As it opens its flagship trade show in Orlando, Florida Monday, The National Content & Technology Cooperative said it is closing in on landing a partnership agreement with a still undisclosed carrier or carriers for mobile service for its more than 700 member companies. 

NCTC first hinted at the deal last month. The agreement, expected to be similar to mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deals struck between other cable and wireless service providers, would allow NCTC members to provide premium cell phone service to their customers at significant discounts by the fourth quarter.

In a press release, NCTC said that multiple suppliers will be incorporated into one program that is transparent to member subscribers.  

“Mobile is increasingly crucial to many of our members who are seeking more options to meet the unique needs of their customers,” NCTC VP of Technology Innovation Jared Baumann said in a press release. “Like other benefits of NCTC membership, our new MVNO agreements will harness our collective buying power to drive  value and ease of entry for members of all sizes. Now that NCTC is firmly in the mobile game, we can benefit operators and end-users across the country by offering the most competitive deals for high-quality services.”

Also: NCTC CEO Lou Borrelli Talks ‘Connectivity Exchange,’ MVNO Deals ... and the New Name

The new MVNO agreements will allow operators to bundle MVNO services with broadband and other options, according to NCTC.

“Success in today’s complex and competitive market hinges on collaboration,” Baumann said. “Our new MVNO agreements align perfectly with the other group-based savings members already receive. Based on this, operators will be able to offer innovative new bundles and service offerings to their customers.” ■

While on the surface, Dish Network's new mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deal with AT&T looks like many other similar agreements of the past few years, at least one analyst thinks the transaction is a game changer for the satellite TV company.

In a note to clients Monday, MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett noted that the AT&T deal will give Dish the ability to become a Mobile Network Operator/MVNO "indefinitely," potentially letting it off the hook for fulfilling its federally mandated requirements to provide wireless service to the rest of the country after 2023.

"The issue here is duration," Moffett wrote.

Dish has been laying the groundwork for its wireless service for years using its own spectrum and some from other sources -- in 2019 it agreed to buy wireless spectrum and the Boost Mobile prepaid business from T-Mobile for $5 billion -- for what it claims will be a state-of-the-art 5G service based on ORAN technology. The company said its first market will go live in Las Vegas in the third quarter. 

Although it already has an MVNO agreement with T-Mobile, part of the larger deal where Dish acquired about $3.6 billion in spectrum licenses and the Boost Mobile prepaid wireless business for $1.4 billion from the carrier, that resale agreement was set to expire in 2027. In addition, T-Mobile plans to shutter its 3G CDMA wireless business on Jan. 1, a move that Dish, which relies on that network for Boost Mobile, has said would be a financial hardship. 

According to the latest agreement, AT&T will make its network available to Dish for 10 years, with a two-year transition period, pushing the expiration date to 2033. In a research note, MoffettNathanson media analyst Craig Moffett wrote that is a key part of the deal, because until now it was becoming increasingly doubtful that Dish would be able to meet federally imposed deadlines on its wireless buildout. 

Dish is under the gun to make its network available to about 70% of the country by the end of 2025, but Moffett noted that was never really a concern.

“After all, the first 70% of the population lives on just 2.9% or so of the U.S. by landmass,” Moffett noted. “ It has always been what would come after that that mattered.”

Moffett wrote that table stakes for wireless coverage in the U.S. is about 95% of the country.

“Without an MVNO agreement to fall back on, Dish would have to build that out themselves by 2027, when the T-Mobile deal was slated to expire… and the next 25% of the country occupies nearly ten times the landmass of the first 70%,” Moffett wrote.

Moffett added that even if reaching 70% of the population with its network won’t be that hard, it depends on the definition of coverage -- does it  mean merely enough to meet minimum Federal Communications Commission requirements, or service that is sufficient enough to satisfy customers? 

“The latter definition of coverage is vastly more demanding than the first; it means fill-in facilities in every airport, stadium, convention center, and congested downtown area, and every dead spot along every highway,” Moffett wrote. “Under the T-Mobile agreement, Dish had until 2025 to satisfy the FCC, but only two more years afterwards to satisfy the much more exacting demands of customers. That was always the real challenge.”

