NPE problem, but I don’t think it is a good idea to propose broad-based remedies to deal with specific problems, because the baby can get thrown out with the bath water. The “Innovation Act” applies to all patent holders, and it will make patents less valuable, by making patents more difficult and more risky for patent holders to enforce. When a big company can appropriate a start-up’s technology without fear of reprisal in the courts, that harms our country’s innovation and global competitiveness. In terms of copyrights, content owners are trying to deal with a shifting landscape. This has resulted in a lot of litigation seeking to shut down a wide range of innovative services, as well as legislation to change copyright law and even enlist the U.S. government to police copyright infringement. As the pace of technology accelerates, there will be more and more gnashing of teeth over intellectual property issues.
MS:  Name two or three of the bigger things you are spending a lot of time on currently?
MZ:  CableCARD matters and legislation in Washington, DC. I suspect the recently announced effort by House Energy & Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Communications Subcommittee chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), to rewrite the Communications Act, will take a fair bit of my time. I also have a lot of important contractual matters that I am dealing with right now.
MS:  Please name one or two of your important current challenges?
MZ:  We are trying to make a buck in a very competitive, ever-changing, industry; one that is dominated by much bigger players.
MS:  Please name a couple of your important current opportunities?
MZ:  One is that since we are primarily a software provider and our service is cloud-based (i.e. the intelligence in the system is more and more server-based), we have greater opportunities to reach more consumers – either directly through retail or indirectly through operators – through more devices, as well as providing additional functionalities that more and more consumers are appreciating as important. These include recommendations and personalization and the discovery of video programs in a crowded landscape…and those functionalities make the video providers’ content offerings more valuable and sticky.
MS:  What has been your biggest challenge legally in the past?
MZ:  Getting access to cable television signals, so that we can develop retail products that are competitive with operator-supplied set-top boxes. As an example, we have had to fight tooth and nail to maintain access to cable television signals with the CableCARD.
MS:  Who in your legal background impressed you?
MZ:  Morgan Chu at Irell Manella (6); and Paul Glist (7)at Davis Wright and Tremaine.  Both are brilliant and creative in their own ways.
MS:  Who in your background non-legally impressed you?
MZ:  It may sound self-serving, but I’d say Tom Rogers (8).  His business acumen and strategic thinking are incredibly impressive.
MS:  If you could do the legal experience over again, what would you change?
MZ: I might have taken a year or two between college and law school…I might have gotten more out of law school that way.

1.Ironically, both Zinn and Dish Network’s Dodge attended the University of Vermont as undergraduates.
2.Zinn’s travels to L.A. are typically for meetings with content providers and to meet with the law firm that deals with much of TiVo’s key litigation, Irell Manella. Trips to Texas have been typically for the purpose of dealing with litigation matters for cases being tried in that state.   
3.OTT refers to video service providers who deliver video via the Internet, rather than via broadcast or traditional pay TV infrastructures.   
4.MSO refers to a Multiple System Operator, meaning a cable operator with many franchises located across the nation or in greater regional offerings.  
5.See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAM.
6.Morgan Chu, Esq., is a partner in Los Angeles for the law firm of Irell Manella. Since 2000, he has been lead counsel for several of TiVo’s significant litigation matters.
7.Paul Glist is a partner for Washington, DC-based Davis Wright & Tremaine. Matthew Zinn worked with Glist at Cole Raywid & Braverman LLP in the mid-1990s.
8.Tom Rogers has been TiVO CEO since 2005.

Stanton Dodge has worked since 1996 as one of the dozens of lawyers assisting Dish Network’s chairman, Charlie Ergen, and their team of thousands of employees at the DBS provider. 

In that more than 17 years, Dodge has advanced to corporate secretary, executive vice president, and general counsel, but more importantly, he says he has learned to mentor and help make those around him better at what they do. Indeed, as the answers below connote, during those years at Dish Network/EchoStar, he’s been quite fortunate to have gained a rather bountiful plate full of experience and perspective to apply to his core tasks of legal and regulatory affairs.

