Daniel Frankel

A year after Mediacom paid an undisclosed sum to take over the cable system in Andalusia (AL) the town’s mayor is warning the operator that if he continues to hear complaints, Andalusia will shop for a municipal broadband provider. “For the entire time that I have been mayor, I have not received as many complaints about anything as I have received about the cable and broadband service from Mediacom,” said Andalusia Mayor Earl Johnson. “Whatever it is that they’re doing here, they need to make some changes.”

[Commentary] Last week, Forbes contributor Rosyln Layton was fed up with what she saw as a lack of journalistic stridency in reports by FierceCable, DSL Reports, as well as numerous tech media publications, on a study (PDF) published by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society concluding that municipal broadband was generally a better deal for consumers. Layton went on to accuse FierceCable of “blindly” accepting the Berkman study.

Charter Communications told the New York Public Utilities Commission (PUC) recently that it is ahead of schedule on a series of state broadband infrastructure improvements promised amid regulatory approval of its Time Warner Cable purchase two years ago. 

Despite tying a projected five-year capital expenditure figure of $50 billion to the Federal Communications Commission’s recent decision to roll back its net neutrality mandates, an analysis of Comcast’s capital expenditures (capex) reveals that the top US cable operator was on track to spend about that much even before the agency voted to deregulate. 

Deutsche Bank Analyst Matthew Niknam listed seven key benefits to the Comcast-Charter Communications partnership, which calls for the two companies to share wireless technology and best practices, as well as control each other’s major M&A endeavors in the wireless industry. Niknam then listed seven “opportunities” rendered by the deal:

1. It offers national scale across a fiber-dense network footprint covering 80% of the US
2. The two companies will share network technology, software, product development and operational investments and expertise
3. Each will dramatically increase its service footprint, allowing customers to reach across each other’s Wi-Fi networks, as well as any LTE or 5G network infrastructure built in the future
4. The deal offers collaboration on spectrum procurement and any future network design and buildout
5. It will enable both companies to better serve the business market with wireless services
6. It will provide better leverage and scale for procurement from vendors
7. It will extend the amount of retail service locations both companies can offer

Prices charged by cable operators for broadband services will double over the next several years, offsetting declines from broadband saturation and erosion of linear pay-TV services, says New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin. In a note sent out to investors, Chaplin noted that while cable operators continue to steal high-speed internet marketshare from telephone companies, cable companies' rate of Internet service provider customer growth is actually slowing. Chaplin said customer growth came in at 6.4% in the fourth quarter of 2016, down both year-over-year (from 6.9% in Q4 of 2015) and sequentially (down from 6.9% in Q3 of 2016).

[Commentary] NBC News released the results of a survey a few days ago showing that 49% of US consumers say they’re less likely to buy a product endorsed by the current US president. Despite the benefits AT&T and Charter might obtain from the Trump Administration, it might not make good business sense for these guys to fly too close to the sun. Not when he’s perceived as a black hole to more than half of the consumer base.

Indeed, captains of telecommunication industry need to understand that bedding with this administration could have serious long-term public-perception consequences. Just on an average Tuesday this week, the press secretary had to issue an apology for using a bad Nazi-era analogy. During Passover. If things were to get much worse, a CEO who got in too tight with the Oval Office could end up with a figurative public head-shaving.

Charter Communications has been hit with a class action suit in St. Louis (MO) for selling subscribers’ personally identifiable information. A subscriber said that between 2011 and 2013, Charter sold information such as names and addresses to unknown companies without customer consent. The plaintiffs are alleging that Charter violated Missouri’s Merchandising Practices Act. The subscriber claims he was not provided with a copy of Charter’s privacy policy, which is required under that law. The complaint also said Charter failed to obtain written consent to sell the information or provide an opt-out provision.

Notably, when Comcast, Verizon and AT&T each put out statements two weeks ago swearing to not sell private customer data in the wake of the Republican Congress’ decision to dispense of Obama-era privacy protections, the nation’s No. 2 cable operator was quiet.

After touting a steady stream of synergistic benefits from its NBCUniversal division in recent quarterly earnings reports, Comcast could be facing an unanticipated challenge from being tied to the programming conglomerate. Along Donald Trump’s inexplicable march to Jan 20’s inauguration, NBCU has found itself at odds with the president-elect. In short, NBCU has a terrible relationship with an incoming president who seems to hold a grudge.

A decade ago, Trump starred in a hit reality show for NBC, The Apprentice. But last summer, the network’s top entertainment executive, Robert Greenblatt, made a private Facebook post that became public, not calling out Trump by name but presumably referring to the then far-right presidential candidate. “It’s actually corrosive and toxic because his ‘mind’ is so demented; and his effect will unfortunately linger long after he’s been told to get off the stage,” Greenblatt said.

Although AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson conceded that he’s never run a movie studio before, chances are the acquisition of Warner Bros. Pictures, part of the company’s $85.4 billion bid to buy Time Warner, isn’t an afterthought. Certainly, in 2009, when Comcast first proposed buying NBCUniversal, there wasn’t a whole lot of attention paid to the cable company taking over a badly slumping Universal Pictures unit that had fallen to dead last among the major movie studios.

Indeed, seven years ago, Time Warner’s Warner Bros. Pictures unit controlled 19.7 percent of the North American box office. With its powerful Minions still a year away from hitting the global box office and turning the fortunes of the studio around, Universal controlled just 8.3 percent of the North American theatrical market in 2009. Jump forward to 2015, and Universal controlled the lion’s share of the global box office, bringing in more than $2.4 billion in North American theatrical revenue alone and generating intellectual property that sparked EBITDA for Comcast across not just cable video on demand, but in robust businesses like theme parks and consumer products.