While AT&T will reportedly receive $5 billion for its trouble, Moffett believes it has sacrificed its future competitive position for short-term wholesale revenue. Because the Dish deal is similar to the MVNO agreements Comcast and Charter have struck with Verizon, Dish will  be able to build out its own facilities in dense areas, which have a low cost and high return, and leave the low density areas, with higher costs and lower returns, to AT&T

“We can’t stress enough what a windfall this is for Dish.  And what a terrible decision it is for AT&T,” Moffett wrote, likening the deal to Orange’s 2016 decision to strike an attractive MVNO deal with MasMovil in Spain. “Today, five years later, MasMovil has taken double-digit market share, and Orange is shrinking by more than 10% annually.”

Moffett added that the AT&T deal doesn’t solve Dish’s CDMA problem because AT&T has never had a CDMA network. But that just proves the real impetus for the deal was in its duration. 

Not every analyst shares Moffett’s view.

In a research note Monday, JP Morgan media analyst Phil Cusick said that the general consensus among telecom execs is that they want to be the provider of choice when an MVNO moves into the market. Whether AT&T struck a deal with Dish or not, it wouldn’t change that situation. 

“...the negative to the industry came when Dish bought spectrum over the last 10 years, or when it agreed to replace Sprint, not today,” Cusick wrote.

Cusick, who downgraded Dish to “underweight” in June,  also wasn’t convinced the deal was that big a windfall for Dish.

“We don’t see this as a huge change for Dish’s prospects, but rather that getting a rural roaming deal and longer-term MVNO are each pieces of the puzzle that Dish needed in building a network over time,” Cusick wrote. “It is interesting that Dish shares were off as much as Verizon shares Monday, likely indicating that there was still some hope of Dish selling assets rather than building a network.” 

Dish shares were down about 1% (41 cents) on July 19 to $39.04 each. The stock closed at $40.87, up 4.7% on July 20.

Verizon shares were down 1.1% (62 cents) on July 19 to $55.84 per share. The stock closed at $55.62, down 0.4% (22 cents) on July 20.  

Some have speculated that the deal really is a precursor for a future combination with AT&T’s DirecTV satellite TV business. Moffett said that is probably unlikely, but in the end won’t matter that much, adding that addressing the 2027 expiration was more important than ensuring the future of the declining satellite business. 

Barclays Research analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wrote that there could be several reasons behind doing the deal for AT&T -- one he said, was to limit Dish’s capacity to invest in building out its network by spending big on the MVNO. 

“Strategically, the move is also interesting given that the expectation among some investors was likely the opposite i.e. that Dish would be a scaled MVNO service provider to others rather than being an MVNO user itself for the next decade,” Venkateshwar wrote. For AT&T, he said the additional money from the agreement will help provide another cash flow source to get to its goal of $20 billion in free cash flow after its WarnerMedia deal. 

But Moffett again pointed out that in giving Dish the breathing room it needs to meet its federal requirements and a network deal that virtually allows it to pick and choose where it can spend the most for the largest return, AT&T has basically breathed new life, wittingly or unwittingly, into Dish. 

“Again, the big takeaway here is that AT&T has all but assured Dish’s survival, and as a much more disruptive and dangerous competitor than would otherwise have been the case,” Moffett wrote. “AT&T has been signaling recently that they want more wholesale business when they can get it, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. They clearly decided that the short term gain of additional wholesale revenue was worth that risk. But they’d be well advised to be careful what they wish for. We see their decision to extend this deal to Dish as a catastrophically bad one. Dish and its investors should thank their lucky stars for AT&T’s strategic blunder here.”

Altice USA is expanding into the mobile services arena via a strategic, multi-year “full” MVNO agreement with Sprint.

The agreement, announced Sunday, will pave the way for Altice USA to use Sprint’s network to provide mobile voice and data services to its customers throughout the nation.