Because the role of a telecom entity’s top legal officer is of such importance  – yet one that is so underestimated and in normal trade journals so rarely told – “Mixed Signals” chooses to present this four-part series, focusing segment spokespeople who both understand the importance of law and regulation within the industry, but also convey some of their thinking, strategy, and passion for the job. Additional snapshots in the weeks ahead will focus on general counsel from TiVo, Comcast, and Viacom, as well.

Here, below first is a quick biographical look at Mr. Stanton Dodge, followed by a slightly-edited/slightly-corrected set of questions and answers, conducted earlier this month. Questions were developed with an idea toward taking a look at the person behind the job, and their thinking, motivations, and goals, both on behalf of their companies and on behalf of their professions. Also, because long ago I, too, worked as a lawyer for a big telecom’s legal department, I thought I might be able to add a few unique perspectives and clarifications, where necessary and/or optimal.

Stanton Dodge, A Brief Biography:
R. Stanton Dodge serves Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH), a Fortune 200 satellite TV provider with more than 14 million subscribers nationwide. In addition to the positions described above, Dodge was responsible for human resources from January 2010 through July 2011. 

In 2013, Dodge was selected for the inaugural The Legal 500 – Corporate Counsel 100: United States, recognizing the 100 most influential in-house lawyers in the United States. 

Dodge is actively involved in many community and philanthropic causes. He serves as a member of the board of directors of National Jewish Health and the Denver Scholarship Foundation, and is a member of the E-Discovery Committee of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. 

Prior to joining Dish, Mr. Dodge was a law clerk to the Hon. Jose D.L. Marquez of the Colorado Court of Appeals. 

Mixed Signals’ Q & A:
MS: Tell “Mixed Signals” about your schooling?
SD: I did my undergrad in accounting, graduating in 1991 from the University of Vermont; I graduated from the Suffolk University Law School, located in Boston, MA,  in 1995 (1).

MS:  What is your Dish Network staff size?
SD:  Forty-five, including thirty attorneys.
MS:  How much of your job time is spent on the road versus in the office?
SD:  I’m on the road about twenty-five percent of the time.
MS:  Which are the places you visit the most?
SD:  I travel to Washington, DC a lot, and about eighty percent of my Washington, DC time is devoted to policy; I have also been spending a fair amount of time in New York City managing litigation.
MS:  Why is a general counsel important to a big telecom?
SD:  One thing…a great company has to have someone at the highest levels, where folks can come and talk. They need to tell their points of view without concern…there has to be a safe place to kick around ideas.
MS:  What are the core things you do in your job?
SD:  I mentor junior lawyers and other professionals; I make sure they, we, learn good lessons from the past. I want those lessons to continue to be played forward. Two weeks ago, I had my seventeenth anniversary at this company. I see the general counsel as the torchbearer of the corporate culture, making sure that gets passed on to the next generation. And exercises in legal learning can be a big part of that; that we don’t make the same mistake twice.
MS:  How do you spend the majorities of your time?
SD: I spend about half of my project-based time on managing litigation; most of the rest of my project-based time is spent guiding our wireless regulatory interests, primarily in Washington, DC. In that latter role, I spend time being part of the core team that is building the foundation for us to participate in the all-important wireless market one day. I think of this as doing the spade work that creates the next big step for this company.
MS:  What are your personal legal favorites?
SD:  I get my greatest satisfaction from seeing our junior lawyers progress in their judgment and thought processes. Seeing them develop into great lawyers…it’s just like watching and helping with young kids, seeing them “grow up.”
MS:  What duties are not so pleasant?
SD:  Seeing how some folks try to make litigation less about resolving disputes on the merits, and more about a quest for endless sideshows and detours seeking a procedural advantage.
MS:  What duties are the most important?
SD:  Wireless. Plain and simple. And standing up for consumers. Our Hopper (2) is the best current example of that. It is critical that I as a legal representative and Dish as a company advance technology for the benefit of consumers, and that we stand up to entrenched incumbents …we are about moving the ball forward…and being a disruptive force for the benefit of consumers.
MS:  What are big legal controversies or issues ahead for you and Dish, on a legal and regulatory basis? FCC? Copyright? Others?
SD:  It is critical that the industry create meaningful retransmission reform (3). In 2010, we had ten broadcast station takedowns, last year we had about hundred, this year it approaching one hundred fifty. Consumers are suffering,  and something has to be done there to prevent blackouts and level the negotiation playing field for distributors.
MS:  Please ID a couple of current opportunities?
SD:  I see cost cutting, in-house and in the industry, as opportunities.
MS:  Looking back, what was your biggest challenge legally?
SD:  The case against TiVo (4).  It was “bet-the-company” litigation, in the truest sense of the words.
MS:  What has been the best/worst event or occurrence in your legal life that taught or impressed a lesson on you?
SD:  The Voom trial. I learned a lot sitting in a courtroom for four straight weeks.
MS:  Who in your background impressed you legally?
SD:  Judge Bruce Selya, from the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. I interned for him in law school in 1995 (5).
MS:  Who in your background “non-legally” impressed you?
SD:  My dad.
MS:  If you could do the legal experience over again, what would you change?
SD:  Nothing.  I’ve been tremendously fortunate: I have been learning, growing and challenged every day at Dish for seventeen years -- and for me, professionally, that’s what it’s all about.

