Mike Farrell

Altice USA said it is extending its free broadband service to students in its service territory until June 30, 2020. The company also has been partnering with school districts in the New York Tri-state area to offer its Student WiFi product at no cost for 60 days, a program that provides students who have school-issued devices the ability to use the Optimum WiFi Hotspot Network to access their school’s network and resources from home if they do not have dedicated Internet access. To date, Altice USA has partnered with more than 100 school districts and connected more than 240,000 student de

Small cable operators are answering the call to provide wider access to broadband services as the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt lives across the country, offering free service to low-income qualifying homes and beefing up speeds to account for increased traffic as residents increasingly work from home. While larger companies like Comcast, Charter, Altice USA and others have grabbed headlines with their broadband offerings during the crisis, small cable is stepping up to the plate too, including Mediacom Communications, Shenandoah Telecommunications (Shentel) and TDS Telecom.

Municipal broadband networks, an idea that some in the cable business believe looks a lot better on paper than in practice, may be on the verge of a breakthrough.

NCTA–The Internet & Television Association CEO Michael Powell, called for tighter controls against massive tech companies like Google, Facebook and Netflix on issues like privacy and data collection, but added that moves to implement net neutrality rules on a state level isn’t the solution. He said that federal regulators have failed to see the influence of companies like Google and Facebook, adding that in the government’s eyes, they are tech companies that need to be protected. 

Sinclair Broadcast Group filed documents with the Federal Communications Commission withdrawing its applications to acquire Tribune Media and asking the agency to cancel hearings set to discuss the merger. Sinclair asked that its applications to acquire Tribune be withdrawn with prejudice and requested that the chief administrative law judge terminate a hearing that was to look into possible sham transactions associated with the approval process. 

Tribune Media said in court filings that its merger path over the past 12 months with Sinclair Broadcast Group was bloodied not by regulatory pressure but by its partner's hubris, and is seeking $1 billion in damages to help heal its wounds. Tribune said Sinclair repeatedly failed to disclose key information to tribune and regulators, a practice which helped torpedo the deal. According to the suit, the deal would have likely been approved months ago if Sinclair had only agreed to divest of stations in 10 overlap markets earmarked by the Department of Justice and presented clean station sale

When they set out on their own in 2012 after more than two decades working for one of the most revered names in the cable industry — the late Bill Bresnan, founder of Bresnan Communications — Jeff DeMond and Andrew Kober had a clear vision of where their respective futures lay. Broadband was the key. But not just any broadband. DeMond, CEO of Vyve Broadband, one of 2018’s Independent Operators of the Year, said he and Kober, Vyve’s chief financial officer, specifically looked for rural markets, territories that were essentially being shunned by larger, more established operators.

The Walt Disney Co.’s pending deal to buy certain assets of 21st Century Fox were briefly interrupted by a larger offer from Comcast, but the cable giant’s reluctance to offer a termination fee and concerns that the transaction would face stiff resistance from regulatory bodies pushed Fox towards a less lucrative deal with Disney, according to federal filings. Fox’s fears were bolstered by the Department of Justice’s decision to block another large vertical merger – AT&T and Time Warner Inc. – that was eerily similar to a Comcast pairing.

Comcast, Charter, and Cox have teamed up with ad sales company NCC Media to form a new division within NCC to design, deploy and sell unified advertising solutions across the country to participating NCC partners. The group will use non-personally identifying data and targeting capabilities to create advanced advertising products and will launch later in 2018. NCC is jointly owned by Comcast, Charter and Cox and provides national, regional and local marketers with advertising solutions that allow them reach consumers via TV programming and targeted online content on every screen.

New Street Research managing partner Jonathan Chaplin said the cable business is going to look vastly different in the next five years. “Today the wireless and cable industries have completely separate networks. In five years, those networks will be as one.