Update: The agreement appears to be limited to Altice's U.S. footprint. “With respect to restrictions on Altice to sell within their footprint, they are restricted to sell within their footprint, but we are very happy if they are expanding their footprint and we would be expanding their ability to sell in any new footprint that they would be expanding to,” Sprint CFO Tarek Robbiati said Monday during a call with reporters, according to FierceCable.  

Under that full MVNO model, Altice USA will “have full control over the Altice USA mobile features, functionality and customer experience.”

In exchange, Sprint will leverage Altice USA’s network – covering the Suddenlink and Optimum (former Cablevision Systems) cable footprints – to support the mobile carrier’s “network densification efforts.”

Notably, Altice USA is moving ahead with a plan to upgrade the bulk of its network to fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) in the coming years. Altice USA also operates a WiFi network (with the majority of it based in the Optimum footprint) composed of a mix of metro hotspots and hotspots in customer gateways. 

RELATED: Altice USA to Skip DOCSIS 3.1, Roll Out All-Fiber Network

The MVNO deal with Altice USA also comes the day after Sprint and T-Mobile officially scrapped merger talks. The Wall Street Journal reported that Softbank, Sprint’s parent company, will instead increase its stake Sprint from 80% to about 85% by purchasing shares on the open market.

Comcast has already launched a mobile service, called Xfinity Mobile, that relies on its MVNO agreement with Verizon Communications and has already generated more than 250,000 customer lines for Comcast’s new service. Charter Communications has plans to roll out a mobile service next year using the MVNO agreement it inherited from Charter’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Comcast has also held talks with Sprint about improving a separate MVNO agreement that Comcast has with Sprint that was signed about a decade ago.

Prior to getting bought by Altice, Cablevision offered a WiFi-only service called Freewheel that debuted in early 2015. Altice shut down Freewheel about a year ago, several months after sales of the WiFi-only offering were halted.

RELATED: Farewell, Freewheel

“We are incredibly excited to work with Altice USA on this innovative win-win solution that benefits both of our companies,” said Sprint president and CEO Marcelo Claure, in a statement. “As content and connectivity continue to converge, we believe this approach will be a model for future strategic arrangements across multiple industries including cable, tech and others.”

“Sprint is an ideal strategic partner for Altice USA given our shared vision around converged customer experiences,” added Altice USA Chairman & CEO Dexter Goei. “Altice is a convergent leader with more than 26 million mobile customers in countries including France, Portugal, Israel, and the Dominican Republic, and we are excited to bring our global expertise to the U.S. to enhance and strengthen our offerings. Working together we will be able to capitalize on Sprint’s vast mobile network, which fits well alongside Altice USA’s deep WiFi network, and leverage Altice’s global mobile experience to deliver greater value, more benefits and seamless connectivity for our U.S. customers.”

I’ve been in the wireless industry for several years, and I can honestly say that I’m seeing something I haven’t seen before — a rapidly developing wireless technology ripe for innovation — especially among cable operators. I’m talking about spectrum sharing in the 3.5-Gigahertz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band. If your business development and technology teams are not already exploring the opportunity, they should.

Historically, there have been two vehicles for cable operators to add a mobile option to their networks — either spend billions in expensive Federal Communications Commission spectrum auctions and then spend billions more to build out a cellular network, or create an MVNO agreement with a mobile network operator. Several U.S. cable companies have already taken the first step with updated MVNO agreements, which is a great start. The next step will be to determine where to further invest wireless budgets. Shared spectrum offers a new, cost-effective opportunity.

The 3.5-GHz band has historically been used by the Department of Defense and fixed-satellite service providers, but it is now being opened up by the FCC for commercial use through a unique spectrum-sharing framework that will make spectrum available for the delivery of LTE services without requiring a license. As a result, cable operators can enhance their indoor and outdoor WiFi networks with LTE, enabling them to expand relationships with their enterprise and residential customers with new mobile services. Spectrum sharing promises the quality and capacity of LTE, at the cost and ease of deployment of WiFi.

In a paper I recently completed with Mobile Ecosystem’s Mark Lowenstein, we outlined several benefits that shared spectrum can offer cable operators, including:
■ Lower barrier to offering wireless services. Historically, the only way an MSO could offer wireless services has been through expensive spectrum auctions or doing an MVNO deal with a wireless operator. Spectrum sharing represents a faster, more flexible, and more economically viable alternative.

