Breezeline (formerly known as Atlantic Broadband) will operate under the National Content & Technology Cooperative’s mobile virtual network operator agreement, with provisioning supported by Reach.

Breezeline Mobile will be offered to the company's internet customers with unlimited nationwide talk and text combined with By-the-Gig or Unlimited data plans, the company said. Other than Connecticut Breezeline operates in Delaware, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

Astound said will it roll out Astound Mobile in its other markets by the end of the year, after initially offering it to RCN customers in the Boston area and in Grande markets Corpus Christi, Midland-Odessa, Temple and Waco, Texas. 

Also Read: NCTC Sets Up MVNO Partnership With AT&T 

The cable company published some pricing for 5G services in the Boston market depending on how many lines and “by the gig“ or unlimited talk and text plans, as first noted by Light Reading. Astound said it passes 4 million homes in 12 states and also encompasses the Wave Broadband and enTouch Systems brands. 

Cable companies, led by Comcast and Charter Communications, have had success in growing mobile businesses tied to their video and internet offerings. While still a small share of the overall phone market (less than 5%), cable mobile subscriptions accounted for about 75% of total phone net additions in the first quarter of 2023, according to MoffettNathanson. Via MVNO arrangements, cable companies sell mobile service priced below the big providers, notably Verizon Communications and AT&T. Cox Communications and Altice USA also sell mobile service.

“Astound’s entrance into the wireless market comes at a time when the need for fast, reliable, high-value broadband and mobile services is at an all-time high and more critical than ever,” Astound CEO Jim Holanda said in a release. “Through our relationship with T-Mobile, we’ll bring exceptional choice, value and savings, and competitive, award-winning services that customers need to stay connected to their world.”

Rutledge joined Charter in 2012, after serving as chief operating officer of Cablevision Systems for about 10 years, and led the company through its biggest period of growth, engineering the 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable that vaulted Charter into the No. 2 spot among cable operators in the country.  Rutledge will serve as Charter’s executive chairman and serve on its board of directors through 2023, where he will maintain oversight of government affairs and help with a smooth transition. He then plans to retire after a 50-year career in the cable industry. 

“It has been an honor and a pleasure to lead Charter and this incredible team over the past 10 years,” Rutledge said in a press release. “We have grown the company through innovation and strategic investments and have positioned Charter to provide the best-converged connectivity products and services available today. During my 50 years in this industry, I have witnessed first-hand its ability to continually evolve and change the world, and our opportunity today is greater than ever with ubiquitous connectivity being central to everything we do.”

Also: SCTE Cable-Tec Expo: Talent Gap Depends on What You’re Doing, Cable Chiefs Say

Rutledge can trace his cable roots back to 1972, when he served as a technician for Eastern Telecom while still attending college. His first permanent job in the industry came in 1977, when he joined American Television and Communications (ATC), a predecessor of Time Warner Cable, as a manager trainee. He eventually became president of Time Warner Cable, and in 2002 left to head up operations for Cablevision, joining Charter a decade later and steering it to its greatest period of growth. Under Rutledge’s watch, Charter’s annual revenue rose more than 600% while its customer base has increased 500%. Rutledge also oversaw the launch of the Spectrum brand, the company’s forays into mobile and 1-gigabit per second broadband. Today Charter has more than 32 million customer relationships, second only to Comcast. 

“When Tom was chosen to lead Charter in 2012, his reputation as a skilled operator was second to none, but we never anticipated the new heights to which he would take this company,” Charter’s lead independent director, Eric Zinterhofer, said in a press release. “He redefined and exceeded every measure of success, establishing Charter as a best-in-class U.S. connectivity provider. He grew the company both organically and through transformative acquisitions, which included Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Optimum West (Bresnan). In addition, Tom has skillfully developed the next generation of leaders at Charter, including Chris. We are pleased Tom will continue to serve Charter and its shareholders as Executive Chairman of the Company and its Board in 2023.” 

Winfrey “has consistently demonstrated significant leadership and delivered an impressive track record of successes. He earned the respect and trust of his colleagues, the industry, the financial community and this Board,” Zinterhofer added. 

Winfrey joined Charter in 2010 as chief financial officer and was named chief operating officer in 2021. He has nearly 25 years of experience in the cable business, and before Charter served as managing director for cable operations, broadcasting and satellite entities at Unitymedia GmbH, Germany's second-largest cable operator. Earlier in his career, he served as senior VP, corporate finance and development at Cablecom GmbH, and was previously a director of financial planning and analysis and director of operations services of NTL’s Continental Europe operations, and a senior associate in the private equity group at Communications Equity Associates. 

“Chris’s leadership and expertise in both operations and finance have been pivotal to Charter’s growth and success,” Rutledge said in a press release. “He has repeatedly demonstrated innate strategic insight and keen market and industry awareness to drive an organization to perform at the highest level. Having worked closely with Chris for more than 10 years, he is the right choice to be our next CEO and will serve Charter’s customers, employees and shareholders with integrity and skill, leading the company to new and extraordinary heights.” 

Also: Texas Judge Cuts Charter Damages Bill to $1.15 Billion in Case of Customer Murdered by Installer

Currently, Winfrey is leading Charter’s rural construction initiative including its $5 billion investment associated with the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), making gigabit broadband connectivity available to more than 1 million currently unserved locations. He also will lead the company’s path to a fully converged broadband offering with symmetrical and multi-gigabit speeds across its entire network. As CFO, he spearheaded Charter’s transformative M&A activity, played an integral role in the Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks integrations and managed Charter’s financial activities through a period of significant growth. 

“I am grateful to Tom and the Board for entrusting me with this appointment and the incredible opportunity to lead this top-flight management team and company,” Winfrey said in the press release. “I am deeply committed to Charter’s success and will continue our track record of delivering the best connectivity products and service to our customers, investing in the careers of our employees and building long-term value for shareholders.” ■

Verizon stock was priced as low as $43.91 in early trading August 18, down 3.2% or $1.13 per share, after MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett wrote that two years after AT&T started its aggressive pricing strategy, Verizon has "seesawed between periods of promotionality and financial restraint, optimizing neither. They have recently pulled back sharply on promotions, a reversal of their approach in Q2, and have introduced a suite of lower priced plans instead. There are no easy answers."

Verizon shares closed at $44.19 each on August 18, down 2.5% or $1.15 per share. 

At the same time, Verizon appears to be losing the battle with T-Mobile, which still has the lowest pricing in the industry despite spending heavily to build out its 5G network. T-Mobile now has the largest 5G network in the country, a crown that used to be worn by Verizon.

Adding to the pressure is the emergence of cable wireless. Moffett noted that Comcast, Charter Communications and Altice USA added a combined 694,000 wireless customers in Q2, about 100,000 customers more than in the same period last year. Cable now accounts for more than 9 million wireless customers, still only about 3% of the market, but it is growing. And recently Cox Communications said it was beta testing its own wireless MVNO, which Moffett wrote "will only add to the pressure on the incumbents."

Also: Analyst Says it's Time to Take Cable Wireless Seriously 

Moffett's outlook isn't much better for AT&T. While the analyst maintained his "market perform" rating on the stock, he lowered his 12-month price target to $17 per share from $19 because of lower growth expectations. But Moffett raised his price target on T-Mobile to $174 each from $165, citing its strong growth prospects. ■

Frontier Communications chief financial officer Scott Beasley said the mid-sized  carrier does not expect to introduce a mobile product in the near future, mainly because returns on its fiber-based broadband service are so high.

Frontier emerged from bankruptcy protection about a year ago with a goal to upgrade its network and vastly improve its customer experience. The company built out about 640,000 homes to fiber in 2020, and expects to pass another 1.1 million to 1.2 million homes with fiber this year -- up 20% from the original forecast. The plan is to pass 10 million households by the end of 2025.

At the Credit Suisse Communications conference Tuesday, Beasley said the build has been progressing well, adding that the company also is exceeding expectations for its goal of removing about $250 million in costs annually out of the business. 

“We’re about a year ahead of that plan. We expect to meet the $250 [million] a year ahead of schedule, plus add to it,” Beasley said.  

But one thing the company will not be focusing on is launching a mobile product, something overbuilder WideOpenWest  did earlier last month. 

At the Credit Suisse conference, Beasley said mobile has had no impact on Frontier’s fiber success, adding that at this point, the returns on the fiber product are so high, it doesn’t make sense to shift resources at the moment toward a mobile product.

“The demand for fiber is clear, we’ve had three successive quarters of record net adds without a wireless product,” Beasley said. “Consumers are choosing the best connectivity product separately from the potential to bundle it with wireless. Secondly, we haven’t done it yet because the returns on capital from building fiber are so strong for us that we’ve chosen to stay focused, we’re going to allocate capital to our fiber build. The unlevered IRs are in the mid-to-high teens there.” 

Also: Cable Wireless Grows Up 

But the CFO added that if consumer behavior does change, Frontier has the resources and the leadership -- Frontier chairman John Stratton and CEO Nick Jeffery have extensive experience in the wireless business -- to quickly launch a mobile product. 

“If we decided to do that we could do it quickly, we could do it well,” Beasley added. “But it hasn’t been a part of the core strategy this far.”

Also: It’s Time to Take Frontier Communications’ Fiber Plans Seriously 

In April, Frontier made 2 Gigabit per second data speeds available across its entire footprint -- making it the first carrier to do so, according to Beasley -- and the CFO said the company has been “very pleasantly surprised with the uptake.” While he conceded that not everyone needs that level of bandwidth -- “power users” like gamers and those who need to download and upload massive files are the main customers -- that may change sooner than you think. 

Beasley estimated that data consumption has risen between 30% and 40% annually over the past few years, with the average Frontier fiber customer consuming almost 1 Terabyte per month of data, up 30% from pre-pandemic levels. Also, as the number of devices connected to the network rises -- he estimated that the average household in Frontier’s footprint has 22 devices -- so will the need for bandwidth.

“We think demand is there now for a portion of our customer base, and we think it’s going to  continue to rise as data consumption rises,” Beasley said. ■ 

Investors have been lining up for cable’s funeral for decades. The industry’s death rattle supposedly began in the nineties with competitive threats from satellite TV and telcos. Now streaming video, direct-to-consumer offerings that bypass the traditional bundle and fixed wireless access service that is expected to steal away broadband customers are expected to deliver the fatal blow. But instead, every year cable survives. It weathered the satellite onslaught, the multiple attempts by AT&T to weasel its way into the video business, and by the looks of things, it is preparing itself to ride out the latest storms. 

I’m not saying cable, or any industry, is invulnerable. Taking even a cursory look at the industry is proof that the business is nothing like it was a decade ago. But unlike buggy whips and the Betamax, whenever the collective consciousness began to stray, cable operators have for the most part managed to figure out a way to make themselves attractive again to consumers. 

In the past century, cable pushed back video competition by introducing more channels, more choices and better pictures through digital and later HDTV offerings. Later, competitive wireline phone offerings, high-speed internet service and in the past few years, mobile service have helped the industry not only survive, but thrive. Now cable companies have twice as many broadband customers as video subscribers, and mobile service, once thought of as merely a retention tool, is becoming a real threat to traditional carriers. In the meantime, cable continues to invest in the business, build out fiber networks and reinvent itself.

Even though those moves are far from secret, operators continue to make the seasonal rounds, reminding investors that although they may not be the latest thing, they are what makes that latest thing work.

Investor Conference Rites of Spring

March is the traditional beginning of the spring conference season (I know spring doesn’t officially begin until March 20, but it was 74 degrees in New York this week, for gosh sake), with Morgan Stanley's Technology, Media & Telecom conference on March 7, and Deutsche Bank Securities hosting the next media get-together on March 14. There is expected to be a bit of a reprieve in April, followed by MoffettNathanson’s Media & Communications conference and J.P. Morgan’s Global Technology Media & Communications conference slated for May. Evercore ISI should wind down the spring season with its TMT event expected sometime in June, although others could be sprinkled in between. And then the fall season starts.   

Already, CEOs of the top three publicly held cable companies have hit the conference circuit and have had to reassure investors that: Yes, they still intend to add broadband subscribers; no, they haven’t given up on video quite yet; and yes, mobile service is on the path to becoming profitable.

Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts kicked off the spring season with his March 7 appearance at the Morgan Stanley conference, He spent most of his time telling the investment community that while broadband growth is indeed slowing down, it has lots of runway ahead of it. He pointed to four areas where he sees Comcast can boost broadband growth: expanding its footprint; competing more aggressively; bundling with other products like wireless; and growing its business services reach.

Comcast has been expanding its reach to about 1 million more homes per year within its footprint through edge-out programs. This year, he expects that expansion to be even greater, given government initiatives to build out unserved and underserved rural areas. 

“Where it's been uneconomic previously, it will be economic in the future for us to extend our broadband,” Roberts said. “And we're going to compete aggressively to do that.”

Roberts also defended cable broadband against the latest competitive threat — fixed wireless access from the telcos — adding that at the moment it is an inferior product to high-speed data service from cable, reminding the audience again that cable has a history in pushing back competitive threats. 

“We don't take it for granted, but we've seen lower-price, lower-speed offerings before,” Roberts said. “And in the long run, I don't know how viable the [FWA] technology holds up.”

Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei, who has been dealing with a steep drop in his company’s stock price since it lost broadband subscribers in 2021, spent his time at the Morgan Stanley conference reiterating plans to accelerate its fiber network buildout, and hinting about faster speeds becoming available to a wider swath of customers. 

Altice‘s accelerated fiber rollout has been well-documented, and Goei said at Morgan Stanley that it is expected to make a big difference. 

