Insights, Ideas and Imagination
Specter of Fixed Wireless Seemingly Lives in Wireline Executives’ Heads
For all the talk about how fixed wireless access service doesn’t represent a real threat to wireline broadband, wireline executives spend a lot of time …
Bally Sports’ Outsized Impact
From Dish dropping nearly all RSNs to Comcast’s ongoing disputes with RSNs like Altitude Sports, RSNs have been on the defensive lately. But this is …
Google Fiber Lights Up 5 Gbps Service in Four Markets
Google Fiber made good on one of its 2022 promises and launched a symmetrical 5 Gbps fiber Internet tier to four markets in mid-February. Impact: …
Scrappy Fiber Overbuilders Pick It Up a Notch to Start 2023
If it feels like a number of smaller and regional fiber overbuilders have picked up their deployment pace in 2023, that’s because in many cases …
AT&T Views Fiber Strategy As Key to Long-Term Success
AT&T added 280,000 new fiber subscribers in Q4, a 3.3% increase from a year ago and the company’s 12th consecutive quarter with more than 200,000 …
On the Way to Xumo Play
Per ADTRAKER’s findings in 2022, XUMO’s FAST service zig-zagged upwards on the scale that considers hourly average time allocated to advertising. The Comcast-owned service started …
FCC Broadband Map Moves Into the Next Phase After Challenge Deadline
The FCC has yet to reveal how many broadband availability challenges to its new broadband map were received by the January 13 deadline but given …
Roku Gets Smart
In the first unsurprising development of 2023, Roku is finally launching its own smart TV. The question now is whether the company – whose stock …
Charter Unveils HFC Network Upgrade Strategy
At an investor day this month, Charter Communications revealed a number of updates about its overall operational strategy, including details on a $5.5-billion network upgrade …
Peacock Pride
It’s been a good few months for Comcast NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service, which continues to post impressive growth even though its overall subscriber numbers pale …
Fiber Deployments Slow with Supply Chain and Other Disruptions
A series of trade publication articles over the last few weeks warn of a looming slowdown in the current U.S. fiber craze, variously describing concerns …
Bobbing for Apple?
Cord cutting, the streaming wars, content cost inflation, and advertising pressure continue to swirl under the weight of Wall Street stock declines that have put …
T-Mobile Makes Waves with Supposed Fiber Interest
T-Mobile dominated the news over the past week with its potential interest in getting into the wireline fiber business, another 5G Home Internet expansion, and …
Q3 Earnings Highlights: Disney and Scripps
“I believe we are well positioned for future long-term growth, and I am confident in the path forward.”– Disney CEO Bob Chapek Disney execs …
New Study Reveals What Consumers Want in Broadband Labels
The findings of a new study from the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute at Carnegie Mellon University on the topic of the coming FCC broadband …
Aviation Industry Pushes to Make C-Band Restrictions Permanent
After the debacle surrounding the launch of C-band spectrum into the 5G networks of AT&T and Verizon earlier this year amid concerns about airplane interference, …
The New (Fron)Tier
Netflix this week finally pulled back the curtain on its previously announced plans to launch an ad-supported tier, and the details suggest that the streamer …
Cable Industry Hints at Competitive Strategy to Counter Fiber
Cable executives at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo provided a glimpse into how the industry plans to compete with multi-gigabit speeds even as it works to …
A UFC Knockout on Xumo
The prevalence of unfilled ad time at FAST providers is remarkable. Those unfilled spans amount to dead airtime, with some spans going on so long …
Verizon’s Mobile Business Not Likely to Turn Around in Q3
Anyone expecting a third quarter turnaround in Verizon’s mobile fortunes likely wasn’t happy with CEO Hans Vestberg’s recent admission that the carrier expects to lose …
Hulupalooza
Disney CEO Bob Chapek indicates he’d like to buy out Comcast’s Hulu stake sooner rather than later.
New Funding Will Feed Ziply’s Expanded Fiber Goals
With $450 million in new funding in hand, Ziply Fiber will look to edge-out and greenfield opportunities to expand its fiber network beyond the existing …
Membership Has Its Privileges
Those of a certain age will recall American Express’ famous advertising campaign that touted the value of “membership.” You’re not a customer. You’re a “member” …
Smaller Providers Facing Problems Ahead of FCC Mapping Deadline
Concerns are rising among smaller broadband providers that they won’t be able to meet the FCC’s September 1 deadline to submit their coverage data in …
Shifting Sports
It’s no secret that sports TV rights are slowly melting into the streaming universe as well-funded companies like Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet’s Google bid for …
Cable Broadband Feels the Heat in Q2
Cable operators struggled through a tough quarter of broadband subscriber growth in Q2, with Comcast reporting flat growth (negative on the residential side), Charter sliding …
Comcast Q2 Earnings
Comcast’s Q2 earnings report lays bare why well-diversified media companies tend to weather economic storms and business challenges better than others over the long term. …
Microsoft Seeks to Fill in the Gaps with New Broadband Mapping Tool
The FCC plans to unveil its long-awaited new and improved National Broadband Map sometime later this year, but in the meantime telecom providers and other …
It’s Not TV, It’s…
We’re probably only about two months (or less) away from Warner Bros. Discovery finally combining HBO Max and discovery+ into one hulking streaming service. WBD’s …
Starlink Faces Headwinds — and Tailwinds, Depending on the Source
It seems like every day there’s a new headline proclaiming good news or bad news for low earth orbit satellite Internet provider Starlink, part of …
Can’t Get No Satisfaction?