■ Complement to broadband and WiFi. MSOs can cost effectively add LTE to their millions of installed APs, offering coverage extension and capacity augmentation. This can be translated into higher quality of service for existing customers, or potentially incremental B2C and B2B revenue opportunities through a premium service offering.

■ Cellular offload service. Cable operators have relied on carrier WiFi deployments to offer a cellular offload service. Shared spectrum presents a secure, cost-effective, higher-capacity alternative.

■ Premium enterprise services. Broadband/WiFi services to enterprises have been a fast-growing business for MSOs. Shared spectrum’s capacity and coverage augmentation capabilities can be used to offer a premium in-building cellular service to customers.

■ Wireless MVNO. Shared spectrum makes the wireless MVNO business case eminently more viable, reducing cost and dependency on the host MVNO. A hybrid mobile network combining WiFi, shared spectrum, an MVNO relationship and perhaps owned spectrum assets could be a compelling opportunity.

I truly believe that cable operators are in a unique position to take advantage of CBRS to expand their wireless networks. They have the enterprise and consumer relationships. They have extensive WiFi networks that can be leveraged. MSOs are in the business of disruption. Spectrum sharing is the new frontier, and the opportunity is there for the taking.

Iyad Tarazi is CEO of Federated Wireless, an Arlington, Va.-based wireless technology firm.

Sprint has entered exclusive talks with Comcast and Charter Communications to discuss an agreement that could boost the cable operators's plans to offer wireless services, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The paper said Sprint chairman Masayoshi Son and the MSOs are in a two-month, exclusive deal that could include investments by Charter and Comcast aimed at upgrading Sprint’s network in exchange for “favorable terms” to offer wireless service on Sprint’s network. Subsequently, Sprint’s merger talks with T-Mobile are now on hold, the WSJ said.

Comcast has already launched a wireless service under its own brand, Xfinity Mobile, via its MVNO agreement with Verizon Communications. Comcast is bundling that mobile service with its high-speed internet service and is currently limiting sales to within its cable market footprint.  Charter Communications inherited a similar agreement via its acquisition of Time Warner Cable, and has said it has plans to introduce a wireless product next year. 

RELATED: Xfinity Mobile is Open for Business 

Comcast and Charter Communications recently confirmed that they would “explore potential opportunities for operational cooperation” in wireless, with a focus on operational efficiencies, including common operating platforms, technical standards, device logistics and emerging wireless tech platforms.  That agreement reportedly would prohibit Comcast or Charter from making a major wireless acquisition without the other's consent for one year.

RELATED: Comcast, Charter Make Wireless Partnership Official

Charter and Comcast declined to comment on the WSJ story. 

A person familiar with the situation said Comcast’s interest in talking with Sprint is centered on improving its existing MVNO agreement with Sprint, which was signed almost a decade ago. About that time, Comcast,  Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Cox Communications confirmed they had cut ties with Pivot, a wireless service reseller joint venture with Sprint.

The WSJ said Sprint’s Son has been open to a new deal with Comcast and Charter that would give the cable operators more flexibility and control of a mobile service that would ride on Sprint’s network.

WSJ also posited a scenario, though unlikely, that the talks could open up the possibility for Charter and Comcast to make a play to acquire Sprint.

RELATED: Cable’s Wireless Strategy Gets More Complicated

Charter Communications is moving forward with its wireless plans, planning to launch its own wireless product next year while it currently conducts tests of the next generation technology, 5G.

Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge said on a conference call with analysts to discuss Q4 earnings that the company has already activated its Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) with Verizon Communications. But unlike Comcast – which activated its Verizon MVNO last year and plans to launch a wireless product by mid-year – Charter’s product won’t likely come out until sometime in 2018.

On the conference call, Rutledge said the MVNO will serve Charter’s wireless needs in the short term. Longer term, he said the company is currently conducting tests of 5 G technology.