Goei said Altice has been talking about fiber for three years, and the slowdown in deployment has been a combination of permitting and COVID-19 related delays and the company’s inability to “get its own ducks in a row.” But now with a restructured management and a clearer focus,  growth is expected to take hold in 2023.     

“The goal was to reinvigorate distribution, rebrand the company, address some customer service-related issues we were dealing with and make that a one-time investment,” Goei said, which “leads to a nice payback in 2023.”

Goei hinted at “multi-gig” speeds for its Optimum broadband service in the second quarter, stopping short of saying just how fast its offering would be. But the company has said publicly — back in May 2021 at the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications conference — that its goal was to offer 10 Gigabit per second broadband within 18 months.       

On the video side, Charter Communications chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said there is “more damage to come” regarding continued customer losses, but all is not lost quite yet.

“There’s nothing about the old model that’s really changed, Rutledge said at the Morgan Stanley conference, adding that prices for traditional video service continue to rise, driven by ever-increasing sports rights fees. “There’s nothing to really constrain the cost of live sports in the linear business and that’s still the glue that holds it together. I see that business continuing to get more and more expensive for consumers.”

Eyeing a Mobile Future

Despite the shift toward streaming, Rutledge isn’t expecting the pay TV business to change that much over the next few years. But he echoed Roberts in saying that the mobile/broadband bundle will be the future. And he acknowledged that he often thinks of how cable could eventually aggregate and package streaming services for consumers. 

“The opportunity going forward is to start to reaggregate and use that aggregation to give a better, more cost-efficient consumer experience to more people,” Rutledge said. “We think about that every day and how that might happen. I don’t want to be overly Pollyannaish and say that is about to happen because the current model is still very much in force. I don’t see that disappearing in the next couple of years.”

But Rutledge said Charter is laying the groundwork for that day when it does come, making itself available on apps like Roku, where it is one of the most used applications. He added that nearly 12 million customers access Charter services (broadband-only as well as video) via an app instead of a set-top box.

“The upside is still yet to be realized,” Rutledge said. “The reaggregation is somewhat far away, but we’ve been thinking about how to build a platform that can be used by customers  in a more efficient way.” 

It’s a concept that has been well-documented in this column over the past year, and a place where, whether participants say it aloud or not, the industry is headed. But it is also an example of something that cable has been famous for, at least during the 30 years I’ve been covering it: No matter what gets thrown at it, this industry has managed to adapt. It sounds a lot easier than it is to do, and the landscape is littered with the carcasses of companies that underestimated the resilience of this business. This March and beyond, cable executives will get to remind investors of that fact once again. ■

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, Roberts said he sees four areas where the company can boost broadband growth: expanding its footprint, competing more aggressively, bundling with other products like wireless and growing its business services reach.

Comcast has been expanding its reach to about 1 million more homes per year within its footprint through edge-out programs. This year he expects that expansion to be even greater, given government initiatives to build out unserved and underserved rural areas. 

“Where it's been uneconomic previously, it will be economic in the future for us to extend our broadband,” Roberts said. “And we're going to compete aggressively to do that.”

Roberts didn’t seem too concerned with competitive technologies like fixed wireless, because he believes cable broadband is still a better quality product and aggressively priced. 

As far as fixed wireless, Roberts said only time will tell, but at the moment “it’s an inferior product” to cable broadband, likening it to digital subscriber line service from the telcos in the past. 

Also: T-Mobile, Verizon Fixed Wireless Subscriber Additions Could Double by 2023, Analyst Says 

“Today we can say, we don't feel much impact from that,” Roberts said of fixed wireless, adding that it reminds him of earlier days when telcos touted digital subscriber line service as a replacement for cable broadband. “We don't take it for granted, but we've seen lower-price, lower-speed offerings before, and in the long run I don't know how viable the technology holds up.”

Also: Analyst Says Telcos Better Positioned to Chip Away at Cable’s Broadband Lead 

Roberts believes that maintaining its leadership in offering the highest speeds and the best quality will continue to drive broadband growth for the industry. Comcast, he said, was the first company to offer 1.2 Gigabits per second high-speed internet service, and now it’s available throughout its entire footprint. And customers continue to want speed. He noted that two years ago, only 28% of Comcast’s broadband customers took 300 Megabits per second service. Today, 55% of its customers take that speed. 

Also: Verizon Recasts Jim Carrey as the Cable Guy for Super Bowl Fixed Wireless Ad 

“So, we've doubled the amount of our customers getting that speed in getting ready for any kind of potential competition,” Roberts said, adding that Comcast’s moves to deploy DOCSIS 4.0 technology, which promises speeds of up to 10 Gbps, show where it believes the path is leading. 

Adding to the potential growth runway is wireless, which Comcast has said in the past could be an attractive bundle with broadband. Xfinity Mobile has grown to 4 million lines since its 2017 launch, representing about 2 million customers. Comcast has about 32 million broadband customers — and a broadband subscription is needed for wireless service — so the growth runway is long. 

“So, we're just getting started and I hope that as we go forward, you'll see really a combined offering between our broadband and our wireless products,” Roberts said. 

Roberts also touted Comcast’s streaming service Peacock, which has about 24.5 million subscribers, putting it near the bottom of big-time streaming services like Disney Plus, HBO Max and Paramount Plus.  

Also: Comcast to Double Programming Spending to $3 billion 

While Peacock’s previous model had been more geared to revenue generated through advertising, a more hybrid subscription-ad revenue model appears to be the current path. 

“The take rate led us to say that the sweet spot, as we think of it as a business, will be to go with the dual revenue stream,” Roberts said. “That's no stranger to Comcast. That's what powered the company for 50 years.” ■

Cable operators have already warned that the expected slowdown in broadband customer growth could get steeper in Q4. Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson told a virtual audience at the UBS TMT Virtual Conference in December that it would likely add about 1.3 million broadband customers in 2021, implying that Q4 additions would be about 185,000, its lowest quarterly growth since Q2 2017. Watson was echoed by other cable execs at the conference like Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei, who implied that Q4 broadband subscriber growth could be negative in Q4 and for the year. 

But mobile service was expected to continue its torrid growth pace. Comcast’s Watson predicted that his company would add a record number of mobile customers in the quarter, beating its previous best of 285,000 additions in Q3 2021.

Also: Comcast Q4 Broadband Results Narrowly Miss Consensus; Dividend Upped

In a research note Thursday, Cusick wrote that he expects Comcast to surpass that old mark, adding about 300,000 mobile customers in Q4, ending the year with 1.14 million additions. But he believes Charter will add about 260,000 mobile subscribers, below the 315,000 it added in Q4 2020. He estimated Altice USA would add about 2,000 mobile customers in the quarter, down from 7,000 in Q4 2020. 

Overall, Cusick expects cable to add about 562,000 mobile customers in Q4, implying a 20%  share of total growth for the sector in the period, compared to 23% in Q4 2020. For the full year, Cusick estimates that cable will add 2.23 million mobile customers, or about 24% of total ecosystem growth, compared to 35% in 2020. 

Cusick sees the slowdown continuing into 2022, forecasting that Comcast mobile subscriptions will be about 1.047 million next year, and Charter slipping to 1 million additions. Cusick predicted that Altice USA would grow mobile customers by 29,000 in 2022, up from 13,000 in 2021. 

Also: Charter Falls Short of Broadband Subscriber Targets, Wireless Soars

Other analysts have revised their Charter estimates as well. In a January 3 report, Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino pointed to a possible industry-wide mobile deflation risk, and revised his expectation for Spectrum Mobile subscriber additions to 252,000 from 277,000 in Q4.  

The answer should come in the next few weeks. Comcast is scheduled to report Q4 results on January 27, with Charter reporting on January 28. Altice USA has not said yet when it plans to release Q4 results, but usually does so in early February.   

Cable operators have been aggressively pricing mobile service in the past year — Comcast dropped monthly pricing to $30 per month per line for four lines minimum in April — and have added device promotions and discounts for customers that switch service.

According to Cusick, Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile now offers up to $400 in device credits for any iPhone 13 users that switch — double its prior offer. Cable companies also have benefitted from their ability to bundle wireless service with broadband, which has had a big impact on wireless customer growth. 

Also: Analyst Says It’s Time to Take Cable's Wireless Seriously  

Cusick added that his estimates for Charter could be a bit low, given the operator’s aggressive discounting in October, dropping monthly charges for two lines or more to $29.99 from $45 per month. And Charter CEO Tom Rutledge has said he sees the wireless business as a huge catalyst for the future.

Back in December at the UBS conference, Rutledge did not offer any future subscriber growth guidance but said that going forward, the biggest growth driver for the business overall is mobile. 

And both Charter and Comcast have seen the benefits of bundling broadband and mobile, with efforts to pair the two more aggressively beginning last year.  

At the same time, the Big Three (AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile) wireless players are beginning to see their subscriber dominance wane. AT&T, which Cusick expects to more than triple its wireless subscriber additions in 2021 to 3.19 million from 1.46 million in 2021 — largely due to aggressive device promotions — will see that growth dip to 2.35 million additions in 2022. He predicted that Verizon, which should nearly double its mobile additions in 2021 to 1.101 million from 667,000 in the prior year, will fall back to about 875,000 additions in 2022. T-Mobile, which is expected to add 2.917 million mobile customers in 2021 — up from 1.87 million in 2020, will add 2.4 million in 2022 according to Cusick. ■

Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson touched off a mini firestorm on Dec. 7, telling the virtual audience at the UBS Global TMT Virtual Conference that he expected to end 2021 with 1.3 million additional broadband subscribers. That is lower than the 1.4 million Comcast added in 2019 and implies that Comcast would add about 185,000 high-speed data customers in Q4, its lowest growth since Q2 2017. 

Most analysts had expected Comcast to end 2021 with about 1.4 million additional broadband customers. In a recent research report, MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett predicted Comcast would add about 286,000 broadband customers in Q4. Moffett expects Charter to add 271,000 broadband customers and Altice to add 3,000 high-speed internet subscribers in the period. 

While Charter may well hit Moffett's target, chances are that Altice USA, coming off a third quarter where it lost 13,000 broadband customers, could see negative growth in Q4.

“We probably are trending -- and we still have a big month of December coming up -- slightly negative in Q4, which probably leads us to be down in a range of 5,000 to 10,000 for the year,” Goei said at the UBS conference.

He added that the declines are in markets where Altice USA competes with Verizon Communications’ Fios Internet product, which Goei described as heavily promotional. 

“These losses are in Fios zones,” Goei said. “I think Fios has been saying they have not lost momentum. We’ve slowed momentum relative to Fios and we really need to drive to the first quarter when we have a better mobile product.”

The news sent Comcast shares down 7% on Dec. 7, as well as the rest of the sector. At the end of the day, losses eased a bit -- Comcast stock closed down 5%, Charter down 3% and Altice USA fell 2%. But the fear that sluggish broadband growth could last a while longer didn’t seem quite as irrational as the day before. Between Dec. 6 and Dec. 8 the three stocks fell 6.5%, 4.6% and 6.4%.

Charter Communications chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge spoke at the UBS conference on Dec. 8, and avoided making any specific broadband predictions. Rutledge did say that as the spike in pandemic-fueled consumer acceptance of the broadband product begins to unwind, there is still plenty of runway left. 

“I do think that the opportunity to grow the business is pretty much unchanged,” Rutledge said at the UBS conference. “If you look at it on a four- or five-year growth rate trend, it’s pretty solid, pretty straightforward and pretty consistent. I think that that future will look more like the trend than it will look like the third or fourth quarter.”

Cable operators have consistently denied that stepped up telco 5G wireless and fiber broadband initiatives would cut into their businesses, and at the UBS conference tried to stress that in addition to strong opportunities ahead for broadband, their other services are even more robust. Watson said at the conference that wireless subscriber additions should break records in Q4, and added that cable EBITDA growth should be between 7% and 8% in the period, exceeding analysts expectations.  

Watson said Comcast would add a record number of mobile customers in Q4, after signing on 285,000 additional Xfinity Mobile customers in Q3, its best quarterly performance since launching the wireless product in 2017. At the UBS conference, Watson said Comcast expects cable EBITDA growth to be in the 7% to 8% range in Q4, while net cash flow growth will be in the low double-digit percentages. 

“In wireless, we’ll  beat Q3 in Q4,” Watson said. “We’ll set a record.”

Rutledge didn’t make any wireless subscriber predictions, but said mobile service will be Charter’s biggest growth engine going forward, likening the mobile opportunity to that of the wireline telephone business several years ago. Back then, traditional phone companies were offering wireline phone service for $72 per month. Today, cable companies are selling wireline service for $13 per month and dominate the industry, with Comcast and Charter the two largest wireline phone companies in the U.S. 

“We took that business,” Rutledge said. “So, what kind of upside is there [to the mobile business]? That kind of upside.” ■ 

“I see 2022 as a sort of return to normalcy kind of year for us,” Rutledge said at the UBS Global TMT Virtual conference Wednesday, adding that the past two years have been disruptive for Charter and the industry as a whole. “We’re getting back on plan in ‘22 in terms of growing the business, and growing the kinds of product sets we want to deploy. The biggest growth opportunity, the biggest growth driver going forward starting in ‘22 is mobile.”

Rutledge said the mobile opportunity is even bigger since Charter has revamped its billing system. 

“The initial billing system that we launched with didn’t really scale as well as we wanted it to,” Rutledge said. “We actually had to hold back marketing and efforts to grow that business because of the scale issue that we had before we could switch out systems. Those are done and we have the ability to accelerate growth in the mobile platform and do that in a logical way.”

