Earlier in 2016, DirecTV announced that it will launch a new streaming service, DirecTV Now, by the end of the year. Various reports in trade publications have indicated that AT&T, DirecTV’s new owner, would like to launch a package of 100+ channels for a very aggressive price point, somewhere around $55 a month.  It’s unclear yet which 100 channels a consumer would get for their money or whether their flagship product, NFL Sunday Ticket, will be included in that $55 fee. 

DirecTV Now becomes just the latest streaming multi-channel product offering to launch in the last two years. Satellite rival Dish Network beat them to the punch with Sling TV in 2015, and Sony followed several months later with it’s Playstation Vue package. Having subscribed to both of them at one time or another, I can attest to the fact that both of those services offer compelling reasons for customers to “cut the cord” from a traditional cable TV lineup.

But there are rumors that DirecTV may go a step further than Dish Network. A recent story in the Dallas Business Journal (http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/techflash/2016/09/report-at-t-has-set-a-timeline-to-phase-out.html) says that AT&T would like to phase out satellites and dishes as soon as 2020, forcing customers to get DirecTV Now.  On its surface, it’s an idea that makes a lot of sense. Operating satellites and hordes of technicians to install and troubleshoot the service is an expensive proposition. If indeed AT&T fulfills this vision, it could have a big impact on broadband Internet providers as bandwidth needs of customers would further increase. But it could also be a boon to those providers whose only profit margin exists on internet service and not video. In fact, it could be a win-win for AT&T and local ISP’s.

Having dipped their toe in the water with SlingTV, a “skinny bundle”, will Dish Network follow AT&T’s lead and push to move their service out of geosynchronous orbit and onto broadband networks?

The primary challenge to this transition for DirecTV (or Dish Network for that matter) will be the fact that many of its customers live in rural areas where reliable broadband with enough bandwidth for multiple HD or 4K video streams is hard to find. Will those folks be allowed to keep their dishes until such time in the future as real broadband arrives at their home? If so, any savings that AT&T is planning on will evaporate. They will need to maintain their fleet of satellites for years beyond 2020.
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So, will AT&T ditch the dish for its DirecTV services? I think the answer is yes in the long term. But America’s broadband infrastructure has a long way to go before it can make that move without losing a significant number of rural customers.

For the past six weeks, I have been spending a lot of time in three small rural Iowa communities talking to citizens about broadband. The visits and conversations have been part of a process called "Community Broadband Engagement and Assessment" on behalf of community leaders in Maquoketa, New Hampton, and Charles City, Iowa. The process itself serves as a sort of "pre-feasibility study" for these towns, each of which are considering whether or not a community fiber broadband network would be a smart investment in their communities' future. If feedback from residents is positive during this process, community leaders may decide to proceed with a full feasibility study.

The conversations I've had, along with my partners in the project (Eric Lampland of Lookout Point Communications, Todd Kielkopf of Kielkopf Advisory Services, and Ken Demlow of NewCom Technologies) have been eye-opening on a number of fronts. So I've decided to share some of what we are hearing from folks about what's bothering them about their current broadband services.  This entry is about reliability.

During presentations at these community meetings and individual discussions, one of the points that gets people's heads nodding is that good broadband needs to be reliable. After all, the fastest internet service, the most robust cable service, or the best telephone service means nothing if service is out.  As I've pointed out numerous times, the consumer has become so reliant on these services, particularly internet, that any outage becomes a significant disruption. And it seems that, at least in these three cities, service outages are a problem.

One of the real advantages of all-fiber networks such as the ones these towns are considering is reliability. It's simply a matter of physics. A typical cable network has a LOT of active electronics between the customer and the cable office. Active electronics are devices that require power to operate and includes amplifiers, line extenders, fiber nodes, etc. They are complicated, and complexity introduces the chance for problems. Add in the fact that some of these networks are decades old and in some cases in need of significant repair, and you have inevitable service interruptions. Something as simple as a loose connector can cause service to degrade or go out. Sometimes those interruptions affect one or two customers. Other times half a town or more could go down due to some equipment or cable failure somewhere in the system.

Fiber to the home networks, by contrast, are much less complex. All of the devices between the broadband office (also called a headend or central office) are passive, meaning they do not require electrical power. Basically it's fiber optics that carry light generated on one end by a laser and received on the other end.  There may or may not be passive devices like splitters in between (depending on how the network is designed), but many fewer opportunities for failure. Yes, an overzealous post hole digger can still take out a fiber just as easily as they can a copper cable (please use OneCall!!!!), but things like lightning and power outages are much less likely to cause disruption.

Regardless of the technology the broadband provider uses and how well maintained and operated the network is, bad things can still happen (above mentioned post hole digger, weather, etc.). What often separates excellence from mediocrity in broadband services is response time.  And that's the subject for my next blog post.

For the second time in just over a month, I will be speaking at an event sponsored by NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association. The NTCA is the national trade organization for small, rural telecommunications companies. In both my presentation in Orlando last month and this week's panel in LaJolla, California the topic is straightforward-how can municipals and telcos work together to get fast, affordable, and reliable broadband deployed in rural areas.

Since I first became involved in telecommunications in 1998, I've thought of partnerships between municipals and telephone companies as a natural fit between small, customer-focused entities. But there are challenges to making it work. One of the primary challenges is building trust and understanding between the two types of organizations.

With major fanfare, CenturyLink announced a couple of weeks ago that it had decided to accept Phase II funding from the Connect America Fund to help pay for building out "high-speed" internet service to rural areas of its service territory.  The announcement even showed up on local newscasts here in Iowa as some sort of revelation.  A friend of mine saw one of those news reports and asked me, "What does this mean?".  I replied, somewhat cynically, "It means that sometime early in the 2020's CenturyLink's rural customers will finally get access to yesterday's definition of broadband." 

Cynicism aside, it's true.  Around 2022, the most remote CenturyLink customers in Iowa will be able to get internet speeds of 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up.  That's not only less than half of today's FCC definition of broadband (25 Mbps x 3 Mbps), but likely to be seriously lagging behind the average consumer's needs in the future.  10 Mbps will seem as inadequate in 2022 as 1.5 Mbps DSL seems today.  Still, some people will be able to get something better than dial-up for the first time ever.   


One thought that CenturyLink's decision to accept the statewide commitment brings to my mind:  what does that mean for their more urban service territories?  Already, many CenturyLink DSL customers cannot get 25x3 (your's truly included) even if they live in cities.  To improve speeds in these areas, CenturyLink would need more fiber closer to more customers so that the copper loops are short enough to handle higher DSL speeds.  But with the emphasis on rural areas to meet the requirements to receive CAF funding, it makes me wonder if there will be much left over for the rest of the state.  

Recently, a client was struggling to overcome challenges that were the result of some poor past decisions (or lack of decisions) by the company's employees and governing board. I initially used the term "benign neglect" to describe how they reached their predicament.  But I'm not so sure that is the right term.

Merriam-Webster defines the term "benign neglect" to mean "an attitude or policy of ignoring an often delicate or undesirable situation that one is held to be responsible for dealing with."  That's a perfect description for what this client faced, and it's all too common in the telecommunications world, especially among small companies with limited resources.  But the damage that can be caused by "benign neglect" is anything but harmless or benign.

Benign neglect can lead to:

• Increased costs
  
• Lost opportunities
  
• Poor customer service
  
• And ultimately, failure
  

Fortunately this client decided to seek help in time to prevent that final bullet point from happening.  The key to getting help is admitting that you need it.  And in their case, they cleared that hurdle and are well on their way to overcoming the not-so-benign challenges they face.