Charter said back in December that it had applied for experimental licenses to test 5G, which it said at the time could service as the backbone for a 10 Gigabit per second broadband service. 

On the conference call, Rutledge said he sees 5G more as a capacity play than a mobility play.

Rutledge pointed to Charter’s current high-speed network which has 22 million customers and 200 million connected devices. He added that 75% to 80% of the bits being used by those devices, mostly cellphones, are coming in through its WiFi network. For that reason he believes that products developed for 5G will be virtual reality and augmented reality products more geared toward fixed wireless services.

“How that manifests itself is a little unclear, but my sense is that many of those will not be mobile products,” Rutledge said. “They will be fixed products in the dwelling or the office. They’ll be how you learn and how you play. They’re less about mobility than they are about capacity and low latency.”

Charter also addressed disappointing subscriber growth, which the company said was primarily tied to heavy promotions at the former Time Warner Cable. Basic video subscribers declined by 51,000 in the fourth quarter, as increases of 20,000 and 34,000 at legacy Charter and Bright House systems were erased by a loss of 105,000 video customers at the former Time Warner Cable properties.

Chief financial officer Chris Winfrey said TWC promotions – including a $10 per month basic TV offering and $45 per month double play of basic TV and Internet service – were the culprits. While Charter is rolling out its own pricing and packaging across the entire footprint – it should be finished by the end of March – it could take some time for those promotions, some of which were initiated in eh Fall of 2015 and early 2016, to roll off.

“We’re doing some things to mitigate it that have taken us time to put in place, because of the complexity – there were 96,000 different promotional offers out there,” Rutledge said.   

“Just the sheer logistics of managing that has been a challenge. We’ve gotten some control over it, and are getting better every day. We think we can mitigate some of the churn through better management of the step-up process.”

Charter Communications president and CEO Tom Rutledge alluded that wireless will be part of the MSO’s game plan going forward, but stopped short of saying whether that strategy will ultimately include an MVNO component.

Charter expanded into the metro WiFi game by inheriting the networks deployed by Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, while also getting access to an MVNO deal with Verizon that was factored into TWC’s and BHN’s sale of wireless spectrum sale to the mobile carrier.

“We have not fully exercised that right yet,” Rutledge said of the MVNO agreement. “We’re looking at what those rights are and how we’ll execute for how we’ll utilize them for the best interest of the company. But we don’t have a plan yet that we’re ready to roll out.”

Earlier in the call Rutledge noted that Charter’s WiFi network combined with “MVNO opportunities” and other wireless building blocks “Should allow us to create products and services with high value proposition…Over time, we'll have more to discuss on this subject.”

Comcast has already invoked its MVNO agreement with Verizon (Comcast also has one with Sprint), but has not yet launched a mobile service under its own brand. However, Comcast has created a new mobile division that is being led by Greg Butz.

Rutledge also offered an update on Charter’s plan to use two-way, VOD-capable set-tops to fuel the completion of all-digital rollouts at the TWC and BHN properties, and to extend its new cloud-powered Spectrum Guide to those markets.

Charter has wrapped up all-digital upgrades in its legacy areas, and expects to get them rolling in TWC and BHN markets. Rutledge estimated that 40% of TWC’s assets are not all-digital, and about half of BHN’s properties have not yet gone all-digital, and that the upgrades should be completed by 2018.

As for Spectrum Guide, which can be offered on Charter’s full suite of set-top boxes, the MSO expects to have it rolled out to most legacy Charter markets by the end of 2017. It will follow with rollouts in TWC’s larger markets by mid-2017, and hit other TWC and BHN areas throughout the year and through 2018 as the all-digital project is completed.

Charter, Rutledge said, has also begun an “insourcing” effort for the newly combined company, noting that the process will take “several years” and require the hiring and training of 20,000 people.

As an example of progress, Rutledge said Charter has built its first Spanish-language call center in Texas, which will house approximately 600 seats.

“Ultimately, with a more local workforce, we'll perform higher-quality transactions with customers , which we expect will improve customer satisfaction,” Rutledge said.

New York — The cable industry seems destined for wired-wireless convergence as consumers demand access to services in the home and on the go, but how MSOs will get there is far from certain.