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea-based streaming, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy, The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

1. Dodge did not mention it during our interview, however, he graduated magna cum laude from law school. Coincidentally, Matt Zinn, Esq., the subject of next week’s “Mixed Signals” (and Dodge’s key legal rival in the seminal patent case of TiVo vs. EchoStar), is also a graduate of the University of Vermont.

2.The Hopper, for the lay-person in our audience, is a top-of-the line TV set-top box and digital video recorder, developed and manufactured by EchoStar, another telecom company controlled by Charlie Ergen, located in Englewood, CO (See, http://www.dish.com/technology/hopper/?WT.svl=technologysubnav).

3.Retransmission consent involves a process of negotiations between pay TV operators on the one hand, and broadcasters, on the other, focused on the appropriate compensation to broadcasters for the right to retransmit their content.   

4.From a transparency POV, it is important to note that The Carmel Group was hired as and served in four separate roles in various cases on behalf of TiVo – including the TiVo vs. EchoStar case. The Carmel Group also served as both a testifying and consulting expert witness in three separate cases involving and on behalf of both EchoStar and Dish Network.   

(5) See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_M._Selya.

In several unique ways, it’s a great time to be a content producer/distributor, especially if you are a studio stakeholder or someone connected with the advertising industry. 

Plus, with more and more remarkable movies, TV shows, and even online streaming content coming from those content makers to users’ video monitors, smart phones, tablets and smart TVs everywhere, it’s quite easy to conclude “…quality content…that’s the core reason why the world loves motion pictures and video so much.”

Yet, to think it through properly, some real credit also has to be given to the technical and hardware sides of the video equation. Indeed, it’s frequently a real chicken and egg dilemma…what comes first, and what is more important to the experience… the software, or the hardware to show it on?

In recent months, French-owned and French-based Technicolor (formerly known as RCA and Thomson Consumer Electronics) has unveiled two particular developments that go a long way toward improving the look and visual feel, as well as the availability, of whatever it is that makes it in front of the world’s billions of TVs, and billions of computers (and other portable screens of every size and found everywhere today). Technicolor is helping to develop both objective standards, and content access performance mechanisms, that help the industry and the consumer to get more out of their respective hardware and software investments.

Technicolor describes itself as a “Technology company known for its technology.” Among Hollywood folks, Technicolor is well known for behind-the-scenes technology, such as color correction, sound, special effects, and more recently, streaming. The VP, Technologies Licensing, for Technicolor is industry veteran, Ed Thompson.