Charter currently has about 3.2 million wireless subscribers. 

Rutledge acknowledged that broadband subscriber growth is slowing, but didn’t give any specifics like his peers earlier in the UBS conference. The Charter chief said that the pandemic changed consumer behavior towards broadband and led to huge spikes in subscriber growth -- Charter added about 2.2 million broadband customers in 2020, nearly double the 1.4 million it added in 2019. While it’s inevitable that that kind of growth will wane as people return to work and school -- he called it the “unwinding” of that earlier behavior -- he still sees a lot of opportunity in the sector. 

Also: Cable Shares Slip After Comcast’s Watson Says Operator Will Add 1.3 Million Broadband Subs in 2021

“I do think that the opportunity to grow the business is pretty much unchanged,” Rutledge said. “If you look at it on a four- or five-year growth rate trend, it’s pretty solid, pretty straightforward and pretty consistent. I think that that future will look more like the trend than it will look like the third or fourth quarter.”

On the video side, Rutledge does see subscriber declines continuing, but added that might slow as well as customers, especially sports fans, see the value of the bundle. 

With 32 million total customers and just under 16 million video subscribers, half of Charter’s customers don’t subscribe to its video product anyway, Rutledge added. Charter’s strategy is to provide as many different video packages as it can, while also helping consumers who have cut the cord better access direct-to-consumer products. 

“I see us becoming more transactional and helping these direct-to-consumer businesses work and to help sell those direct-to-consumer models,” Rutledge said, adding that he still feels a responsibility to provide a robust video product. 

“I think the decline in full package services will abate to some extent, because it’s still the primary way to get sports,” he continued. “But how it ultimately breaks up and gets into sports direct and entertainment direct, that could be a long way away. We’ll continue to play in all of those parts and try to find the opportunities for us in our relationship with our customers that video presents us.” ■ 

Liberty Global said Wednesday that it has agreed to sell its UPC Poland operation to mobile operator Play for $1.8 billion. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022.

Play is part of the iliad Group, which also operates mobile networks in France (under the Free trade name) and Italy (under the iliad name), and has about 15 million subscribers in Poland. Iliad S.A. is the parent of iliad Group. SAa. the mobile subsidiary of Polish telecom company Iliad S.A.  

UPC Poland has about 1.5 million subscribers and passes 3.7 million homes in the country. Liberty said the sale price represents about 9 times UPC Poland’s 2021 estimated adjusted EBITDA.  

“This transaction highlights, yet again, the significant value of fiber-rich HFC networks in Europe, as well as the substantial synergy benefits inherent in fixed-mobile convergence mergers,” Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries said in a press release. “We have been operating in Poland for over 20 years and are proud of our contributions to the country’s growing digital economy and the impact that we’ve made in the communities where we operate.”

Liberty Global said the cash proceeds from the deal — about $600 million — will boost its already hefty cash balance of $4.1 billion.

“As ever, we remain squarely focused on value creation and are pleased with the premium valuation we received for our Polish business, providing a strong return for Liberty Global shareholders,” Fries continued.

Proceeds from the sale, net debt repayment, will be used for general corporate purposes, including reinvestment into its business and for share repurchases. Liberty Global also has agreed to provide Play with certain transitional services — mainly network and information technology functions — for a period of up to four years.

Credit Suisse acted as financial advisor to Liberty Global for the transaction.

That compares to 33% in the first quarter of 2018, with millions more U.S. households ditching bundled pay TV service over the three-year span.

However, with the number of U.S. pay TV homes now dwindling below 80 million—after exceeding 90 million just a few short years ago—a new trend has emerged among what remains of bundled telecom services.

According to Parks, which said it surveyed 10,000 households for its latest Home Services Dashboard report, mobile services are emerging as a popular bundling complement for wireline broadband, replacing pay TV. 

The research company said 19% of U.S. broadband households currently bundle mobile and home internet services, paying an average of $128 per month.

Comcast, for example, said it experienced its greatest quarterly expansion for mobile in Q1, adding 278,000 lines, all of them through bundled offers. Both Comcast and Charter Communications have launched mobile services within the last four years. 

“Falling pay-TV subscriptions among consumers are negatively impacting bundles with other services—bundles with four or five services in particular are losing their value,” said Kristen Hanich, senior analyst for Parks Associates, in a statement. “However, a growing crossover between mobile and home broadband services is helping to stem the gap. The fastest growing segment of these bundles is a standard double-play combining home internet and mobile service.”

Of course, with the number of standalone broadband subscriptions higher than ever, pricing has increased. 

Notably, these homes are paying an average of $64 a month for broadband service—an uptick of more than 64% over the average $39 they were paying in 2011, when the practice of bundling video with broadband was much more widely adopted.

Parks believes that average price will soon rise even further. 

The research company said 24% of U.S. broadband households reported plans to upgrade their home broadband in the next six months, which would drive broadband service ARPU upwards 5% year-over-year.

Liberty Global said it has received final regulatory approval for the 50-50 joint venture to combine its Virgin Media unit with Telefonica’s O2 business from the U.K . Competition & Markets Authority, clearing the path for the June 1 completion of the deal.

CMA approval was the final regulatory hurdle for the deal to be completed. Liberty Global and Spain’s Telefonica first proposed the transaction, which would combine Virgin Media’s broadband internet business with Telefonica’s mobile operations, last May, creating an entity valued at about $38 billion. The combined companies are expected to create a stronger competitor in the U.K. fixed and mobile markets, supporting the expansion of Virgin Media’s giga-ready network and O2’s 5G mobile deployment. The joint venture is expected to deliver about £6.2 billion in synergies and have combined revenue of about £11 billion.

Also Read: Liberty Global Looking at Possible Mobile Deals in Ireland, Poland 

The two companies named Virgin Media CEO Lutz Schüler and O2 chief financial officer Patricia Cobian as CEO and CFO, respectively, of the combined company last month. 

In a joint statement, Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries and Telefonica CEO José Maria Alvarez-Pallete called the deal “a watershed moment in the history of telecommunications in the UK as we are now cleared to bring real choice where it hasn’t existed before, while investing in fiber and 5G that the UK needs to thrive. We thank the CMA for conducting a thorough and efficient review. Lutz and Patricia are now set to take the reins and launch a national connectivity champion that will connect more people, ignite more businesses back to growth and power more communities for the greater good.”

The UFP is customizable and can be refreshed every hour or once a month and lets advertisers know how often an ad is being seen by individual viewers. It captures the ad exposure and passes the device ID back to Sabio. Sabio removes that ID from the campaign delivery during the time frame determined by the advertiser.

“The simplicity of UFP gives advertisers a 360-degree view of what’s working, what’s not, and the option to adjust mid-campaign rather than having to wait until the numbers come in,” said Joao Machado, senior VP, marketing at Sabio.

Also Read: Google: Advanced Ad Impressions Bounced Back After COVID

The tool helps clients avoid duplicated reach by serving impressions where they will have the most impacts. It also preserves a brand's reputation by not contributing to consumer frustrations, and saves ads dollars, the company said.

“CTV is becoming a more important platform for us yet the issue of duplication and wasted ad dollars present a problem," said Scott Bishoff, senior VP at digital ad agency Digitas North America. "Having a comprehensive solution like Sabio’s Universal Frequency Pixel creates the opportunity for more effective campaign management.”

Also Read: FreeWheel Report Charts Rise in CTV, Programmatic

Many providers feel CTV takes precedence, because they believe that their consumers only want to watch long-form content on the big screen. What consumers actually want is to be able to watch at any moment, on the screen of most convenience. CTV is certainly critical, especially for ad-supported businesses trying to lure buyers away from cable TV. But mobile is also playing a critical role that cannot be neglected, with a growing audience, use cases that are key to viewer satisfaction, and a role as the platform more and more consumers are using to create accounts with new services. The OTT services that neglect mobile are missing a huge opportunity, and giving a gift to YouTube, which already enjoys incredible success with its mobile video app.

Measuring success on CTV vs. mobile

Research shows that in many markets CTV’s account for more viewing hours of streaming video then other platforms. Yet a recent NPAW report shows that there are more plays (or sessions) happening on smartphones and tablets. Those sessions are, on average, shorter than CTV sessions, and session length is important. But, it's only one of many metrics. Reach and frequency are also valid ways to measure OTT success, and mobile exceeds CTV on both counts.  

Even though a smaller fraction of time spent viewing OTT video is on mobile, a higher percentage of the times viewers hit play are on a mobile device. This is significant because some of the most frustrating viewing issues happen when you press the play button on a mobile device: startup delays, buffering, poor quality. So even when less time is spent in the app, there are a high number of mobile touchpoints with viewers—and a high number of opportunities to have their perception of your service undermined.

You might think that more time is spent with CTV than phones and tablets because mobile viewers are on the go and only want to watch short content, but that’s not the case. According to YouTube data, 3 in 4 adults watch YouTube on mobile while at home. Shorter mobile sessions are likely caused by poor experiences. Even at home, mobile video is more fraught with issues due to poor connectivity, which leads to higher rates of stream abandonment. In fact, poor video experiences can reduce view time by 30%. So it’s likely that improving the performance of mobile OTT videos would mean those mobile viewers at home and on the go would keep watching longer.

Why YouTube gets mobile video right

YouTube seems to understand this potential to engage mobile viewers. In fact, 59% of viewing time on the service happens on mobile (Conviva). While historically, the platform has been known for short-form user-generated content, these days the most popular content on YouTube comes from professional producers. As a result, the average video length is growing, and popular creators now regularly put out content between 20 and 60 minutes long. This is, of course, because of the site’s ad-based model. The longer you spend watching a creator’s new video, the more ads you’ll see, and the more money they’ll make.

But it adds a new perspective to YouTube’s mobile success. The days of 30-second cat videos are long gone, so length cannot solely account for it. It may be in part because YouTube’s audience trends younger, and younger viewers are watching more video on their phones. However, there’s another explanation: YouTube consistently updates and improves its iOS and Android apps, adding new features and improving the user interface, which has resulted in a fantastic mobile platform.

Other OTTs may not have this same level of success on mobile, but that’s not because their viewers don’t care about mobile. Some may even take Quibi’s epic failure as an indication that viewers overall don’t care. Yet there are plenty of explanations that could explain Quibi’s demise (it’s content was almost universally panned by critics, for example).

Instead, those OTTs that ignore mobile because they don’t get as much mobile viewership are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: if an OTT doesn’t invest in a great mobile experience, it’s users won’t be as likely to choose them when they’re watching on mobile. Even though they may not consider YouTube a direct competitor, OTTs that don’t prioritize mobile are essentially conceding their share of mobile screen time to YouTube.

Viewers are watching your content on many devices on any given day and at too many companies, mobile has taken a backseat to CTV. Mobile is not only a popular way to watch, it’s also the front door to your service: more people are signing up for services on their mobile device before ever logging in on their CTV. Plus, mobile has higher reach, with 85% of viewers watching on a smartphone in Q1 2020 (compared to 49% who watched on other internet connected devices, according to Nielsen). To both gain and retain an engaged audience, and keep your ground in the streaming wars, it’s important to have a strategy that takes a cross-platform approach and ensures a great experience on any screen your viewers watch.

Penthera is a global software company that develops and deploys products to help OTT providers improve the mobile video experience and drive business results.

Ericsson's report acknowledges that it has "slightly decreased our 5G subscriptions forecast for 2020 and 2021 in North America," compared to previous estimates, although it offers no reasons other than "LTE will remain the dominant mobile access technology" for the next few years and "is projected to peak in 2022." Ericsson predicts that "5G subscription uptake is expected to be significantly faster than that of LTE" after its 2009 debut.

Video traffic in mobile networks will grow by around 30% annually during the next five years, Ericsson says, driven "by the increase of embedded video in many online applications, growth of video-on-demand (VOD) streaming services ... and viewing time per subscriber." It also cites "the evolution towards higher screen resolutions on smart devices" and "the increasing penetration of video-capable smart devices."

The growing impact of wireless video becomes even more significant when compared to the forecasts of exactly 10 years ago this month, when Cisco's Video Network Index for the year 2020 predicted that video would consume 79% of internet traffic -- almost entirely using wireline facilities.

The primary drivers for video traffic growth include the growing role of video in online content such as news, advertising and social media as well as video streaming and sharing services, according to Ericsson's analysis. It also cites:

• Changing user behavior

• Increased segment penetration, not just early adopters

• Evolving devices with larger screens and higher resolutions

• Increased network performance through evolved 4G deployments

• Emerging immersive media formats and applications, such as high definition and ultra HD, 360-degree video, augmented and virtual reality

The report also cites that decades-old visionary goal: "video being consumed anywhere, any time" (although it overlooked the "any device" trope).

Ericsson expects that video streaming via wireless networks will rely on higher resolution quality than the current 480p format.

"With smartphones and networks improving constantly, streaming in HD (720p) and Full HD (1080p) is becoming more common," the report says. "More immersive media formats and applications are expected to become a significant factor contributing to mobile data traffic growth, as 5G networks will provide the performance needed for a good user experience. For example, watching a streamed e-sports event in multi-view would consume about 7GB per hour, while a high-quality AR/VR stream with a media (bit) rate of 25Mbps would consume as much as 12GB per hour."

This year's forecast slightly ups the outlook that Ericsson predicted a year ago, when it expected 5G to account for 55% of North American mobile subscriptions by 2024.

