SAN ANTONIO, Texas – As the number of connected devices in the home expands, the threat of consumers cutting their broadband cord increases, but operators are not powerless in the battle to grow and retain customers, according to a session at the NCTC Winter Educational Conference here Tuesday (Feb. 13).

Parks Associates senior director of research Brett Sappington said that connected devices in the home have increased from just over eight in 2015 to 9.2 in 2017, and consumers are demanding higher and higher bandwidth to accommodate that equipment. At the same time, he said that about 12% of U.S. households are mobile-only.

Read More: Additional Coverage of the NCTC Winter Educational Conference

Sappington said the consumers most likely to go mobile-only aren’t surprising – they are mainly younger people who have been in their homes a short period of time. Price sensitivity is also an issue. Customers of the least expensive wireless services like Metro PCS and T-Mobile are more likely to go mobile-only (about 12% of Metro PCS and 11% of T-Mobile wireless customers say they would go mobile only, compared with 7% for AT&T and 5% for Verizon wireless customers).

As unlimited wireless plans and zero-rating for video continue to proliferate, so does the drive to go all mobile. But fixed service has speed, throughput and latency advantages over wireless, according to Sappington.

He added that loyalty for existing broadband subscribers is pretty high – about 50% of consumers that have both a fixed and mobile service say they will absolutely not switch, according to Parks Associates research.

Cable operators can continue to battle the mobile-only threat by doing what they have been doing in the past – partnering with wireless service providers, bundling services, providing access to OTT options and offering premium WiFi options.

“Bundling still works,” Sappington said, adding that operators have to “learn to live with mobile services, and how we can evolve or strategies to include the reality of mobile data in our packages.”  

CuriosityStream, the subscription VOD service founded by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, will be seeking distribution deals with hundreds of tier 2/3 cable opera taros after forging a deal with the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC).

Read More: Additional Coverage of the NCTC Winter Educational Conference

The agreement, focused on NCTC’s membership of 850-plus indie operators that serve nearly 9 million subs, will enable those operators to offer CuriosityStream’s offering of more than 1,500 documentaries, via their VOD service and through a streaming app that supports a wide range of mobile and TV-connected platforms.

RELATED: CuriosityStream Connects With Vizio’s Smart TVs

Plans are also underway to integrate CuriosityStream’s app on certain operator-supplied set-top box platforms later this year, they said. 

Pricing of the SVOD service through the NCTC deal wasn’t announced, but CuriosityStream’s stand-alone, retail OTT offering starts at $2.99 per month for a “Basic” standard-def tier, while Standard (which supports HD) runs $5.99, and its Premium tier, with access to the service’s 4K library, runs $11.99 per month.

CuriosityStream, a service launched in March 2015, has not announced subscriber numbers. However, the NCTC agreement builds on its strategy to work with various types of distributors. Those partners include Comcast, Layer3 TV (now part of T-Mobile), Sling TV, Amazon Channels and VRV, the Ellation-owned SVOD aggregation/bundling service.   

The CuriosityStream deal also expands on the NCTC’s focus on helping its members work with or integrate new services from the OTT world. As part of an effort to help those members have a video option for broadband-only customers, the NCTC has recently signed deals with two virtual MVPDs – fuboTV and PlayStation Vue.

The NCTC-CuriosityStream agreement was announced in concert with this week’s NCTC Winter Educational Conference in San Antonio. At a session today, panelists urged operators to tighten their ties to SVOD services that can enhance or complement their pay TV offerings.

RELATED: Operators Should Embrace SVOD to Attract Next Generation

"CuriosityStream is proud to partner with NCTC to give its members and their enormous customer base easy access to the world's greatest collection of non-fiction programming that empowers viewers to satisfy their curiosity about their favorite subjects," Clint Stinchcomb, chief distribution officer for CuriosityStream, said in a statement.

San Antonio, Texas -- With a new focus on acquiring content that was previously relegated to pay TV services, social media and tech giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google are focusing more on disrupting traditional pay TV, director of USC’s Annenberg School of Media Innovation Lab and author Jonathan Taplin told an audience at the opening keynote of the NCTC Winter Educational Conference here.

Read More: Additional Coverage of the NCTC Winter Educational Conference

Taplin, whose book Move Fast and Break Things traced the monopolization of the internet by Google Facebook and Amazon, noted that while over the years those three companies focused on other business segments, they are increasingly honing in on the video business. Facebook’s $610 million bid for streaming rights to Indian Cricket matches – it lost out to Fox – is just one example of how serious the tech giants are becoming about video.

The largest corporations of the world -- Google, Amazon and Facebook --  are going to be the new gatekeepers, Taplin said.  

