Despite a handful of mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreements by companies to resell wireless service, Verizon Communications executive vice president and president of product innovation and new businesses Marni Walden said the telco has no appetite for its own quad play.

At the Citibank Internet, Media & Telecommunications conference in Las Vegas, Walden seemed to shut the door on a possible combined wireless, voice, video and data product offering. Verizon, through its 2011 purchase of wireless spectrum from cable consortium SpectrumCo, agreed to MVNO agreements with the operators as part of that deal. In the past year, Comcast and Charter have said they have exercised those MVNO rights. Comcast expects to offer a wireless product later this year.

Walden said that concept of the quad play, though popular in Europe — Liberty Global is a big proponent — makes less sense in the U.S. market.

COST SAVINGS IS KEY

Walden said that through Verizon’s customer research, what subscribers most want out of a product bundle is price discount.

“The quad play is overrated in the U.S. unless it is deeply discounted,” Walden said at the Jan. 5 gathering, adding that is something Verizon does not intend to do.

More important is the telco’s fiber network and its plans for a next generation 5G wireless offering.

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said last year that the telco could start 5G trials as early as the first quarter of 2017.

5G networks could deliver blinding broadband speeds — up to 10 Gigabits per second, 10 to 100 times faster than traditional wireline data networks.

RELATED: Verizon Touts Progress on Next-Gen FTTP

The first product offering on the 5G platform will most likely be a fixed wireless offering, Walden said, which could take the form of a connected home product or a bundled video offering.

Other telcos have jumped into the 5G fray as well, with AT&T saying it would test a 5G service to deliver its DirecTV Now over-the-top service in Austin, Texas in the first half of the year.

The Austin trial will involve residential customers in the area. It will also include other unspecified next-generation entertainment services and devices and is expected to enhance AT&T’s understanding of the technology. That also includes how the fixed wireless technology handles heavy video traffic, according to a company statement. Some DirecTV Now customers have complained of spotty service after its November launch.

The excitement over 5G is widespread: Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge mentioned its potential to deliver speeds of 10 Gbps for cable over hybrid wireless wireline networks in a conference last year. But the service isn’t expected to reach full commercial deployment until 2018 or 2019.

“We’re not waiting until the final standards are set to lay the foundation for our evolution to 5G. We’re executing now,” AT&T chief strategy officer and group president, Technology and Operations John Donovan said in a statement.

Charter Communications hasn’t said specifically when it would begin to offer a service based on the MVNO agreement — Rutledge had said it could come in 2017 or 2018. But the Charter CEO said at the Citi conference last week that he’s confident the cable company can compete, adding that he believes Charter can squeeze 10 Gbps speeds out of its existing coaxial network.

“We’re not only developing coaxial 10 Gbps symmetrical services, but we’re developing new platforms inside the fiber optic network that ensure the backhaul capacity is there to match the coax,” Rutledge said at the Citi conference. “We think we have the best network to build the next generation of wireless services.”

MORE YAHOO SKEPTICISM

Walden also cast some doubt on the future of the Yahoo deal. Yahoo revealed in December a second data breach — this time of about 1 billion email accounts — which Verizon is currently investigating.

Walden said the fundamental reason for the merger still exists — to build scale.

“This is really about taking the audience from hundreds of millions to the billions,” Walden said. “That still remains important to us.”

The investigation continues, she added, noting that several questions need to be answered, including whether there have been any changes to the Yahoo asset.

“With time we will have answers to those questions,” Walden said. “We will be very responsible about what we do to make sure we are getting the value out of the assets and doing the right thing for our shareholders.”

Mergers and acquisitions, fueled by a drive to consolidate mobile communications operators, surged in 2014 in Europe, as big and small names vied to capture the last leg in a quadruple play offering for consumers.

Total deal volume in Europe last year was about $901.4 billion, up 40.5% from $641.4 billion in the prior year, according to Mergermarket. It was the highest value since 2008, the company said.