Related: Ericsson Predicts Billion-plus Sub Boom in 5G

COVID-19 Impact

Ericsson's report begins with an examination of the role of networks and digital infrastructure during the COVID-19 pandemic, described by Fredrik Jejdling, Ericsson's executive VP and head of business area networks. He cites the impact of novel coronavirus starting early this year, including lockdown restrictions and new work-from-home "digital behaviors."

The report explains that, "in markets with limited penetration of fixed residential networks, the mobile data demand increase was especially high" and that in some markets "service providers made temporary changes to data plans [such as]... unlimited data for a certain period of time." The report also cites, "up to 90% increase in Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) calls for some service providers" and an "increase of 20% to 70% in voice due to more and longer calls. Data traffic increased due to more bidirectional and streaming services."

Expanded Role for Fixed Wireless Access

FWA connections are forecast to reach nearly 160 million by end of 2025 – totaling about 25% percent of global mobile network data traffic. At the end of 2019, global FWA data traffic was estimated to have been around 15% of the global total. It is now projected to grow nearly 8 fold to reach 53 exabytes in 2025, representing 25% of the global total mobile network data traffic.

"FWA delivered over 4G or 5G is an increasingly cost-efficient alternative for providing broadband," says the report, citing factors that are driving the FWA market, including growing demand for digital services and government-sponsored programs and subsidies in some countries.

The ad blitz was also a metaphor for Quibi itself and the challenges it faces launching a new entertainment brand, built entirely around short-form mobile video consumption, into the brutally competitive online-streaming sector.

On Oscar night, the brief ads made the point that even when time is tight, you can still watch all of a Quibi episode. Its series—Quibi plans 175 of them, and 8,500 pieces of content in its first year—will unfold in seven- to 10-minute bites over multiple weeks. Ads wrapped around Quibi episodes will be short too, from 6- to 15-seconds long. For access to all that, subscribers will pay about $5 a month for an ad-supported version of Quibi, and $8 per month for an ad-free version.

Visit Next TV to read the rest of this story.

Netflix has about 167 million paid subscribers globally, with 61 million of those in the U.S. and 105 million elsewhere. Domestic subscriber growth has slowed in the past several years from 5.3 million in 2012 to 2.6 million in 2019, and will likely continue over the next few years. Nathanson estimates that paid customer additions will shrink to 1.7 million in 2020 and to 903,000 by 2024.

The flattening out of the U.S. market was just a matter of time, Nathanson wrote. With 61 million U.S. subscribers, Netflix is now streamed in 76% of homes that stream video, and 80% of homes that have broadband. So, it was only logical that growth would decline. And decline it did, sharply. The 2.6 million U.S. subscriber additions Netflix reported in 2019 was 55% below the 4.5 million adds in the prior year. For the next five years at least, Nathanson predicts that U.S. adds will be around 1 million per year.

Nathanson added that even as cord cutting accelerates -- pay TV subscribers are declining at about a 3% annual clip -- it won’t help Netflix domestic subscriber rolls, because its existing penetration with pay TV providers is high. He estimated that with Comcast alone -- which integrated the Netflix app in its X1 operating system in 2016 -- penetration is about 67%.

“In other words, people are cutting the cord because they have Netflix,” Nathanson wrote. “They’re not cutting the cord and discovering Netflix for the first time.”

But it’s a different story internationally, and Nathanson believes that subscriber growth outside of the U.S. should more than double in the next five years. Nathanson estimated that Netflix would have 305.2 million global paid customers by 2024, with 66.4 million in the U.S. and 238.8 million in other countries.

Also helping out Netflix’s positioning internationally, is the near lack of competition from other streaming services. In his note, Nathanson pointed out that Comcast, despite its ownership of British satellite TV service provider Sky, didn’t mention an international component to its streaming Peacock service, which will launch in April. AT&T’s HBO Max will have a delayed international debut as the company agreed to extend its own content licensing agreement with Sky.

“That lack of international competition presents a long and open green field of opportunity for Netflix to keep growing outside the U.S.,” Nathanson wrote.

The analyst expects Netflix subscriber growth to focus on two areas with the most low hanging fruit first: U.S. Clones (those markets with high disposable incomes and broadband penetration and English-language fluency); and “Local Language Giants” (like Japan, South Korea and France).

U.S. Clones could create 16 million more broadband subscribers over the next five years, with 50 million additional high-speed internet customers coming from “local language markets by 2024," he predicted.

“Mobile First” countries like India and Southeast Asia, will require a little more work in terms of lower pricing and greater localization of content, Nathanson wrote, adding that Netflix would have to promote low-cost mobile broadband to drive penetration. He added over the next five years, he expects an additional 35 million broadband customers to come from those markets.

“The real game changer for Netflix, in our opinion, is the mobile opportunity,” Nathanson wrote, adding that based on Facebook and Instagram usage in those markets, the potential is huge. He estimated if Netflix could capture 2% of the Facebook users in Europe, Middle East and Africa and 5% in Asia-Pacific, it would add 50 million new customers to its rolls by 2024.

Netflix, already focused heavily on its international opportunity as the U.S. market matures, will likely get most of its future growth from three key areas, with mobile broadband users representing the greatest opportunity, according to a report by MoffettNathanson media analyst Michael Nathanson.

Netflix has about 167 million paid subscribers globally, with 61 million of those in the U.S. and 105 million elsewhere.  Domestic subscriber growth has slowed in the past several years from 5.3 million in 2012 to 2.6 million in 2019, and will likely continue over the next few years. Nathanson estimates that paid customer additions will shrink to 1.7 million in 2020 and to 903,000 by 2024.

Also read: Netflix's Library Through the Years

The flattening out of the U.S. market was just a matter of time, Nathanson wrote. With 61 million U.S. subscribers, Netflix is now streamed in 76% of homes that stream video, and 80% of homes that have broadband. So, it was only logical that growth would decline. And decline it did, sharply. The 2.6 million U.S. subscriber additions Netflix reported in 2019 was 55% below the 4.5 million adds in the prior year. For the next five years at least, Nathanson predicts that U.S. adds will be around 1 million per year. 

Nathanson added that even as cord cutting accelerates -- pay TV subscribers are declining at about a 3% annual clip -- it won’t help Netflix domestic subscriber rolls, because its existing penetration with pay TV providers is high. He estimated that with Comcast alone -- which integrated the Netflix app in its X1 operating system in 2016 -- penetration is about 67%.

“In other words, people are cutting the cord because they have Netflix,” Nathanson wrote. “They’re not cutting the cord and discovering Netflix for the first time.” 

But it’s a different story internationally, and Nathanson believes that subscriber growth outside of the U.S. should more than double in the next five years. Nathanson estimated that Netflix would have 305.2 million global paid customers by 2024, with 66.4 million in the U.S. and 238.8 million in other countries. 

Also helping out Netflix’s positioning internationally, is the near lack of competition from other streaming services. In his note, Nathanson pointed out that Comcast, despite its ownership pf British satellite TV service provider Sky, didn’t mention an international component to its streaming Peacock service, which will launch in April. AT&T’s HBO Max will have a delayed international debut as the company agreed to extend its own content licensing agreement with Sky.     

“That lack of international competition presents a long and open green field of opportunity for Netflix to keep growing outside the U.S.,” Nathanson wrote.

The analyst expects Netflix subscriber growth to focus on two areas with the most low hanging fruit first: U.S. Clones (those markets with high disposable incomes and broadband penetration and English-language fluency); and “Local Language Giants” (like Japan, South Korea and France).

U.S. clones could create 16 million more broadband subscribers over the next five years, with 50 million additional high-speed internet customers coming from “local language markets by 2024," he predicted.  

“Mobile First” countries like India and Southeast Asia, will require a little more work in terms of lower pricing and greater localization of content, Nathanson wrote, adding that Netflix would have to promote low-cost mobile broadband to drive penetration. He added over the next five years, he expects an additional 35 million broadband customers to come from those markets. 

“The real game changer for Netflix, in our opinion, is the mobile opportunity,” Nathanson wrote, adding that based on Facebook and Instagram usage in those markets, the potential is huge. He estimated if Netflix could capture 2% of the Facebook users in Europe, Middle East and Africa and 5% in Asia-Pacific, it would add 50 million new customers to its rolls by 2024.

For the industry to truly thrive, however, it will need to address the challenges that inevitably come with a growing share of audience time and attention. Within the past year, there’s been a wealth of media coverage suggesting that ad fraud has become a serious issue for OTT platforms. Left unaddressed, it has the potential to stifle growth for the channel, with advertisers opting to spend their media budgets in more mature environments.

The good news is that this isn’t a new phenomenon. Fraud follows money, and as the OTT industry matures, it is experiencing the same growing pains that in-app ecosystems had to start confronting nearly a decade ago. Many of those same lessons are equally applicable to the growth of OTT, starting with the ability to reliably identify fraudsters based on quantifiable behavioral patterns.

Recognizing non-human behaviors

For mobile advertising demand sources, fraud prevention is a two-pronged strategy. The first is the creation of rules that prevent known fraud instances from recurring — a rules-based strategy. The second technique is to get proactive about identifying unusual patterns that are unlikely to represent human behavior. This second approach is essential to stopping fraud before it takes root.

The drawback is that proactive fraud prevention can be significantly more challenging for demand sources. It requires the ability to extensively analyze device IDs, IP addresses, network activity, and the various ways users engage with advertisements. Most importantly, it requires an understanding of what type of behavior could reasonably be accomplished by a human. If your behavioral metrics suggest a user has engaged with five hours of advertising content within fifteen seconds, that’s likely related to fraud. In the OTT space, this could appear as a user who watches videos twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without taking a single break.

This understanding isn’t just necessary to spot fraudulent behavior, it’s required to prevent platforms from becoming too cautious. If you’re overzealous in flagging statistically unusual behavior, it’s increasingly likely that you will generate multiple false positives. Eliminating all fraud is costly and next to impossible — the better goal is to aim for the “center mass” of ad fraud that mitigates the majority of instances and makes the space safer for advertisers.

Work to unify fractured environments

Fraudsters aren’t just targeting OTT platforms that are monetized with ad revenue — they’re targeting the fractures that have emerged out of discrete solutions evolving in isolation. Since OTT platforms are relatively new, each brand has its own internally designed advertising standards. This creates a variety of weak points that fraudsters can probe for opportunities.

Mobile ad networks have experienced this trend first hand — Android devices were notoriously prone to fraud because apps can be downloaded from any third-party website or storefront. iOS devices, on the other hand, are always integrated with a unified App Store. This allowed Apple to establish universal standards that made it harder for fraudsters to operate.

Fractured environments aren’t caused by any inherent flaws in device hardware or ad delivery methods. Instead, by offering channels for third-parties to define an experience, the easier it is for malicious agents to take advantage. The more disparate your advertising environment is, the less transparent each interaction becomes -- and transparency is essential for reducing fraud in any meaningful way.

Unfortunately, creating transparency at this scale isn’t something that can be accomplished alone.

Pursue shared standards with competitors

It’s always possible to surpass the technical skills of any individual fraudster. To combat fraud at scale, however, the advertising environment needs to be harmonious — which is easier said than done. A unified ecosystem requires each demand source and advertising partner to adopt universal standards, but finding shared definitions is a challenge in itself.

What should count as an impression? What interactions are measured as clicks? Does watching 90% of a video mean it is “completed” for advertising purposes? The answers might seem obvious, but many ad networks have unique definitions for each metric. Facebook in particular has faced notable criticism for considering a completed video view to mean just three seconds. And that’s before defining what activity constitutes fraud itself.

Admittedly, creating shared standards means demand sources must cooperate with their direct competitors. While transparency is healthy for any ad industry, actually initiating the process can leave individual networks feeling vulnerable. It’s crucial to remember that the consequences of failing to address ad fraud are greater than any individual perceived loss of competitive advantage. The more that demand sources are able to reach a consensus when it comes to advertising standards, the easier it will be for advertisers to invest in them. A rising tide lifts all platforms.

Partner with third-party solutions

Once universal standards are established, how do advertising partners guarantee transparency? Historically, the best approach has been to partner with objective third parties who help ensure everyone is on the same page. For mobile ad networks, these are mobile measurement partners (MMPs) who manage the tracking and attribution of downstream behavior to individual ad campaigns and their associated channels.

Before MMPs, many networks custom-built a solution for recording user data. In practice, this slowed down advertising deployments and disrupted the overall user experience. MMPs offer unified sources of data that streamline the collection and analysis of campaign-specific data, allowing for the first steps to be taken towards standardization.

If OTT platforms follow the same trajectory as in-app advertising, these solutions should materialize very soon. When they do, I have one piece of advice: Don’t ignore them. Never assume your SDK is going to beat the competition. Advertisers want all of their data in one spot, and nothing your SDK offers will beat the security and transparency that access provides. Even giants like Facebook, which provides a first-party SDK, has partnered with MMPs for these exact reasons. Once you start hearing about the same measurement partner from multiple advertisers, it’s probably time to consider working with them yourself!

OTT platforms won’t be able to overcome all advertising fraud overnight, but solutions do exist. By following the lessons of mobile ad networks — seeking out non-human behavior, creating shared standards, and working with third-party solutions — providers will be able to better serve advertisers and drive the continued growth of the environment.

Sarah Chafer is the executive VP of global sales at Tapjoy. She is responsible for global performance & brand sales revenue growth and product adoption. She has been with the company since 2009 and saw them through the transition from web-based advertising to mobile in 2010.