Sometimes it’s fun to mash together data from different sources just to see whether any correlations exist. And while we acknowledge the ancient wisdom that …
Weighing the Sports Anchor
This week, Sinclair launched its long-awaited regional sports streaming service Bally Sports Plus, adding it to a long list of direct-to-consumer services that RSNs, leagues, …
Ziply Fiber Acquisition Will Help Expansion Effort
Ziply Fiber has been busily expanding its fiber infrastructure since it was formed out of WaveDivision Capital’s acquisition of its four-state Pacific Northwest footprint from …
OTT: Live vs VOD Ad Loads Resemble Traditional TV, For Now
In the first five months of 2022, Peacock, The Roku Channel, and Tubi all served an average of over four pods each hour on FAST …
Federal Broadband Funding Train Starts Rolling Down the Track
Although the bulk of the federal broadband funding provided for in last year’s infrastructure legislation won’t be available until the FCC completes its overhaul of …
Programmatic Static
As the industry takes a new look at ad-supported streaming amid slowing SVOD growth, we decided to check out AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in Las …
DTCs and Legacies
The recent streaming turmoil raises big questions about where the direct-to-consumer business sits relative to a legacy TV business that remains a cashflow cow, despite …
Comcast Details Edge-Out Strategy for Broadband Growth
On Comcast’s Q1 earnings call, company executives revealed more detail about a plan to grow the cable provider’s footprint by at least 800K new broadband …
Altice Doubles Down on Fiber as Broadband Losses Mount
Despite an accelerated buildout schedule and subscriber gains on the fiber side, Altice USA’s overall broadband subscriber numbers trended negative again in the first quarter. …
AT&T Fiber Additions Can’t Overcome Other Broadband Losses
Although CEO John Stankey reported during the Q1 earnings call that fiber makes up nearly half of AT&T’s consumer broadband revenue, gains in fiber were …
Netflix’s Next Chapter
“I know I’ve been here for more than 20 years and have been through a couple of these. And yes, they don’t feel great in …
AT&T Still Faces Challenges After WarnerMedia Sale
New analysis from Wall Street research group MoffettNathanson says AT&T still faces challenges now that the WarnerMedia spin-off to Discovery has finally closed. Impact: AT&T …
Suddenly Rebranded
The full rebranding by year-end of Altice USA’s Suddenlink systems to the core Optimum brand it inherited from Cablevision in 2016 offers a window into …
FCC Sets Date and Rules for Next Mid-band Spectrum Auction
Wireless carriers pushing for more mid-band spectrum to use for 5G have gotten their wish, as the Federal Communications Commission has expedited its plans to …
The FAST and the Curious
The explosion of free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST)-live channels has only accelerated in recent months as hundreds of new players enter this nascent and chaotic …
Big Cable Continues to Downplay Potential Threat from FWA
The CEOs from Charter and Comcast had similar responses when asked during recent investor conference appearances about the potential threat to cable broadband from the …
Shentel Reveals Big Fiber Plans During Q4 Earnings
The fiber buildout craze sweeping the country also extends to smaller regional players like Virginia-based Shentel, which has been implementing its own fiber deployment strategy …
Verizon’s Bold Play
Verizon’s announcement this week that it will launch a new video aggregation service called +play amounts to its current strategy on steroids. The carrier already …
Riding the Wave
We often hear about big streamers dominating the market and crushing smaller players, but is it possible the majors actually help niche streaming services grow? …
Rip-and-Replace Requests Nearly Triple the Program’s Budget
When Congress mandated that telecommunications providers would need to remove equipment supplied by Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE from their networks over national security concerns, …
T-Mobile’s Coming for Cable Broadband
T-Mobile executives reveled in the success of their fixed wireless access product on the carrier’s Q4 2021 earnings call on Feb. 2, with CEO Mike …
Recent entrants to the streaming video scene doubled down on movies in 2021
Near its launch in early in 2021, Paramount+ boasted over 30K titles. It truly was a “mountain of entertainment.” That is, unless you were looking …
The fixed wireless invasion: analyzing carrier geographies
The latest STREAMTRAK report from One Touch Intelligence examines the fixed wireless invasion and analyzes how carriers are approaching the competitive marketplace, where systems overlap …
IMDb TV: An invitation to join the Amazon bandwagon
An interactive Gold Peak Tea ad that popped up while auditing Amazon’s IMDb TV service in December piqued our interest. Questions surrounding IMDb’s identity have …
C-Band Deployment: Another Delay on the Road to Potential Resolution
After first rejecting a request from U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Federal Aviation Administrator Steve Dickson to delay the C-band deployments scheduled to …
One Touch Intelligence Names Michael Grebb as VP, Lead Analyst
One Touch Intelligence6312 S Fiddlers Green CirGreenwood Village, CO 80111Contact: Noelle Botti – noelleb@onetouchintelligence.com FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Grebb to lead team covering media, communications, and entertainment/streaming …
AVOD’s ascent: In search of the perfect ad break
The future of the advertising-supported video on demand (AVOD) economy offers a glimpse into the future of TV itself. As more traditional TV subscribers choose …
What’s an SVOD service worth?