Creating a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in partnership with an existing wireless carrier might work for some, and there’s still plenty of speculation that a large player like Comcast could someday make a move to buy a T-Mobile or Sprint if the opportunity (and the price) were right.

Future wireless and mobile strategies for the cable industry, as well as game-shifting 5G technologies, were among the key themes discussed at last week’s Inform[ed] Wireless conference in New York, an inaugural one-day event hosted by CableLabs.

FASTEST-GROWING SEGMENT

Wireless and mobility are becoming increasingly important for cable, Phil McKinney, CableLabs’s CEO, said, noting that those areas have become the fastest-growing segment at the R&D organization.

Beyond the ongoing Cable WiFi initiative, which continues to deploy hundreds of thousands of hotspots in various public and quasi-public venues, several MSOs around the world have worked out MVNO deals (General Communication Inc. of Alaska and Liberty Global, for example), operate their own mobile networks (Rogers Communications of Canada), or are mobile carriers at their core but are also expanding into cable (Vodafone, which now owns Kabel Deutschland of Germany and Ono of Spain).

“We’re seeing this converged network,” McKinney said, adding that consumers “don’t want that broadband service to stop at the front door.”

But how those strategies will evolve for many MSOs, particularly in the U.S., is still being sorted out and debated — a topic taken on by a panel led by two top industry analysts.

Though the wireless and mobile sector is heated and saturated, it gives cable a prime opportunity to seek opportunities that are adjacent to their existing businesses for a market that is about 2.5 times larger than the one cable’s serving today.

“To me, it looks like an absolute no-brainer,” Jonathan Chaplin, managing partner at New Street Research, said during the panel discussion.

He said he sees several ways cable MSOs can get into that market, including a WiFi-only approach; a WiFi-and-MVNO play; network sharing deals; building a network from scratch; and acquiring another provider.

Chaplin said WiFi-only is not a product. “My apologies to Cablevision [Systems],” he said, noting that the MSO has been travelling that path with its Freewheel service. “It’s a niche product that goes after a very small part of the opportunity … That’s not exciting.”

And building a network from scratch is too expensive. Cox Communications tried it, at great expense, and eventually threw in the towel. That leaves MVNO-focused strategies and acquisitions and partnerships among the most viable options for some MSOs.

Comcast already has the MVNO option available to it through deals with Sprint and Verizon Communications, and has begun to trigger its arrangement with Verizon, but has not announced what it will do next or when.

Chaplin said Comcast has little to lose here.

“It makes all the sense in the world to start leveraging that MVNO and to start testing the market,” he said, noting that Comcast could, for example, use that to learn more about how to position products, determine if it needs to have a big retail presence and how deeply it would need to subsidize the handsets.

“The economics are attractive enough,” Chaplin said, but warned that the MVNO structure Comcast would have to live with doesn’t give it much control over the product. “That’s not an ideal long-term strategy, either.”

But Comcast could use it as a “stepping stone” for a longer- term approach that gives it more control of the product and the relationship with the customer.

And, because of that, Chaplin said he also thinks it makes sense for Comcast to make a play in the upcoming spectrum auctions. If Comcast comes away with spectrum, particularly with blocks that provide national coverage, it would be in position to broaden its options.

Paul de Sa, vice president and senior analyst at Bernstein Research, held that cable is already a dominant carrier of residential wireless traffic, given its WiFi coverage in and out of homes.

But he also agreed that the cash for wireless is in the cellular/mobile industry, though cable operators can make some scratch here and there by providing non-subs with paid access to their WiFi networks or using WiFi to sell higher-speed broadband tiers. Plus, cable has already established a nice revenue stream with its wireless backhaul business.

While cable has a decent default position (doing nothing new), de Sa said during the panel that he also thinks MSOs must weigh the risks and rewards of entering the cellular mix having missed the growth market, and of jumping into a sector that is dominated by the four major carriers.

“It’s difficult for fringe players to disrupt that [mobile market],” de Sa said, noting that cable would be pressed to enter that arena “without any compelling consumer proposition” given little evidence that a bundle with a wireless component gives much value to the provider. And simply competing on price won’t be enough to move the needle much in what’s now a saturated market.