Prior to joining Tapjoy, Sarah was a media director at Medley, Inc. a global digital agency responsible for dating brands. There she was responsible for the user acquisition and affiliate sales team. Sarah has previously held senior level roles at IAC, and Yahoo.

President Donald Trump has made winning a chief goal, including beating the Chinese in the race to 5G supremacy. 

In a speech to the Mobile World Congress Americas in Los Angeles, she pointed out that NTIA had pledged that victory at last year's conference and made the case for why the Trump Administration was delivering on that pledge. 

She said that included a long-term spectrum policy, removing obstacles to infrastructure buildouts by streamlining permitting and identifying security gaps. The first two have been the province of the FCC, which has been freeing up spectrum, high and low as it were, for 5G, as well as loosening regs on cell tower environmental and historical reviews and putting other local reviews on the clock. 

She said that there were 5G networks in 35 cities, with that number expected to be pushing 100 by year's end. 

Throw in Silicon Valley chip leadership and more, and "that is what winning looks like," she said. 

She credited the "unmatched power of the free enterprise system" as the engine of that victory track.

Charter Communications said Friday that its new consumer wireless service, Spectrum Mobile, added 208,000 lines in the second quarter, bringing it to 518,000 lines since launching at the end of June of last year.

The service also generated $158 million in revenue in Q2, up from $140 million in the first quarter. Spectrum Mobile is on track to generate at least $600 million in revenue this year, Charter said.

Expenses from the mobile operation totaled $277 million in Q2, slightly up over $260 million in the first quarter as Charter ramps up marketing for the service. The adjusted EBITDA loss for mobile was $119 million during the quarter. 

(Seeking Alpha has Charter’s complete Q2 slide deck here.)

Spectrum Mobile wasn’t in the market in the second quarter of 2018, so there’s no direct year-over-year figure to compare that loss to.

Notably, however, Comcast, which partners its Xfinity Mobile service with Spectrum Mobile for key operations, and also bases its platform on a very similar MVNO agreement with Verizon, reported an EBITDA loss on mobile of $185 million in Q2 2018—that was also just under a year after launch.

Both Comcast and Charter have said their respective mobile services will reach profitability when the percentage of their customers taking mobile service reaches mid to high single digits.

MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said in his report on Charter Friday that he remains “skeptical” that Comcast and Charter’s Verizon MVNO model will ever be profitable.

However, with Comcast revealing narrowing Xfinity Mobile losses in its own Q2 earnings report Thursday, “the worst of the losses will be felt this year, and then should begin to moderate as the business reaches something closer to steady state.” 

“We have also implemented a solution that provides additional safeguards around our porting process, and we’re working aggressively towards a PIN-based solution,” Comcast said in a statement, which didn’t outline the safeguard procedures.

“We are reaching out to impacted customers to apologize and work with them to address the issue,” Comcast added. “We take this very seriously, and our fraud detection and prevention methods, policies and procedures are continually being reviewed, tested and refined.”

The issue surfaced last week, when a Lodi, California Xfinity Mobile customer detailed what he called “a security breach large enough to drive a truck through” to the Washington Post.

Wireless carriers typically assign a four-digit personal identification code (PIN) to customers, who use it for authentication when they want to move their phone number from one carrier to another. For convenience, Comcast had each customer assigned to “0000” PIN code.

Armed with a the Lodi customer’s credit card data, an identity thief was able to also steal his phone number using this 0000 code. With that phone number and the credit card info, the thief reportedly created a Samsung Pay account and purchased a computer at an Apple Store in Atlanta.

Comcast reps noted that in order to steal the phone number, the thief had to also have the customer’s full Xfinity Mobile account number. And to get that number, the thief would have to access Comcast’s password-protected online customer portal.

Comcast blamed the issue on bad password management by the customer. 

In the Lodi case, Comcast said the customer used the same password for multiple accounts involving numerous companies.

“We believe this has only affected customers whose passwords might have been included in previous, non-Comcast related breaches. We recommend that customers use unique, strong passwords,” the Comcast statement added.

Comcast also attempted to paint the picture of a broader industry security problem. 

“The fraudulent porting of mobile numbers is a well-known industry issue and not unique to Xfinity Mobile,” Comcast also said.

That may be true, but Comcast is once again in crises communications mode, playing defense on a bad-looking story proliferating across the viral internet. Indeed, with Xfinity Mobile now boasting 1.2 million customers, and many financial institutions now using mobile numbers as a lynchpin to two-factor authentication, stories about protecting numbers with default PIN codes don’t have the best optics. 

Cisco’s Mobile Visual Network Index (VNI) predicts that in three years, only about 3% of total mobile connections will occur over 5G networks. And connections, both to 5G device users and machine-to-machine systems, will account for only about 12% of global mobile data traffic.

Certainly, the amount of mobile traffic has steeply increased. Cisco predicts that by 2022, mobile usage will account for nearly 20% of global IP traffic, reaching 930 exabytes annually. That’s up nearly 113 times over mobile traffic generated in 2012.

Other predictions include increased usage of low-power, wide-area networks (LPWA), which supported only around 1.5% of mobile devices and M2M connections in 2017, but will grow to 14% by 2022.

By 2022, Cisco said that 4G networks will support about 54% of mobile connections worldwide.

Cisco, meanwhile, forecasts modest increases of mobile traffic to Wi-Fi: In 2017, 54% of mobile data traffic was offloaded; but by 2022, 59% of global mobile data traffic will be offloaded to Wi-Fi. 

Notably, the company said it is building out so much wireless network infrastructure, it will operate more as a mobile network operator than a mobile virtual network operator that leases wireless network services. 

“We will be operating our own core network with its own [Home Location Register], which is the brain of the mobile network,” said Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei, speaking during the operator’s third-quarter earnings conference call.

“This means we will manage our own customer base and mobile services, as well as provide our own SIM cards, so we can negotiate costs with our SOM suppliers directly and mange the configuration where we have scale and benefit from a lot of legacy experience in countries outside the U.S.,” Goei added.

Related: Altice Says ‘Facilities-Based MVNO’ Approach Limits Partnership Potential with Comcast, Charter

Altice USA is launching its mobile service based on an MVNO deal carved out with Sprint last year. The cable operator agreed to help densify the wireless company’s network to enhance coverage and capacity in its own footprint. Goei said Altice still has a lower wholesale network lease price than “light MVNO” users like Comcast and Charter, which have partnered up with Verizon.

“In other words, we are getting ready to operate almost like an MNO and will provide a great value proposition to our customers and the market,” he said.

“We basically own and control everything apart from spectrum and base stations, although we are currently testing CBRS spectrum, and will see if any spectrum locally becomes available,” Goei added.

Related: Charter Reports 21,000 Mobile Sub Lines, Mulls CBRS Network Plans

Altice, Goei explained, has a “path” to a spectrum strategy, whereas light MVNO users need to switch strategyes and build out their own mobile infrastructure to capitalize on the benefits of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service.

Goei also touted the Altice’s ability to deliver better data offloading, noting that the operator’s dense WiFi coverage will enable better handoff between networks.

And he added that a “light MVNO restricts the services you can offer and how you can market to customers … You might have to sell in bundles and might not be able to sell a standalone product.”

Charter’s video results weren’t quite as dramatic as those of Comcast – which lost 140,000 video customers in Q2, four times its Q2 2017 losses. Charter attributed the results to the continued conversion of legacy Time Warner Cable and Bright House customers to new packaging and pricing plans.

Still, Charter’s results beat most analysts’ expectations.

In a research note, Evercore ISI media analyst Vijay Jayant said the results were “healthy,” and beat his estimates of 110,000 video losses and 180,000 broadband customer gains.

Revenue in the period rose 4.8% to $10.9 billion and cash flow increased 5.3% to $4.1 billion.

Charter said at the end of the quarter, 91% of its footprint was all-digital. As of June 30, about 6% of its legacy Time Warner Cable footprint and 50% of its legacy Bright House Networks footprint were not yet all-digital.

Related: New York: Charter Has to Stop Operating Former TWC Systems in State

Charter also launched its Spectrum Mobile wireless service, part of its MVNO agreement with Verizon Communications, on June 30.

"Over the last two years, we have invested significantly to quickly integrate and unify the operating strategies of three large cable operators. While that process is disruptive, it has allowed us to position our residential and commercial businesses for long term growth and success, which is beginning to show in our operating results," Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said in a statement. "By the end of this year our integration will be nearly complete, and we will be operating as one company, with a unified product, marketing, and service infrastructure, which will allow us to accelerate growth and innovate faster."

That is the conclusion of a June study of 10,000 consumers commissioned by the Internet Innovation Alliance.

IIA honorary chairman Rick Boucher said the FCC relied on the 2016 analysis in making the determination they are not substitutes, and that those findings are now obsolete. He said it was time for a fresh look at fixed and mobile broadband, and the IIA was sharing the findings and an accompanying white paper with the FCC Tuesday (July 17).

Boucher said 43% of respondents either preferred mobile or had no preference, with 47% saying they preferred fixed, which Boucher said was functional equivalency. 

He also said consumers use wired and wireless in the same ways across various functions, including streaming video or watching news and reports.

Boucher said the FCC should tell Congress in its next annual report on availability of advanced communications that the two are functional equivalents.

Related: CWA Says Wireless Is No Substitute for Wired Broadband

The FCC is under a congressional directive to periodically assess deployment of advanced communications and is empowered to regulate in the event it finds it is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely manner, as was the finding of the report under FCC chair Ajit Pai's Democratic predecessors.

Boucher said the goal is for the FCC to use the most current data when it reports to Congress, which has made it clear that deployment of advanced communications is a key policy goal.

Consumers are seeing fixed and mobile services as exchangeable on price, affordability and speed, not simply that they would like mobile as well as fixed, all those things being equal, Boucher said, adding that when 5G arrives, the numbers will shift dramatically toward the mobile side.

But even with the numbers moving toward functional equivalency, fixed broadband remains the preferred access point, with 26% saying that was their preference, versus 23% for mobile, 20% no preference, 14% fiber and 7% DSL.

Pushing ahead with a plan to launch mobile services next year, Altice USA has hired Jean-Charles Nicolas as senior vice president of Altice Mobile.

In the newly created role, Nicolas will lead the development and launch and ongoing market strategy for Altice USA’s mobile service, set to debut sometime in 2019 and tie into the company’s “full” MVNO deal with Sprint that will give Altice control over the resulting service’s features and customer experience

RELATED: Altice USA, Sprint Strike ‘Full’ MVNO Deal

Altice USA is also looking to test the emerging CBRS shared spectrum band and a small cell strategy that could help it offload a portion of its anticipated MVNO costs.

RELATED: Altice USA Eyes CBRS Small Cell Strategy

Nicolas, who reports to Altice USA co-president and COO Hakim Boubazine, will also head up the Altice Mobile’s customer experience, including operations, marketing, sales, and customer care. He and his mobile team will be based at Altice’s headquarters on Long Island.

Nicolas joined Altice Group in 2009, and most recently was deputy CEO and CFO at Altice Dominicana, where he managed the daily operations of all the company’s services, including its mobile business. Nicolas is also late of Neuf Cegetel, a France-based wireless and MVNO provider, and Alten, a tech and engineering firm that worked with mobile companies such as Alcatel and Nokia.

“Jean-Charles brings with him more than 20 years of experience in the mobile communications industry, and we are pleased to have him join us in the U.S. as we prepare to launch our mobile service and introduce disruptive and differentiating offers to our residential and business customers,” Boubazine said in a statement. “Our expansion into the U.S. mobile industry is an exciting evolution for Altice USA, enabling us to deliver best-in-class entertainment and innovative digital services through high-quality, ubiquitous and seamless connectivity. We are making great progress readying our network infrastructure and customer management platforms to support our mobile offering and are glad to have Jean-Charles onboard for this next phase as we bring our wireless product to market.” 

Ian Whiting doesn’t expect to rock the boat when he officially takes the helm of Ruckus Networks on July 1.

Whiting is stepping in then as president of Arris’s Enterprise Networks unit, which includes the wireless/mobile-focused Ruckus, said he intends to move ahead with a strategy that he forged with Dan Rabinovitsj, the person he is succeeding in that role.

RELATED: Ian Whiting Tapped to Head Up Ruckus Networks

“I don’t anticipate needing to make any changes to strategy,” he said, noting that he, who has been serving as Ruckus’s chief strategy officer, worked closely with Rabinovitsj, on the integration following Arris’s acquisition of Ruckus late last year.

“I think we share the same view of where we fit into the industry,” Whiting said. “That’s the plan – to stick with it.”

He said the general focus is for Ruckus to continue to focus on its key verticals, expand on the service provider market, and broaden the international scope of its business.

RELATED: Arris Closes Ruckus Wireless Acquisition

Whiting will be taking over as the relatively new Enterprise unit of Arris is performing well in the early going.

RELATED: Ruckus Gears Up for the CBRS Band

And part of the plan going forward is to have Ruckus Networks play a more prominent role in the growing Internet of Things market, edge computing, and the opportunities ahead for CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service), an emerging shared swath of spectrum that will play a big role in new private LTE networks and factor into cable’s mobile and wireless tech and service strategies.

IoT presents the nearer-term opportunity, as Ruckus has already begun to ship IoT gateway products.

The CBRS sector is in the early adopter phase as the FCC and other agencies iron out rules for the spectrum, but it’s also “building quite a head of steam,” he said.

RELATED: Cable’s Latest, Greatest Wireless Opportunity

Arris, he added, has been required to put more resources into that as it responds to demand from customers that are pushing ahead on trials and proof-on-concept deployments, including some early, paid opportunities. CBRS is also enabling Ruckus to enter new markets, Whiting said.