In late July, I had the opportunity to view those two creations, and meet with the Technicolor folks, in the form of offerings from the two separate Technicolor-affiliated companies, Portrait Displays and Marseille Networks.

This article updates that Santa Clara, Calif. visit with recent Technicolor interviews and additional developments.

Color Accuracy + Portrait = Certification

The core idea behind Technicolor’s alliance with Portrait Displays, is that of a certification process. This means a technology and practice whereby eventually every screen possible displays the same quality of video as was originally intended by the studio or any other video maker. This certification standard is especially important for, and intended for, the display on every type of screen of every variation of color.

Portrait Displays describes itself as “…the premier Application Software Provider (ASP) of customized display software to computer and display manufacturers throughout the world.” The Technicolor-Portrait relationship involves Portrait featuring the software, and Technicolor reaching out to the applicable Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), encouraging them to get their products properly certified.

What the new Technicolor certification process accomplishes is to allow viewers to match the display capability with the content, so that what is viewed more accurately represents the originally-produced content. On the movie or TV show side of the business, video standardization and improvement is deemed critical to viewer appreciation.

Put more technically, the concept is one whereby, “The content has a certain range of colors embedded in the content and we want to replicate the display capabilities by reproducing accurately that same range of colors,” explained Thompson. Technicolor and its partners refer to this process as one of allowing the viewer to experience a more accurate color gamut. A company that receives certification assures the buyer/user that its products and services reach certain thresholds when it comes to that full color spectrum and wider color gamut (and thus, presumably, better video and TV).

Using examples, when someone sees a jacket that a wardrobe designer made “bright (and bold)  red” for a TV character the author and the director intended to look just that way in “bright (and bold) red” – in order to add emotional relevance -- the experience has to be that of “bright (and bold) red,” no matter what screen it is displayed on, in order for that viewer to get what the makers of that content truly intended. To show the same jacket as washy red, or orange, or God knows what else, oftentimes is the beginning of ruining the particular experience. Indeed, it’s not hard to imagine and see that “washy (and dull) red” is not the same character as “bright (and bold) red.”

And, importantly, on the advertiser side, not only is the right shade of red important when a woman looks online, or sees a video selling a pair of shoes, it becomes even more important in the actual implementation of that order. Put another way, when those purchased shoes arrive at her doorstep, they need to be the actual color that she ordered (otherwise, she is dissatisfied, which means a lot of hassle returning the shoes that were not what she wanted, and everyone loses).

Thus, the value of video quality certification not only gains importance, but ultimately becomes almost obvious. Indeed, one wonders why it wasn’t done on a mass scale before now. Plus, the thought is that “young millennials” who are buying expensive TVs and similar display devices are “buying less and having it last longer,” so they want value and quality more than previous generations.  Knowing that a product is certified in this manner allows them to get that much sooner toward that sought-after value and quality, reason Technicolor and Portrait. 

HD TV + Marseille Networks = Upscaled 4K

Marseille Networks is a semiconductor company that makes the advanced silicon processor chip that converts video that is HD, into Ultra HD video, the latter of which is also known as 4K. That process is called “upscaling.”

Indeed, in the words of Technicolor’s Thompson, “Marseille is a Silicon Valley company that helped solved this dilemma” [of chicken and the egg…and of which comes first…great devices to watch great content, or great content needing great devices to truly enjoy the experience?]. This is critical because although most content shot in Hollywood these days is done so using 4K cameras, it is delivered to consumers in HD-or-lower quality, which means most consumers lose the enhancement originally intended. Note’s the Marseille Networks website, “…the challenge is to transform this legacy content into a full 4K Hollywood movie theater experience direct to the consumer’s living room.”

The reason that upscaling is so important these days, and why Technicolor sees a market here, is because currently, more often than not, a lack of 4K content accompanies those amazing new screens.

Thus, if Technicolor can work with companies like Marseilles Networks to create more 4K content in the home, then more screens get sold to watch 4K. It’s a great chicken and egg solution…whichever comes first.