The question: What should a niche-targeted video streaming service cost? The answer: $8.22 per month. That, at least, is the average for a collective of …
Original SVOD content: back in business
Original content is again flooding SVOD screens, with the number of titles released by major providers swelling by 50% from the year-ago total. Our latest …
TV’s future: It’s right up front
The killer app for television? It might be an interface. As the ecosystem evolves, an area worth watching involves the way programs are surfaced and …
Apple TV+ keeps it free
Earlier this summer, as Apple reduced the duration of its Apple TV+ giveaway for eligible device buyers to three months from 12, it appeared the …
DirecTV, meet Dish TV. Once again.
Because they basically do the same thing – deliver video over satellite communications platforms at scale – Dish Network and DirecTV’s parent AT&T have sparked …
Houses don’t buy video. People do.
Tucked into Netflix’s second quarter earnings report was an interesting wrinkle about industry semantics. Co-CEO Reed Hastings made a point of diverting from the familiar …
Deal me in: Is an OTT price war ahead?
Just what the hotly competitive streaming video market needed: a price war. There’s no open declaration of hostilities just yet, but an offer spotted recently …
Video’s new game plan
Forget touchdowns, walk-off homeruns, penalty kicks, and three-pointers at the buzzer. The new watchword for sports on the screen is “gamification.” The term is being …
Paramount+: CBS and then some
After examining the content libraries on ViacomCBS’s Paramount+, the newest entry in the SVOD streaming space, we can conclude the advertising claim “A Mountain of …
Sports bars, streaming, and Sundays
The most remarkable aspect of the NFL’s new, 10-year media rights arrangement is how unremarkable it turned out to be. True, some games will end …
NHL skates toward a new video reality
The new National Hockey League TV rights reshuffle shines the spotlight on two influences that weren’t in play the last time the league negotiated its …
TVOD makes a Hollywood comeback
In a shifting screen-entertainment category, there’s a standout candidate for comeback player of the year: TVOD. Over recent years, the category of transactional video on …
discovery+ makes a content-rich debut
The latest STREAMTRAKTM report from One Touch Intelligence reveals that Discovery Inc.’s new direct-to-consumer streaming service stacks up well against category leaders by virtue of …
Rate versus ARPU: Who’s winning?
A subscription to Disney+ costs $6.99/mo., a new Hulu SVOD account costs $5.99, and ESPN+ clocks in at $5.99 . But according to new metrics …
Quibi, we hardly knew ye…
Quibi’s demise reflects the tenuousness of a streaming video category that’s sometimes thought of as a can’t-miss hotbed for next-generation media industry growth. It’s a …
DirecTV, AT&T and a changing world
The possibility that AT&T might sell the DirecTV satellite-TV service evokes questions not just about the identity of a buyer, but a deeper curiosity about …
The Tik-ing of Microsoft’s video clock
Among the five largest U.S. companies, only one lacks a direct-to-consumer video service. That could change, and soon. Press reports naming Microsoft as a lead …
Peacock premium and the 25% solution
The content differential between the free-to-view and premium tiers on NBCU’s new Peacock streaming service will play an important role in shaping the service’s success, …
Gatekeepers 2.0: Meet the new MSO
A strong contender for the quote-of-the-month award goes to Andrew McCollum, the CEO of streaming video service Philo. McCollum recently talked to Variety about the …
For U.S. telecoms, OTT video beckons
Comcast’s recent arrangement to make Sling TV available over Comcast’s Flex platform dovetails with a widening embrace of over-the-top video among multiple U.S. telecommunications providers. …
Hybrid SVOD Models Gain Steam with HBO Max
The news that HBO Max will produce an advertising-supported offshoot next year represents the latest iteration of a movement toward hybridized streaming video economics.
Level Up: Subscription Game Services Rise on Video Charts
Research about a changing video marketplace tells us more than 30% of U.S. adults now maintain a subscription to a video streaming service.
Apple Looks for a Sporting Chance
For a barely born video service, sports could provide an avenue to diversification.