Whiting said Ruckus is also poised to jump on the market for 802.11ax WiFi, adding that upgrades to a new WiFi standard historically given the company a significant lift as customers deploy new access points and switching gear (in addition to Ruckus, Arris also acquired an ICX Switch business via its deal with Broadcom) to handle denser, higher-capacity networks.

Although much of the mobile and wireless discussion tends to focus on the U.S. and Western Europe, Whiting said Ruckus is also keeping tabs on opportunities in emerging markets, such as India, the Philippines, and Africa, where investments are being made in basic infrastructure. 

There’s a big move at the top of Ruckus Networks arriving roughly six months after Arris sealed its acquisition of the wireless-focused company.

RELATED: Arris Closes Ruckus Wireless Acquisition

Arris announced Thursday (June 14) that Ian Whiting, the chief commercial officer of Ruckus Networks, has been named president of Arris’s Enterprise Networks unit, which includes Ruckus Networks.

Whiting, who reports to Arris CEO Bruce McClelland, will succeed Dan Rabinovitsj, who is  leaving to pursue a new opportunity in the technology arena, Arris said.

Whiting’s new role at Ruckus Networks takes effect on July 1, 2018.

Rabinovitsj, who joined Arris following the acquisition, is departing after the successful integration” of Ruckus Networks and will work with Whiting to ensure a smooth transition, the company said.

In his previous role at Ruckus, Whiting has been playing a leading role in vertical markets such as education, hospitality, MDUs, government, large public venues, retail and service providers.

Arris closed its acquisition of the Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch business from Broadcom in December 2017.

The acquisition has been a positive one so far for Arris. Its new Enterprise business generated a higher than expected $170 million in Q1 2018.

The deal is also positioning Arris to become a big player in the emerging market for shared CBRS spectrum, which is expected to play a key role in the cable industry’s future mobile and wireless strategies.

RELATED: Cable’s Latest, Greatest Wireless Opportunity

Spectrum Mobile, Charter Communications's coming mobile service, reportedly will focus on plans and pricing that are in lock-step with Comcast's Xfinity Mobile service. 

Citing details from a consumer survey about Spectrum Mobile, The Boy Genius Report said that Charter plans to offer two plans – a $12 By The Gig option, and an Unlimited plan, with free talk and text, for $45 per line. Per the report, Charter’s materials also show how Spectrum Mobile will stack up against services from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

If Charter moved ahead with pricing shown in the BGR report, they will essentially mimic those of Xfinity Mobile. Comcast announced in April that it ended Q1 2018 with 577,000 Xfinity Mobile customer lines, and has previously said that most of them have opted for Comcast’s By The Gig plan.

Both Comcast and Charter are both leaning on MVNO deals with Verizon Wireless for their mobile services, and complementing them with their respective WiFi networks. Comcast and Charter are also eyeing the emerging, shared CBRS band to help them offload a chunk of their MVNO costs.

RELATED: Cable’s Latest, Greatest Wireless Opportunity (subscription required)

Charter hasn’t announced pricing or a launch date for Spectrum Mobile. However, DSL Reports said last month that Charter is eyeing a June 30 commercial launch, along with pricing that will “largely mirror” that of Xfinity Mobile. Charter and Comcast have also formed a 50/50 joint venture focused on a common backoffice and operations platform that, they believe, will drive critical scale their mobile offerings even as the branding, sales and marketing of those services remain separate.

RELATED: Charter Eyes June 30 Debut for Spectrum Mobile: Report

The new lab is being created to support cable’s development of mobile backhaul-over-DOCSIS networks, Jennifer Andreoli-Fang, distinguished technologist, wireless technologies, at CableLabs, noted in this blog post.

CableLabs is targeting this area as network operators seek out backhaul solutions that can support their move to dense, small cell architectures. CableLabs and others in the industry believe that hybrid/fiber coax (HFC) networks – and their trifecta of location, power and capacity – offer a great (and potentially lucrative) fit.

To that end, CableLabs and its partners have been working on specs that enable DOCSIS networks to serve as a mobile backhaul conduit, and CableLabs has posted a whitepaper from Andreoli-Fang and Belal Hamzeh, VP of wireless at CableLabs, that provides an update on those efforts.

The paper provides an overview of some advances made on that front, and the special needs of mobile backhaul, in areas such as bandwidth, latency and timing.

Of recent note, CableLabs and Cisco Systems announced that a test of a “Bandwidth Report” proposal (and an associated “pipelining” of the DOCSIS and LTE schedulers) showed that upstream latency for LTE data backhaul on a DOCSIS network could be reduced to about 1.1 milliseconds – well within the range of a latency goal of sub-5 milliseconds.

RELATED: CableLabs-Cisco Trial Successfully Extends Bridge Between DOCSIS and LTE

Though the test was focused on LTE, the proposal is designed to be extensible to future 5G networks. 

Canada’s Shaw Communications said this week it had completed its first 5G tech trials in Calgary, which focused on comparing signals using both 28 GHz millimeter wave and 3.5 GHz spectrum and to better understand the interoperability between those two bands.

The tests, held at Shaw’s Barlow Campus Technology Center in Calgary, was conducted with Nokia, CableLabs and Rohde & Schwarz using pre-commercial equipment.

The work in the 28 GHz band came way of developmental licenses provided by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, the operator said. Shaw has plans for additional tech trials in the coming months as it tests the emerging 5G ecosystem and moves on improving performance on its LTE-Advanced network.

“We are pleased that our first trials have been a resounding success, and through our partnerships with best-in-class industry leaders we will work to better understand 5G’s strengths and capabilities while continuing to invest in our network to offer Canadians a new era of strong and sustainable competition for the next generation of wireless technologies,” Shaw COO and CTO Zoran Stakic, said in a statement.

“The learnings from this field trial, together with the cross-industry collaboration on this and other cable industry 5G trials, ensure that Shaw and the rest of the industry are well positioned to use their fibre and HFC infrastructure to advance 5G on a broad scale,” added CableLabs SVP and CTO Ralph Brown. 

Hulu is introducing a wave of updates to its experience for mobile devices and web browsers to help meet the evolving needs and lifestyles of subscribers who view TV shows and movies on the go.

The updated experience have been optimized for smartphones and the web amid an increase in mobile viewing of both live TV and on-demand fare.

Though 78% of Hulu viewing is on connected-TV devices, a “strong cohort” of mobile-primary users has also emerged, Ben Smith, SVP and head of experience at Hulu, noted during an interview during this week’s Pay TV Show in Denver. He said mobile viewing on Hulu has increased 84% year-on-year.

Among the updates and changes, outlined in this blog post from VP of product Richard Irving, Hulu is providing direct access to its live TV product via a lightning bolt icon that’s accessible on the navigation bar as well as a dynamic live TV guide.

Hulu has also added a portrait player that lets users view the channel guide and switch between channels without leaving the content itself. When VOD content is being viewed in portrait mode, Hulu also provides recommendations on what to watch next.

The new mobile-optimized UI has also added some enhanced “scrubbing” capabilities that let users navigate more easily through the content and show a preview of the video frame.

Hulu, which recently passed 20 million subscribers (a number that includes both its live TV and SVOD customers), has also added features that provide more control of recommendations, including “Stop Suggesting” and a “Remove” from Watch History feature.

Among other additions, Hulu has added HDMI support to iOS for customers who like to link their mobile device to the TV, and enhancements that deliver the fuller navigation experience on iOS and Android smartphones that are delivering Hulu to the TV in tandem with a Chromecast streaming adapter.

Hulu is also set to bring its new, optimized platform for desktop browsers to live TV subscribers starting on May 22, with SVOD-only customers getting access to it throughout the summer.

Hulu said the new features will start to roll out to Android and iOS next week.

Smith said this marks the biggest set of changes Hulu has made since the company  introduced its next-gen experience on May 3, 2017 – also the date when Hulu launched its new live TV service in beta form.

DENVER -- 5G’s promise of faster speeds teamed with low latencies make the emerging next-gen mobile technology a great fit for video and pay TV services, Jeff Binder, executive vice president of home and entertainment at T-Mobile, said here Tuesday at the Pay TV Show.

“5G is the perfect delivery mechanism for video,” offering improvements over 4G/LTE, said Binder in a keynote conversation at the event, put on by Fierce and parent company Questex.

Binder, who joined T-Mobile following the mobile service provider’s acquisition of Denver-based Layer3 TV, reiterated that leading the 5G wave is a key component of the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint.

RELATED: T-Mobile Paid $325 Million for Layer3 TV

Binder wouldn’t reveal much more new detail about T-Mobile’s plans for an OTT-delivered pay TV service in the wake of its acquisition of Layer3 TV, with respect to pricing and packaging, but said the plan remains to bring to bear a “disruptive” offering. He also reconfirmed that the current plan is to launch that product later this year.

Prior to the acquisition, Layer3 TV was largely focused on an in-home, full-freight pay TV service with 4K-capable boxes delivered over IP. Moving forward, T-Mobile’s plans is to bridge the TV with the more advanced and personalized capabilities that consumers get with their smartphones.

The TV has “been an island in the home,” Binder said. “Mobile and TV [today] look more alike than less alike." T-Mobile intends to change that, he said, adding that the plan is also bring T-Mobile’s “Uncarrier” principles to the pay TV realm.

“It’s more than branding,” Binder said of the Uncarrier approach, holding that T-Mobile’s approach has changed the wireless/mobile industry.

Pay TV, which continues to see subscriber numbers erode, is “ripe for disruption in that sense,” he added.

He said the T-Mobile deal will bring scale that Layer3 TV didn’t have on its own.

Before the deal, Layer3 TV was focused on an in-home product in a handful of markets, and found that the acquisition costs “were pretty reasonable,” Binder said.

RELATED: Layer3 TV: A Different Kind of Animal

However, the big challenge for a new, relatively small entrant is reach and cost of marketing, Binder pointed out. “You need scale. Scale is really important.”

Binder also hinted that the coming product won’t be a mobile-only play or rely solely on TV-connected devices that would only come from the company.

“We’ll look at various ways to serve what the customers want,” he said. “It’s about how customers want to consumer video.” 

Verizon said it teamed with a mix of vendor partners on a successful trial in Florida that tested LTE technology running on a swath of CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) spectrum on Verizon’s live commercial network.

That live trial follows a batch of trials last year and ongoing CBRS-facing work in Verizon’s lab in Texas.

The latest “real world” trial involved a set of suppliers, including Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies, and Federated Wireless, a company that is developing a platform that enables partners to run services in the emerging, shared CBRS band without interfering with incumbent users.

CBRS, a 150 MHz-wide batch of spectrum in the range of 3.55 GHz to 3.7 GHz, is being eyed for a wide range of use cases that will eventually utilize licensed and unlicensed portions alongside incumbents. Cable operators are eyeing CBRS as a way to offload some of their mobile traffic and reduce MVNO-related costs. CBRS will also be used to nail up private LTE networks and to bring more capacity to mobile and wireless service providers.

RELATED: Altice USA Eyes CBRS Small Cell Strategy

Verizon said the trial deployment in Florida used a combination of Verizon licensed AWS and 700 MHz spectrum aggregated with 50 MHz of CBRS band 48 spectrum, and involved both outdoor and in-building systems.

RELATED: CBRS Band, Cert Program Branded as ‘OnGo’

Ericsson provided its Radio DOT system for indoor and Radio 2208 for outdoor, Qualcomm Technologies supplied its Snapdragon 845 mobile test device with X20 LTE for access to CBRS on mobile devices (devices that can access the CBRS band are expected to arrive next year), and Federated Wireless provided the prioritization through its Spectrum Controller. Ericsson also provided the domain proxy to enable radios to communicate with Federated Wireless’s Spectrum Controller.

RELATED: Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly

“As more people use more wireless devices to do more things in more places, building a network to stay ahead of customer demand is crucial,” Mike Haberman, VP of network engineering for Verizon, said in a statement.” “This shared spectrum resource is a critical component of our strategy to add capacity to our network.”

Add Altice USA to a growing list of U.S. cable operators that are eager to kick the tires on the financial and technical viability of small cell networks that utilize the emerging CBRS (Citizens Band Radio Service) shared spectrum band.

Altice USA last month issued an RFI (request for information) on CBRS small cell products as well as an RFP (request for proposal) for a multi-phase trial, Multichannel News has learned.

Charter Communications and Comcast are among other U.S. cable operators that are testing the mettle of mobile and wireless systems that utilize CBRS, a 150 MHz-wide batch of spectrum in the range of 3.55 GHz to 3.7 GHz that has been underutilized and will be allocated for incumbent users (for U.S. Navy flight operations, for example) and for new licensed and unlicensed use.

RELATED: CBRS Band, Cert Program Branded as ‘OnGo’

Tied into its CBRS-facing efforts, Altice USA is contemplating building a cellular network and exploring the financial feasibility of building a small cell network.

That work is entering the mix as Altice USA moves ahead on the development of a mobile product that will leverage a “full” MVNO agreement with Sprint. Altice USA expected to launch its mobile product in the first quarter of 2019.

RELATED: Altice USA, Sprint Strike ‘Full’ MVNO Deal

As it is with Comcast and Charter, who have MVNO deals with Verizon Wireless, Altice USA’s interest in CBRS centers on helping the operator offset what could be significant roaming payments to mobile network operators once its own mobile offering begins to scale up.

RELATED: Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly

Per information about Altice’s plan reviewed by Multichannel News, Altice USA believes it is well positioned to build a small network in part to its access to low-cost sites and a workforce that could be trained to install and maintain the new small cell network.