The core concept is that upscaling makes the content viewed more immersive and beautiful, so that the upscaled HD content from the blu-ray player is indistinguishable from content produced originally in 4K. This immediately brings more 4K content into the ecosystem, so as to support the purchase of more 4K-capable devices.   

Thus far, Toshiba has been the first video-based company to sign up for the new Technicolor-Marseille chip/process, and has begun deploying it in Toshiba’s new blu-ray players. Technicolor reports that “Customers like the new 4K upscaling capability in some part because the chip made by Marseilles is so easy to drop into the blu-ray player hardware. Plus, the cost, footprint, and power consumption are small.”

Bringing It All Together In The Digital Decade

Opined video industry expert, Marc Beckwitt…”It’s all about enhancing consumer acceptance of the new 4K format.” Beckwitt is a former Technicolor VP who worked closely in and around the new 4K environments until quite recently, and is now a VP of partnerships for Dallas, Texas-based Prodea (Prodea provides what is calls is a “Managed Services Platform for Service Providers, that delivers next-generation applications and services to its customers on any device, in any location, and at any time”). 

Having moved in this direction viewing-wise, my only hope is that at this point Technicolor by itself, or with an ally, can start finding ways to better standardize and thus improve the audio delivery of one device or one TV relative to another.

Finally, as industry professionals start thinking about and prepare for the 2014 International CES in Las Vegas early next month, these two developments -- chips by Marseille Networks for the upscaling of video content, and the certification of video content by Technicolor and Portrait – give most attendees, and certainly including studio stakeholders or someone connected with the advertising industry, a unique up-front understanding of what’s ahead and what’s important to TV and video equipment (and therefore, content), as we rush further into our Digital Decade.

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea-based streaming, broadcast, pay TV/video and consumer electronics consultancy, The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a news junkie.

That means I watch a lot of graphics whirl across the screens of the world, and especially those of the news I watch most. My news viewing would be a combination of a lot of what one might call “informational variety”i.e., …. Fox, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Comedy Central, and my local Monterey-Salinas, CA stations, KION and KSBW. Yet, in the same way I have always been told (and have always told my kids) a Golden Rule of Writing, i.e., “Never leave a typo on the resumes you send out,” I must similarly now insist that my industry invoke a new Golden Rule of Graphics…never leave a typo in your on-air graphics board!

Looking Back: Manual vs. Digital

When I first worked for ABC Sports in the 1970s timeframe, as a production assistant for football games and the Olympics, graphics were all done manually. White block letters were prepared ahead of time, stenciled on to black cardboards, and then held on a telecast stand for the requisite time until the director switched cameras. It was extremely inelegant, and terribly inefficient, but there weren’t many typos in the process, because several eyes usually saw the letters and words before they came to the screen.

As companies like Chyron created machines that could replace the manual grahics made by nerds like me, the system was supposed to have gotten incredibly better. Graphics could be prepared on the spot, and telecast without any real manual involvement (other than typing in the text), and digital – like it has for so much of life – just made the communications process so much better…except for the typos.

A Graphics Typos Scourge

As the five examples pictured here show, a wide range of professionals today seem afflicted by the Graphic Typos Scourge. This ranges from my local station to the all-important and all-powerful Fox and CNN.

Indeed, at one point earlier this year, I had seen so many instances of basic words being spelled badly that I wrote to my local station manager, and even suggested a solution. He needed to deploy or even invent a “Spell Check for Graphics” machine. He promptly wrote back that no such thing exists.

Perhaps worse still, is the threat from a graphics technician/engineer entering graphics that involve important numbers, and when, for example, a second set of eyes isn’t there to notice that the M in front of the word “million” should actually be a B (which tends to make a difference, ask Warren Buffett).

Or one envisions the crazy, yet entirely possible, outcome that might arise when an inadequate system takes a word like “Peer,” and confuses it with one like “Pier.” Indeed, what might the NSA make out of the misspelled graphic (and what political disaster might emanate from the underscreen scroll) “Russian President Putin Attacks Piers In Hawaii”?    