Dominating the sector were deals involving telecommunications companies. Telecom, Media and Technology deals accounted for about $168.2 billion in volume in 2014, up 24% from the prior year and representing the largest sector in terms of M&A.

While mobile aspirations fueled European deal-making, consolidation and the search for scale economics were the sparks that sent transactions in the United States to record highs. Led by Comcast’s pending deal to acquire Time Warner Cable (which Mergermarket valued at $68.5 billion but Comcast places at more like $67 billion) and AT&T’s $66 billion purchase of No. 1 satellite-TV service provider DirecTV, U.S. TMT deals were worth a collective $302.2 billion, up 24% from 2013, when total deal value was about $284.9 billion.

U.K. DEAL LEADS PACK

Leading the European TMT charge was BT’s (formerly British Telecom) $18.8 billion acquisition of mobile carrier EE (formerly Everything, Everywhere). The acquisition was seen by many as an effort by BT, already the largest telephone carrier in Britain, to further solidify its wireless position in the country.

In its report, Mergermarket said ongoing consolidation in the telecom industry helped the TMT sector account for the biggest chunk of M&A activity.

“One of the trends currently shaping the sector is the convergence toward the ‘quad’ model, with operators bundling together Internet, TV, landline and mobile services,” Mergermarket said.

Pivotal Research Group principal and senior media & communications analyst Jeff Wlodarczak said recently that consolidation in the European telecom sector is well underway, adding that competition in the sector is “brutal.”

“The European wireless [companies] would love to consolidate,” Wlodarczak said in a recent email message. That was obvious in the top five deals in the sector, three of which were mobile-capacity plays — BT’s; Numericable’s $15.9 billion buy of Vivendi SFR; and Spanish carrier Telefonica’s $11.6 billion purchase of E-plus.

Even the non-mobile deals had a quad play feel to them. European wireless behemoth Vodafone, flush with the $130 billion it received from its sale of its 45% interest in Verizon Wireless back to the U.S.-based carrier, continued its quest to snap up cable properties, agreeing last March to buy Spain’s Ono for about $10 billion. That deal built on Vodafone’s other big cable buy — German cable giant Kabel Deutschland in 2013 for $10.1 billion.

German cable has been a hotbed of M&A activity over the past few years, and another player could enter the deal fray later this year. Tele-Columbus, the third largest German cable operator, behind Kabel Deutschland and Liberty Global, is slated to launch an initial public offering in the next month or so, raising about $300 million to pay debt.

Tele-Columbus, which has been an acquisition target in the past — its 2013 deal to be acquired by Kabel Deutschland was rejected by regulators — has said it is not pursuing a sale in line with the IPO. Whether that means it will be an acquirer remains to be seen. It has said the IPO will help fuel its growth strategy as well as pay down debt. But already the company has said it is planning to offer its own mobile service later this year.

LIBERTY LOOKS FOR CONTENT

Liberty Global made a widely anticipated play for the remaining interest in Dutch cable operator Ziggo for $13.7 billion. But the Denver-based international cable powerhouse has been said to be on the hunt for programming and production assets (it purchased U.K. producer All3Media for $930 million in a joint deal with Discovery Communications last year) even as it sold programmer Chellomedia to AMC Networks for about $1 billion.

At a recent industry conference, Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries said any content deals the company engages in are a means to one end — driving distribution.

It’s been speculated that is Liberty eyeing German over-the-top service Maxdome, and in March it announced plans to launch its own wireless product in partnership with other carriers (so-called mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs) that should help give it a quad play. Outside the continent, Liberty is gearing up to launch a tracking stock, Liberty Latin America and Caribbean Group, which could serve as a deal currency in that part of the world.

Wlodarczak said recently that he expects Liberty Global to continue to seek out deals in what he sees as a still favorable regulatory climate.

“I still see lots of little deals for [Liberty Global] and the euro regulators seem to be keeping deal approval at the EU [European Union] level, which as we saw with the Ziggo deal, is beneficial if LGI wants to, say, buy more cable assets in Germany, rather than the local level which tends to be far more difficult,” Wlodarczak said.