As for the trials, Altice USA expects the first phase to focus on the verification of its RF propagation modelling in the field, with future field trials to test LTE-based services.

RELATED: Small Cells to Play Big Role in Charter’s Mobile Future

Altice is seeking two vendors for the field trials, and those selected will become candidates for a possible full build out.

Per the project timelines reviewed by Multichannel News, RFI and RFP responses were due by the end of April, and Altice USA expects to complete its vendor selections by May 15, and start phase 1 trials by June, and phase 2 by early August.

Altice USA isn’t commenting on its plans involving CBRS, but stressed that the company is pleased with the progress it’s made concerning its mobile plans.

On Wednesday (May 9) during Altice USA’s Q1 call, company chairman and CEO Dexter Goei did offer an update on the company’s activities with Sprint, noting that the effort is ahead of schedule.

He said core network development has begun via investing into Altice USA’s WiFi network (to help with data offload) and IT platforms. Altice USA, he added, is “connecting to Sprint's microsites to support Sprint's network specification, which will benefit Altice USA's MVNO service.”

He also said the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint would be good for Altice USA’s mobile prospects.

“I think we would benefit from the roaming agreement that Sprint has with T-Mo irrespective of the closing of the transaction,” he said. “So I think it is business as usual, but expectation's that, if anything, it will be net positive.”

Samsung said its indoor 5G router has been awarded the FCC stamp, following earlier authorization of the vendor’s 5G access units and 5G-based home router.  

The latest approval give the green light to Verizon’s current 5G portfolio as it gears up to play a role in Verizon’s coming 5G-based fixed wireless services launches, starting with a rollout in Sacramento, Calif., in the second half of 2018.  

RELATED: Samsung Gets a Piece of Verizon’s 5G Action  

Verizon is also working with Ericsson for a 5G-based rollout in select markets as the company looks to deploy residential 5G broadband services in as many as five markets later this year.  

RELATED: Verizon Picks Ericsson for Pre-Standard 5G Rollout 

Samsung introduced its commercial 5G-based fixed wireless access platform earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, noting then that the equipment was already involved in several field trials in multiple markets. Verizon and Samsung have teamed on 5G trials in parts of California, Georgia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas, and Washington, D.C. 

Speaking on Verizon’s recent Q1 earnings call, Matthew Ellis, Verizon’s EVP and CFO, said Verizon had completed its pre-commercial trials, demonstrating propagation over 2,000 feet from the node using millimeter wave spectrum. 

Reflecting the mobile aspects of the emerging shared Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) band, the CBRS Alliance has introduced “OnGo” as the brand for the LTE-based swath of spectrum as well as the product ecosystem’s certification program.

The CBRS Alliance introduced OnGo in concert with the group’s annual member’s meeting in Washington, D.C.

The OnGo brand and cert program will center on a 150 MHz-wide batch of spectrum in the range of 3.55 GHz to 3.7 GHz that has been underutilized. Its use has been limited to the U.S. Navy for flight operations for aircraft carriers along with some satellite uplinks, but a portion of it will also be allocated for licensed (Priority Access Licenses) and unlicensed use (general authorized access). A new class of spectrum allocation servers will ensure that new users in the band don’t interfere with incumbent users.

RELATED: Federated Wireless Targets ‘Third Model’ for Mobile (subscription required)

Cable operators such as Comcast and Charter Communications eyeing the CBRS/OnGo band for wireless and mobile services as a way to offset some of the costs they incur from MVNO agreements that partly are underpinning their new mobile services.

RELATED: Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly

Chris Stark, a board member of the CBRS Alliance and exec with Nokia, said the OnGo brand is being launched as the Alliance looks to diversify its membership and reach out to adjacent industries.

Part of the aim, he said, is to use a brand tied to the CBRS opportunity to new verticals in a way that’s a bit less techy while also spelling out other benefits of the emerging spectrum band.

The CBRS Alliance released two specs aimed at product interoperability last month.

The certification program for CBRS-facing products will also use the OnGo brand to identify equipment that passes the test. In addition to interoperability, the specs also align with WInnForum standards and are designed to ensure all products that earn OnGo Certification also receive simultaneous FCC Certification, the group said.

Certification will take place at more than ten authorized test labs around the world in the early going. The CBRS Alliance has not announced certification test pricing or listed out locations of those authorized lab sites.

The CBRS Alliance counts members such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Arris/Ruckus Networks, Google, CableLabs, and Charter Communications.

RELATED: Ruckus Gears Up for CBRS Band

RELATED: Comcast Adds 197K Xfinity Mobile Customer Lines in Q1

Among consumers who now use Xfinity Mobile as their primary mobile carrier, 27% are former Verizon Wireless customers, and 20% came from AT&T, versus just 12% from Sprint, MarketStrategies International found in a study focused on what the firm calls the “Xfinity Mobile Effect.”

The study was based on an online survey of 1,044 adults conducted in March that included Xfinity Mobile customers, Comcast customers without Xfinity Mobile, and non-Comcast customers. Data was weighted to reflect current wireless carrier market share.

Xfinity Mobile leans on an MVNO deal with Verizon Wireless and tied into Comcast’s WiFi network. Comcast added 197,000 Xfinity Mobile customer lines in Q1 2018, ending the period with 577,000. Charter Communications plans to launch Spectrum Mobile, a service that also relies on a Verizon MVNO deal, by mid-2018.

RELATED: Charter Eyes June 30 Debut for Spectrum Mobile: Report

As for drivers for those who did switch to Xfinity Mobile, 75% of the total said overall plan costs was the largest, compared to data costs and the use of WiFi hotspots to save on data usage and costs (38% each), and 28% cited free talk and text on up to five lines.

More detail about the study and Comcast’s mobile offering, including how it is faring in the early going from a Net Promoter Score perspective, will be featured in the May 7 issue of MultichannelNews. 

Charter Communications is shooting for a June 30 commercial launch of Spectrum Mobile, though the timing could change should complications arise, DSL Reports said.

DSL Reports, citing a source familiar with Charter’s plan, said it’s also expected that Charter’s initial pricing on Spectrum Mobile will “largely mirror” that of Xfinity Mobile, which currently offers unlimited and by-the-Gig options. Comcast launched Xfinity Mobile about a year ago, and ended Q1 2018 with 577,000 Xfinity Mobile customer lines.

RELATED: Comcast Adds 197K Xfinity Mobile Customer Lines in Q1

Charter isn’t commenting on the report, noting only that it will announce details as it gets closer to the launch of Spectrum Mobile.

However, the reported timing of Charter’s Spectrum Mobile launch fits with the stated plan by the MSO to launch the service by mid-year. Like Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile service, Charter’s offering will lean on an MVNO deal with Verizon Wireless.

RELATED: Small Cells to Play Big Role in Charter’s Mobile Future

Speaking on the company’s Q1 call in late April, Charter chairman and CEO noted that Charter has kicked off a field trial with 5,000 employees ahead of the anticipated commercial launch, and is already modifying retail stores and prepping call centers for Spectrum Mobile.

RELATED: Charter Testing Mobile Product with 5K Employees

Charter and Comcast have also formed a 50/50 joint venture focused on a common backoffice platform and operations platform that should help both MSOs scale up their mobile offerings. Charter and Comcast will be branding, selling and marketing their respective mobile services separately, however.

RELATED: Comcast, Charter Form Mobile Platform Partnership

T-Mobile’s pending merger with Sprint and its recent acquisition of Layer3 TV will help to power a new “quad play” that includes speedy wireless broadband and pay TV services, company execs said on Tuesday’s Q1 earnings call.

RELATED: T-Mobile, Sprint to Combine in $146B All-Stock Deal

With an eye toward 450 Mbps via a national 5G network, “of course, we can be a competitor in that [broadband services] space,” Braxton Carter, T-Mobile’s CFO, said, when asked if wireless can be viewed as a wireline replacement. “And this is a market that is incredibly underserved…There’s a huge opportunity here for us to bring real competiveness to that market for the first time.”

T-Mobile’s ambitions for entering the TV business, via the Layer3 TV deal, is also poised to ratchet up with the proposed combination with Sprint, he said.

RELATED: T-Mobile Paid $325 Million for Layer3 TV

“Now you have a network, where you can provide...IPTV service not just through [the] home broadband connection…but through a wireless alternative to their home broadband as well,” Carter added.

T-Mobile’s Q4 release also shed a bit more detail on the Layer3 TV acquisition, which closed on January 22. As a result of that deal, T-Mobile included an adjustment of 5,000 “branded prepaid customers” to its reported subscriber base as of January 22. Customer activity from Layer3 TV post acquisition was included in T-Mobile’s net customer additions for Q1 2018. T-Mobile reported 1.43 million total net adds in Q1, which included 199,000 branded prepaid net adds.

Prior to its acquisition by T-Mobile, Layer3 TV was focused on an in-home, IP-delivered pay TV offering in select markets that include Los Angeles; Chicago; Washington D.C.; Dallas/Ft. Worth; and Longmont, Colo. (in partnership with a municipal provider called NextLight).

Looking ahead, T-Mobile has plans to launch a national OTT TV service later this year. T-Mobile has not announced pricing and packaging for that offering, but it’s expected to compete with traditional MVPDs (cable, telco and satellite) as well as a growing mix of internet-based, virtual MVPDs that today include DirecTV Now, Sling TV, Hulu, YouTube TV, fuboTV and PlayStation Vue. 

Arris’s Q1 results were a mixed bag as solid growth in its Network & Cloud and Enterprise segments arrived alongside a sales slowdown for both video and broadband consumer premises equipment (CPE).

Arris Q1 CPE sales were $875 million ($323 million for broadband devices and $552 million for video devices), down from $1.05 billion ($424 million for broadband devices and $631 million for video devices) in the year-ago period.

The decline in video set-top sales reflected the general softness of the pay market, while direct revenue contribution was impacted by both lower sales volumes and ongoing memory cost issues.

With that backdrop, Arris has already said it would be more selective with its set-top business and put more emphasis on profitability.

RELATED: Arris to Be ‘More Selective’ With Its Set-Top Box Business

Arris is also working with customers on pricing adjustments that reflect increased memory costs, but those benefits are expected to emerge in the second half of the year, Bruce McClelland, Arris’s CEO, said Tuesday on the earnings call.

The drop in broadband CPE sales was attributed to typical “seasonality” in Arris’s business alongside reduced purchases of DOCSIS 3.0 modems and gateways in anticipation of accelerating investments in DOCSIS 3.1 devices, McClelland said

He called that situation a “short-term blip,” noting that Arris will probably exit 2018 with 30% to 40% of cable broadband CPE being DOCSIS 3.1 devices, up from roughly 10% by the end of 2017.

“We expect momentum to return again this quarter as several new DOCSIS 3.1 products ramped up volume and we continue to anticipate a robust broadband CPE upgrade cycle tied to the customer migration to Gigabit services as we're seeing already in our Network & Cloud business,” he explained.

He said Arris expects CPE revenues to return to the “billion dollar range” in the second quarter.

However, “pressure on product cost has not abated, with memory prices continuing to increase and lead times and availability of other components becoming more challenging,” McClelland said.

On the network side, Arris saw strong sales for its E6000 converged cable access platform as MSOs bought into Gen 2 line cards that more than double capacity. Q1 revenues for Arris's Network & Cloud segment were $536.3 million, up 25% year-over-year. 

“We were a little surprised by the strength of the DOCSIS 3.1 capacity purchases this quarter as we'd expected some of this demand later in the year,” McClelland said.

Arris’s new Enterprise business, driven by its acquisition of Ruckus Wireless, came in at a higher than expected $170 million in the quarter.

McClelland said Ruckus Networks has more than 20 technology and operational trials using the CBRS 3.5 GHz band, a slice of shared spectrum that's expected to factor heavily into cable’s future mobile and wireless strategies.

RELATED: Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly

Another bright spot was international sales, which grew 30% year-on-year, a contributed 43% to Arris’s overall revenue in Q1.

Overall Q1 sales were $1.57 billion, down from $1.48 billion in the year-ago quarter and below Wall Street consensus of $1.6 billion, but in line with company guidance. 

Arris ended the quarter with $543 million of cash resources, up from $511 million at the end of 2017.

Arris expects Q2 sales in the range of $1.76 billion to $1.81 billion, reflecting an expected rise in CPE sales, and full-year 2018 revenues of $7.1 billion to $7.3 billion. 

Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold reiterated his “Strong Buy” on Arris stock and a target price of $37 per share. 

Among what’s new in the version 4.0 release includes features such as Start Over, Lookback for Sports (replays of days that aired in the last three days); and My Fubo, a section where subs can stream and schedule cloud DVR recordings.  

Also new is an upgraded, faster version of the guide.  

The new release also comes on the heels of the 4.0 launch of fuboTV’s Android app.  

fuboTV announced in October 2017 that it had surpassed 100,000 subscribers. 

In anticipation of the commercial launch of its mobile product, Charter Communications recently kicked off a field trial with 5,000 employees, with plans to have them go through the end-to-end sales activation and service process in May, Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said Friday on the company’s Q1 call.

Charter is also in the process of building out its sales channels and service capabilities for the coming product, a project that includes modifying several hundred of its retail stores and preparing its call centers.

Rutledge said Charter is likewise on track to launch the offering, which will be called Spectrum Mobile and lean on an MVNO deal with Verizon Wireless, around mid-2018.

Charter has not announced specifics on how it will price and sell its new mobile product, which will also take advantage of Charter’s WiFi infrastructure.