Process 101: Broadcast Graphics Spell Check

That said, it’s now time now for the industry as a whole, perhaps at the next NAB, or NCTA, or SCTE show, to introduce “Broadcast Graphics Spell Check” as a standard for every future graphics device and software program that goes to the cable, broadcast, satellite, telco or Over-The-Top/Broadband/Online Streaming Video markets.        

And it’s time to put another set of great-spelling eyes into the electronic chain that takes on-screen words from a  keyboard to a video monitor.

Indeed, in what world, is it ever right (or even acceptable) to regularly take the acronym “NFL” and spell it “ONFL,” and spell “iTunes” as “iTuens,” and “Minivan” as “Minvan,” as my local station did most recently? Or when is it right for CNN to take the word “crowd” and write it “crowed,” or for MSNBC to take the word “Virginia” and spell it “Virgina” (especially when such freshman errors can be so readily corrected)? And the Fox entry here…well..it takes the word “typo” to a new level, doesn’t it?

In short, it’s forty-plus years post-Munich ’72, and post-1974 Cal vs. Stanford Big Game; the technology is there; so the video business’s own version of “Care Enough To Get It Right” needs to step up, and focus the storytelling on the story, and no longer on the problems reading it!

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea-based streaming, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy, The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

WISP Lite, WISP Classic, and WISP Turbo are three nicknames I recommended to identify the types of video service packages North America’s Wireless Internet Service Providers should be offering their roughly 3 million mostly rural subscribers, as part of a keynote speech I was asked to deliver October 16, in Las Vegas.

The event was the annual conference of WISPs, cleverly nicknamed WISPALOOZA 2013; the conference/show drew roughly 800 participants to the South Point Hotel, just off of I-15 in south LVC, from October 14-18. Dozens of panel sessions, covering every conceivable panel topic, and a large, well-organized and well-populated exhibition hall, were a few additional highlights.

Much of the reason video is so important to these WISPs is because the entire world is moving that way. The globe is moving not to just more video, and more ways to produce it, but also to higher and higher quality video, be it mobile or be it video sent to and viewed on whatever device, wherever you are. 

We see the proliferation of that video ecosystem business in face-to-face dealings (e.g., services such as www.freeconference.com, www.bluejeans.com, and www.webex.com), audio-only phone service morphing more and more toward audio/video, and analog standard definition screens transitioning rapidly to high definition, and then to 4K, and then, not too far from today, to 8K TV. Plus, perhaps most importantly, as the world moves closer and closer to what many call “Internet Protocol TV (IPTV),” and what many more believe should be instead called “Broadband TV,” video becomes more and more a part of every website on the worldwide web. 

As examples, I investigated one of the more articulate of the WISPs in rural America, i.e., Council Bluffs, NB-HQd, Vistabeam, founded and operated by WISPA board member, Matt Larsen. He is also a core blogger on the industry’s top blogger site, the Wireless Cowboy, at www.wirelesscowboy.com, and one of the industry’s more articulate spokesmen. The other WISP I looked to for signs of inevitable movement toward more and better carriage of video by WISPs, was my Monterey County local WISP, RedShift, founded and managed by CEO, Tony Cricelli.

WISPs For 20 Mil. Cord Cutters/Cord Nevers?
The Carmel Group offers two-three reasons why a predicted 20 million users will be opting for Broadband TV instead of traditional pay TV (i.e., cable, satellite, and telco TV), come 2020, or just seven years from today. One core reason is the generally high costs and lack of flexibility of those traditional pay TV distributors and their content cousins.

A second reason deals with alternative sources for informational and entertainment video. Broadband TV is more and more answering that call, especially for ever-growing hordes of young people. One of the better examples of that amazing phenomena is the remarkable Kevin Spacey YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ukYf_xvgc) I came upon, and which entertained the WISPAs quite well for four minutes in the middle of my on-stage comments.