In addition to Cricket rights, Facebook has tried to incorporate its GUI into set-top boxes as part of the Federal Communications Commission’s “Unlock the Box” initiative back in 2016, which has since fizzled in the new administration but could surface again. Taplin said giving Facebook access to set-tops cold decimate pay TV’s local ad business.

“They’ll keep trying that,” Taplin said. “So, you’ve got to be careful.”

Adding to the pressure is that the next generation of TV viewers have grown up with 100-Mbps broadband connections, creating their own media systems without cable.

“You have to be aware that this notion of cord-cutting is real,” Taplin said. “These companies are coming for your business.”

Taplin said operators can fight back in several ways, offering skinnier programming bundles in response to competition and reliable, high-speed data connections. He added that the traditional method of delivering and buying programming also will change in the future.

The current ecosystem where distributors are forced to buy large bundles of programming from content providers, even those shows that have little viewership, has to change, he added.

“A lot of those channels don’t pass the ‘who cares’ test,” Taplin said. "You have to stand up to the channels that nobody is watching.”

RCN Corp. said it has begun to roll out a 4K-ready box to customers in Lehigh Valley, Pa., that integrates the operator’s pay TV service with some OTT content.

RCN’s rollout there includes cities such as Bethlehem, Easton and Allentown.

The device is made by Arris and is powered by TiVo’s software and user interface. The remote also supports a remote finder and a dedicated button for Netflix, which features a small but growing 4K library.

Arris’s MG2 Cable Media Gateway is an HDR- and 4K-capable, six-tuner device with a 1-TB hard drive and integrated MoCA 2.0

The 4K-facing agreement expands on a collaboration between RCN and TiVo that started in 2009.

Espial said Buckeye Broadband, an operator that serves parts of northwest and Ohio and southeast Michigan, has inked a deal to license Espial’s “Elevate” software-as-a service video platform.

The move will enable Buckeye Broadband to provide integrated access to OTT services such as Netflix and YouTube, as well as new voice-based navigation features.

RELATED: Espial Adds Amazon Alexa Voice Support to ‘Elevate’ Platform

The agreement expands on the video relationship between Buckeye Broadband and Espial. Part of that stems from Buckeye’s deployment of a multi-room DVR centered on Arris’s Whole Home Solution offering. Espial acquired Arris's Whole Home Solution business in 2016.

RELATED: Buckeye Bucks Up Multiroom DVR with Arris Gateway Launch

“Elevate enhances the experience of our video customers, while giving us flexibility in how we deliver those experiences in the future,” Jeff Abbas, president and GM of Buckeye Broadband, aid in a statement. “The continuous innovation being driven on Elevate helps us increase customer engagement and satisfaction while mindfully controlling our expenses.”

The agreement was announced amid this week’s NCTC Winter Educational Conference in San Antonio.

Read More: Additional Coverage of the NCTC Winter Educational Conference

Espial struck a similar deal last fall with MCTV for services supporting live TV, whole home DVR and OTT apps.

Buckeye Broadband also markets a TiVo-based offering under the “Express TV” brand.

To help fuel its IP video transition, Mediacom Communications will deploy Evolution’s “eBOX,” a hybrid IP/QAM set-top that will be powered by TiVo’s software and user interface.

Read More: Additional Coverage of the NCTC Winter Educational Conference

Mediacom, which has deploying a video offering that leans on TiVo’s platform since striking the original deal in 2012, will use the eBOX as its primary, next-gen, non-DVR device throughout its footprint.

RELATED: Mediacom Powers Up TiVo Play

Evolution Digital said Mediacom’s deployment of the eBOX will include Evolution Digital-enabled IP-based pay-per-view services.

“We are excited to bring Evolution Digital’s cost-effective eBOX to our customers and provide the best content available on an enriched and streamlined platform,” JR Walden SVP and CTO of Mediacom, said in a statement. “We have made the eBOX our primary next-generation non-DVR set-top box for households throughout our systems.”

The new agreement exposes eBOX to Mediacom’s base of nearly 1.4 million customers.

Examples of other operators that are deploying Evolution Digital’s eBOX include GCI, RCN, Wave Broadband, WideOpenWest (WOW!), and several operators that are tied into Evolution’s agreement with the National Cable Television Cooperative.

Evolution Digital timed the announcement with this week’s NCTC Winter Educational Conference in San Antonio.

The latest eBOX deployment deal also comes on the heels of Evolution’s introduction last week of the eSTREAM 4K, an all-IP device for on tier 2/3 cable providers that’s powered by Android TV.

RELATED: Evolution Digital Launches Android TV-Based Box for MVPDs