“Ultimately, the goal is to use our mobile service to attract and retain cable bundled, multi-product customers,” he said.

Rutledge also said the 50/50 joint venture with Comcast focused on the mobile backoffice platform and operations will help Charter accelerate its ability to scale its mobile offering.

RELATED: Comcast, Charter Form Mobile Platform Partnership

He also reiterated Charter’s plan to underpin the company’s wireless/mobile effort using a mix of licensed and unlicensed spectrum, including millimeter wave spectrum in the neighborhood of 28 GHz as well as the emerging shared spectrum CBRS 3.5 GHz band.

RELATED: Charter Sees Potential Compromise on CBRS License Areas

Rutledge estimated that Charter has about 250 million authenticated wireless devices connected to its network of 25 million small cells.

RELATED: Small Cells to Play Big Role in Charter’s Mobile Future

Charter didn’t outline specific EBITA losses it will absorb from the mobile services rollout, but using those at Comcast is “as a proxy as good as any at this point,” Charter CFO Chris Winfrey, said.

Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile business generated an EBIDTA loss of $189 million in Q1.

RELATED: Comcast Adds 197K Xfinity Mobile Customer Lines in Q1

“The biggest driver there is the level of subscriber acquisition…there’s a lot of upfront subscriber acquisition costs,” Winfrey said. “Once you get to a steady year state growth the business not only has a positive EBIDTA, but a positive free cash flow contribution on a stand-alone basis. So the faster we grow, the more short-term pressure we put onto EBITDA and free cash flow."

Though pricing and packaging and marketing of their respective mobile products will differ, Charter also sees the J.V. with Comcast as a reducer of operating costs.

“The impact is driven by the speed at which we roll the business out and how successful we are in the market,” Rutledge added.

Moving to broadband, about 25% of Charter’s customer base gets minimum downstream speeds of 200 Mbps, and DOCSIS 3.1, along with 1-Gig services, is deployed to about 43% of that footprint. Charter expects to wrap its network deployment of D3.1 by year end.

RELATED: Charter Brings Spectrum Internet Gig Service to 14M More Homes

Charter capex spending rose $628 million year-over-year, to $2.18 billion, driven by an all-digital transition that requires the purchase and rollout of new two-way set-tops and other consumer premises equipment. Just $17 million of capex in Q1 was mobile-related. Charter expects cable capital intensity this year to be a bit lower than 2017, however.

Rutledge said Charter expects to be wholly-digitized by year and as it completes the process in legacy Time Warner Cable and Bright House Network areas. 

AT&T said sub gains for DirecTV Now, its OTT TV service, were more than enough to offset losses from its “linear” video service category, comprised of its DirecTV satellite TV service and U-verse video, its managed IPTV offering.  

During Q1, AT&T added 312,000 DirecTV Now subs, extending that total to 1.46 million.  

On the linear/traditional side of the pay TV ledger, AT&T lost 187,000 subs (188,000 DirecTV satellite sub losses, and 1,000 U-verse video sub gains).  

AT&T ended the quarter with 25.36 million total video connections, made up of 20.27 DirecTV satellite subs, 3.63 million U-verse video subs, and almost 1.5 million subs for DirecTV Now, the national OTT service that was launched in November 2016.  

Though DirecTV Now adds more than offset traditional pay TV losses, those lower-margin, no-contract customers are on less expensive, skinner video packages. With that as the backdrop, AT&T’s linear video ARPU for Q1 was $113.43 (or $114.91 using the company’s historical video ARPU model), well down from linear video ARPU of $121.16 in the year-ago period.  

AT&T added a net 82,000 broadband subs in Q1 via the addition of 154,000 IP broadband subs alongside a loss of 72,000 DSL customers. AT&T ended the period with 14.43 million total broadband subs (13.61 million IP, and 816,000 DSL), and more than 8 million customer locations passed with fiber. 

AT&T also ended Q1 with 9.64 million wired voice connections, down from 11 million in the year ago period.  

It also notched 3.2 million total wireless net adds – 2.6 million in the U.S., and 543,000 in Mexico.  

The company posted Q1 earnings of 85 cents per share on revenues of $38.04 billion, off from Wall Street expectations of 87 cents and $39.31 billion. AT&T shares were down  

AT&T shares were down $1.59 (4.52%) to $33.61 each in after-hours trading Wednesday.  

Those Q1 additions were just a tick ahead of the 187,000 lines that Xfinity Mobile tacked on in the previous quarter. Comcast launched the mobile service last May using its MVNO agreement with Verizon Wireless.

RELATED: Despite Video Losses, Comcast Has Strong Q1

Comcast said it’s happy with the results so far as it weaves Xfinity Mobile into its broadband service bundling strategy.

“We think Xfinity Mobile is a big opportunity to continue to drive the bundling strategy of the cable business and provide more value to our broadband customer,” Michael Cavanagh, Comcast’s senior EVP and CFO, said.

Xfinity Mobile also generated an EBIDTA loss of $189 million in the quarter as the company ramped up subscriber acquisition activities and absorbed other costs associated with getting the new business launched.

Cavanagh noted that those EBIDTA losses are in-line with guidance, adding that Comcast expects them to “be a few hundred more this year.”

At the same time, Comcast expects to get some benefits from the 50/50 mobile operations partnership formed with Charter, as both MSOs will bear those costs together as they scale up that business.

RELATED: Comcast, Charter Form Mobile Platform Partnership

Dave Watson, Comcast Cable’s president and CEO, said the partnership and its focus on backoffice operations is “critical” to how that business scales, and that it represents a “logical next step,” given the amount of alignment to how Comcast and Charter are looking at the mobile business.

“It’s relatively early, but we like the early trajectory” of the Xfinity Mobile business, Watson said.

RELATED: Xfinity Mobile Launches Bring Your Own Device Option

Though the rate of broadband subscriber growth is starting to slow, Comcast remains confident that its mix of speed, coverage and service control elements (such as its relatively new xFi offering) will enable it to take share.

Cavanagh said 75% of Comcast’s residential high-speed internet subs take speeds of 75 Mbps (downstream) or higher, and that Comcast has 1-gig services available to 90% of its footprint amid its ongoing deployment of DOCSIS 3.1

A sore point for Comcast and other cable operators continues to be the slow erosion of the pay TV subscriber base.

Comcast is trying to address that trend by segmenting the market with new skinny TV services, such as the new Xfinity Instant TV, but will continue to lead with its flagship X1 service, which is now taken by about 61% of Comcast’s residential video sub base and continues to integrate and aggregate OTT services such as YouTube, Netflix and Pandora and support other Comcast services such as Xfinity Home.

RELATED: Comcast Rolls Out ‘Xfinity Instant TV’ Beta

“We have pivoted X1 to be a whole-home platform that aggregates the best content, not just linear TV,” Brian Roberts, Comcast Corp.’s chairman and CEO, said, noting that it also serves as a “dashboard” for WiFi connect and home automation.

“It’s still early for Instant TV,” Watson said. But as virtual MVPDs start to build scale and add subscribers, Comcast has a “real opportunity to win them back,” he added.

Comcast said cable capital expenditures were down 5.2%, to $1.7 billion, reflecting a lower level of spending on consumer premises equipment (CPE), particularly for X1.

Looking ahead, Comcast expects to shift further away from video-centric CPE and more towards connectivity-driven broadband infrastructure spending, Cavanagh said.

“But…as they get traction, that will bring in more traffic to our network that we can monetize as well,” he added. “So we’re happy with that side of the equation.”

For its part, Comcast added 187,000 Xfinity Mobile customer lines in Q4 2017, ending the year with more than 380,000, with most of them gravitating to the company’s by-the-Gig option (Comcast will announce Q1 2018 results tomorrow morning).

Charter, which has teamed with Comcast on a mobile operations agreement, will launch its product, to be called Spectrum Mobile, by mid-year. Altice USA has opted for a “full” MVNO deal with Sprint, but won’t launch its mobile product until next year.

RELATED: Comcast, Charter Form Mobile Platform Partnership

Moving to 5G, Ellis said Verizon has completed its 11-city pre-commercial trials, where it has demonstrated propagation over 2,000 feet from the node using millimeter wave spectrum. Verizon is now moving ahead with plans to launch a 5G-based residential fixed wireless broadband service in as many as five markets, including Sacramento, in the second half of 2018.

RELATED: Verizon Tips Launch of 5G-Based Residential Broadband Service

“We are very much on track with being in a position to launch each of those cities later this year,” Ellis said.

As for adding mobility to 5G, Verizon will “be ready as soon as equipment is ready on the global standard,” he noted, adding that Verizon feels comfortable that it can launch mobile 5G with the assets it has.

“We are not building a 5G network for residential broadband and a different 5G network for mobility. We are deploying a 5G network that will have multiple revenue streams off of it,” the exec said.

Ellis also offered a small hint that Verizon’s coming OTT TV product will be tied to the 5G rollout.

“We continue to look at OTT options, and, as we’ve said previously, we’re not looking to launch a me-too product, but [we] certainly expect to have an overall product offering to consumers in those three to five markets what will be compelling to meet their needs.”

Verizon hasn’t outlined its specific pricing and packing plans for the OTT TV product, but it will be playing from behind, given the number of products already on the market. AT&T, for example, is following up DirecTV Now with a sports-free skinny TV bundle that will be offered for free to mobile customers on unlimited data plans and in the neighborhood of $15 per month to all others.

RELATED: AT&T Eyes Launch of Sports-Free Skinny OTT TV Service

The CBRS Alliance has released two specifications that aim to drive interoperability for devices that support the 3.5 GHz Citizens Band Radio Service, a shared swath of spectrum that cable operators are eyeing for wireless and mobile services.

RELATED: CBRS Spectrum to Open Windows of Opportunity for Cable Ops

The Network and Coexistence Baseline Specs are focused on interoperability of CBRS Alliance-certified devices that tap into that band and lean on LTE-based technologies. The CBRS Alliance, which counts AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Arris, Google, CableLabs, and Charter Communications among its members, is evangelizing LTE-based solutions in the CBRS band on the belief that it will help to ensure product interoperability.

RELATED: Ruckus Gears Up for CBRS Band

On that point, the CBRS Alliance noted that the Baseline specs aim to enable the deployment and coexistence of LTE Private Networks, LTE Neutral Host Networks or a Hybrid (Private and Neutral Hosted Network) in the 3.5 GHz band using Standard 3GPP LTE technology. They also align with WInnForum Baseline specs, the group said.

The CBRS band, a 150 MHz-wide batch of spectrum in the range of 3.55 GHz to 3.7 GHz, has been underutilized, with most of it used today by the U.S. Navy for flight operations for aircraft carriers, along with some satellite uplinks. In addition to supporting incumbent users, the spectrum will also be allocated for licensed (Priority Access Licenses) and unlicensed use (general authorized access).

That scenario is setting up a new market for spectrum allocation servers and platforms that ensure that new users in the band don’t interfere with incumbent users.

RELATED: Federated Wireless Targets ‘Third Model’ for Mobile (subscription required)

CBRS is particularly attractive to cable operators because the spectrum can be used complement their mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreements, enabling them to offset some of the network costs associated with new mobile services. Comcast and Charter are among U.S. MSOs that are conducting tests.

RELATED: Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly

“The networking and coexistence specifications are the critical foundation the industry needs to ensure seamless interoperability between CBRS Alliance-certified Citizens Broadband Radio Service Devices (CBSDs) when operating in CBRS,” Dave Wright, president of the CBRS Alliance and director, regulatory affairs & network standards at Ruckus Networks, aid in a statement. “2018 is expected to be a marquee year for CBRS, and we are particularly proud to kick it off with this significant technical achievement.”

RELATED: Small Cells to Play Big Role in Charter’s Mobile Future

“The coexistence specification ensures LTE systems in adjacent channels within the band can operate without the need for guard bands, making use of the spectrum much more efficient,” added Al Jette, chair of the Technical Working Group for the CBRS Alliance and head of North American standards at Nokia. 

Last week, representatives of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association and some top members met with FCC officials to pitch county-sized licenses for 3.5 GHz services as a compromise between census tracts and PEAs (partial economic areas).

They also raised concerns about Qualcomm's emission limit changes--to facilitate channel bonding--which the cable/broadband operators suggest could cause harmful interference to adjacent C-band incumbents and could “disproportionately disadvantage" lower-power CBRS users.

--John Eggerton contributed to this story 

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Crunchyroll, in partnership with Sumitomo Corp. and GREE, has launched its first game, called Memoria Freese, an adventure title for iOS and Android devices.

The game, released amid season 2 of DanMachi (the anime off which the game is based) is set in the world of Orario, where bands of adventurers gather to seek treasures in an underground labyrinth, known as Dungeon. The North American release of Memoria Freese features dialogue of the original Japanese version with English subtitles provided. GREE developed and designed the game, while Ellation and Sumitomo Corp. are in charge of the game’s distribution, localization and marketing under the Crunchyroll Games brand.

RELATED: SVOD Shakeout: The Survival of the Fittest (subscription required)

Crunchyroll, a service with more than 1 million paid subscribers, is offering the game for free, with in-app purchases. Crunchyroll said 90% of its users identify as gamers.

Crunchyroll’s move into gaming comes as it, and other SVODs, attempt to differentiate in a growing and fragmented market, establishing stronger ties with their audiences through ancillary but relevant products and components that extend beyond their core video offerings.

In Crunchyroll’s case, the move into gaming follows other initiatives tied to the service, including events like Crunchyroll Movie Night and Crunchyroll Expo.