Because these millions and millions of mostly younger folks are leaving traditional pay TV providers, there might very well be an amazing opportunity for WISPs everywhere to fill that intensified need for more Broadband TV. And one imagines that there is generally no reason why WISPs have to confine their services and operations to rural America. Thus, especially where line-of-sight from a central tower to a user’s actual antenna is possible –and that certainty is an awful lot of suburban and even rural America – the WISPs might have a real shot at competing for a lot less money to deliver more of what consumers are truly seeking, at much lower monthly fees than traditional providers.

WISP Video Examples: Redshift and Vistabeam
As Vistabeam’s Larsen claims, “Robust video offerings give my company and my customers a ‘true future.’”        

Larsen details that message by noting that the investment in video and the competition with other video providers made the Vistabeam system better, to the point where today Vistabeam maintains it “…can compete with anyone.” One of the ways the company does that is by offering new advanced services, such as home and business security and local business management capabilities. In short, Vistabeam has found that it can do more for less, especially against the cable and telco video providers. It has also learned to scale from small rural, to larger suburban, neighborhoods.

And perhaps one of the best proofs in the WISP pudding: Vistabeam’s average revenue per month per unit since it began its aggressive bigger bandwidth and video push has risen from $42/month to $47/month, a rather short-term rise of more than 10%. Importantly, the enhanced video service has driven greater usage, which means Vistabeam’s subscribers are more and more not looking at (or for) other content.

RedShift’s Tony Cricelli, on the other hand, has made “RedShift Is Your Video Expert” his company’s mantra.

Offering a mix of DSL, T1, fiber and wireless lines into customers’ homes – and soon Roku set-top boxes – RedShift has constantly invested in building that “better infrastructure.” Redshift maintains what it calls “low prices on installation and bandwidth…but not too low,” with also a solid mix of residential and commercial customers (“Which works,” Cricelli notes, “because in the late afternoon/early evening, when  businesses shut down, that’s the perfect time to transition over to greater residential use.”).   

Cricelli also emphasizes RedShift’s local presence, working constantly with local business toward trades and other good will. In that “local” category, RedShift offers its own Monterey County repair shop, as well as an education and consulting arm. Plus, Redshift works with local doctors’ offices, for example, to solve most if not all of their technical needs, and it will work with residential customers, right down to the proper answer to the question, “My printer is stuck, what do I do?”   

Summing Up: WISP Lite, WISP Classic, WISP Turbo
And, at the end of the day, just what are these three video offerings, i.e., WISP Lite, WISP Classic, and WISP Turbo?

WISP Lite is an offering that involves WISPs doing the minimum to upgrade their respective infrastructures, so that each of their systems can deliver just the basic bandwidth necessary to deliver basic streaming video.

WISP Classic is an offering that is already being delivered by the RedShifts and the VistaBeams of Global WISPLand. WISP Classic provides advanced services, and constantly seeks more spectrum bandwidth, as well as set-top boxes. This is the minimum of what every WISP should be offering its customers today. This WISP Classic offering would be available to WISP customers on both the residential and business sides.

And third, WISP Turbo means WISPs begin to take real advantage of the cord-cutter and cord-never phenomenon, by beginning to offer their customers actual video packages themselves, that the WISP either controls itself, or hires others to assemble and manage and control, according to the newer demands of these very non-traditional new customers. WISP Turbo offers a business model that involves local over-the-air (OTA) broadcast network programming, video on demand (VOD) movies and TV shows, as well as a few more traditional pay TV “channels,” and services like Netflix, GoogleTV, Vudu, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Xbox, Sony TV, and the like.       

At minimum, my strong conviction is that every WISP has to offer at least one of these basic video services during the next three to seven years, or their competition will. Indeed, some I talked to suggested a higher standard: if the typical WISP today does not offer at least one of these basic services over the aforementioned span, that WISP will be out of business (and a lot of those cord-cutters and cord-nevers will be pretty disappointed)!

Jimmy Schaeffler is a telecom author and chairman and CSO of the Carmel-by-the-Sea-based streaming, broadcast and pay TV/video consultancy, The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).