ON THE FRINGES

He also said that while there aren’t any right or wrong answers yet, aligning with Verizon under an MVNO deal is the obvious path for some operators despite the limitations with respect to product control that presents, as is aligning with a “fringe” player, like Google is doing with T-Mobile and Sprint for its Project Fi hybrid cellular/WiFi offering.

Buying a fringe player and attacking the duopoly of AT&T and Verizon is yet another option, if the price is right.

Any one of those choices is appealing, de Sa said, though “none are overly compelling.”

“Staying neutral,” he added, “is also not a bad option.” In a panel later in the day, Rob Howald, senior vice president at Comcast, toed the company line when asked about the MSO’s intentions with respect to the coming 600-MHz incentive auction.

Comcast, which previously said it will participate in the auctions, is “assessing [its] options carefully in that space,” Howald said, adding that the MSO is still doing its homework on any possible strategies it might go with.

But on a broader level, he said, any focus on cellular by Comcast is to “make sure that existing services are well complemented outside the home,” rather than worrying about some “magic” around a quad play offering that was once under consideration by various cable operators.

SIDEBAR: The Slow Road to 5G

NEW YORK — 5G, an emerging standard that represents a quantum leap over 4G/LTE, promises to enhance current mobile and wireless experiences in many ways.

A big one is a jump in the ability to deliver at least 10 Gigabits per second per cell. 5G will also facilitate the so-called Internet of Things, as well as critical apps and communications services that require super-low latency, such as autonomous, self-driving vehicles and other high forms of robotics.

Technically speaking, that low-latency element will be pushed forward by virtualization techniques that will allow for a more distributed network in which software apps are running at the edge.

5G standards are still being developed, and deployments aren’t expected to be underway until at least 2020.

Though some of those use cases can employ LTE, 5G offers a combination of capabilities that hit them all, Bob Berner, chief technology officer of Rogers Communications, said during a mid-day keynote at the Inform[ed] Wireless conference.

But the big question, he said, is whether there’s enough money in those markets to justify the economics in these high-band frequencies that can work over short ranges.

“Spectrum is the real estate of the mobile business,” Berner said. But the wireline business will also expand — a good sign for cable — because those wireless hubs still need to be connected to high-capacity terrestrial networks.

Berner also said 5G has the potential to play a role in cable operators’ networks, suggesting that a 5G small cell at the edge of the wired network could prevent having to run fiber all the way to the home.

In a follow up panel, Bjorn Ekelund, head of device technology and ecosystem at Ericsson Research, agreed that 5G is being viewed as a potential fiber replacement.

Another new characteristic that 5G will bring is the idea of “network slicing” — the ability to micromanage the network for specific use cases as they arise.

And though 5G standards are not yet cooked, “5G is really happening,” Ekelund insisted, pointing out that Ericsson has 21 field trial agreements in place with carriers.

In the meantime, 4G still has plenty of life left in it and will be complemented by 5G, Timothy Burke, vice president of strategic technology at Liberty Global, said.

Sidebar: Small Cells Equal Big Opportunity

New York — Even if cable operators stay out of the mobile service game to a large degree, they are well positioned to continue to make hay on backhauling them with their hybrid fiber/coax and fiber-only infrastructures, particularly with the increased need for small-cell infrastructures and 5G technologies on the horizon.

Small cells are factoring in as carriers and venues seek out ways to handle big, spikey data loads in concentrated, heavy-traffic areas that aren’t supported well by the macro cellular network.

Crown Castle owns 40,000 tower locations in the U.S. and, as part of a market expansion, now supports about 16,000 small cells, Phil Kelley, the company’s senior vice president of corporate development and strategy, said.

And that demand will increase as mobile moves into 3.5-GHz and 5-GHz spectrum.

“It’s backhaul, power and access,” Jeremy Bye, vice president of carrier and wholesale at Cox Communications, said, noting that the MSO launched a small-cell service last year. “When you have all of those, it really fits well into our business model.”