Multichannel News

Comcast Business announced that Springfield Public Schools in Union County (NJ), has selected the unit’s Ethernet service to support a tech learning environment for more than 2,400 students across the district’s five schools.

In addition to providing the Internet bandwidth (from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps) needed by the thousands of laptops and other mobile devices that access the school district’s network, Comcast Business will also provide a connection between Springfield Public Schools and its primary data center for the secure transfer of all critical administrative and educational data.

Springfield Public Schools is a five-school district that includes one early childhood learning center, two elementary schools, a middle school and one high school. The district offers a “1:1 learning environment” whereby it provides laptops for students in grades 6-12 as well as for all faculty and administrators. The Pre K-5 classrooms have a minimum of four laptops and tablets per classroom. Ethernet services are one of Comcast's growth engines. Overall, Comcast business service revenues grew to $876 million in the fourth quarter of 2013, up from $699 million in the year-ago quarter, and $3.24 billion for all of 2013, compared to $2.56 billion in 2012. About 20% of revenues in the category come from mid-sized businesses served by the multiple service operator's Metro Ethernet platform.

[March 11]

Noting at an industry conference that Comcast has tackled big integrations before, Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit said the cable giant has already assembled a small integration team for its pending merger with Time Warner Cable, adding that the initial focus will likely be on upgrading TWC plant to all-digital. Smit, speaking at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom conference in Palm Beach (FL), said the primary focus will be to keep both businesses running well.

[March 10]

Looking to instill loyalty among existing subs while trying to lure new customers to its wireless and wireline service mix, Verizon Communications launched a “Double Up” promo that doles out monthly $20 discounts to subs who take both FiOS and Verizon Wireless services. The promo, targeted to subs on the FiOS Quantum triple-play (with broadband service of 50 Mbps or higher) who also take a Verizon Wireless LTE service with at least one smartphone, are in line for those monthly discounts ($10 off their wireless bill, and $10 off their FiOS bill) over two years, meaning they’ll save a total of $480 during that span. Verizon is offering the promo to new and existing customers – with or without a contract -- through April 19. [March 7]

AT&T likes the results it’s getting with its initial fiber-to-the-premises “U-verse with GigaPower” deployment in Austin so much that it is preparing to unleash the 1-Gig-capable platform in Dallas later in 2014. Like Google Fiber’s build-out approach, AT&T GigaPower is offering access on a demand-driven basis, asking residents to influence the fiber upgrade locations by voting on the Web. AT&T has not disclosed how many customers are on GigaPower, but has said it’s currently available in “tens of thousands” of homes.

[March 7]

Charter Communications has kicked off its all-digital shift in Southern California, teeing up an upgrade that will clear the way for a total of 200 HD channels, faster broadband speeds, and a video on demand library stocked with about 10,000 “options.”

Charter said it will begin the process in the market in late March, and wrap it up in early September. Communities targeted in this round up upgrades includes Monterey Park, West Covina, Azusa, Norwalk, Pasadena, Cerritos, Ventura, Malibu, Whittier, Riverside, Victorville, Hesperia, Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead, Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino, Atascadero, Paso Robles, Grover Beach, Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo, Turlock, Escalon, Gilroy, Watsonville, California City and Porterville. Once the upgrade is complete, Charter will double residential Internet speeds (downstream) from 30 Mbps to 60 Mbps at no additional cost.

[March 7]

Stocks at some of the top station groups were clobbered after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed eliminating coordinated retransmission consent negotiations, a move that could lessen the grip some station groups have on distributors in both rural and urban markets.

With 96 rounds completed, the Federal Communications Commission's H block auction is just under the $1.5 billion mark. As of Feb 19, the auction has reached $1,499,978,000 in bids for 176 spectrum licenses. There were 13 bidders in the latest round, adding another $3.45 million to the total from the previous round. The top bid is for New York, and appears to have topped out at a bid of just under $217 million. Dish has promised that the auction will at least meet the FCC's floor price of $1.564 billion.

Time is launching a new digital sports network with help from three of the "big four" professional sports leagues. The National Basketball Association, National Hockey League and Major League Baseball -- along with NASCAR and Campus Insiders -- have partnered with Time on 120 Sports, a live-streaming digital offering that will be available across all platforms and mobile devices.

120 Sports will not require authentication from users' pay-TV provider, and will feature original and hosted programming, including game footage, analysis, conversation and social commentary from the players, newsmakers as well as voices of the fans. The content will be delivered in two-minute segments. The digital network is expected to launch sometime this spring. 120 Sports will debut as free native applications for mobile and tablet devices, as well as the web at 120Sports.com and other distribution outlets. A premium content offering will be introduced next year.

Based on analyst predictions that telecommunications equipment manufacturing company Arris is the supplier with the most to gain in the wake of the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, one might think that the vendor is jumping for joy. Think again. Both of its feet are firmly on the ground, careful not to exude overconfidence about those future prospects.

Arris, said company chairman and CEO Bob Stanzione, is “holding our breath” to see how the deal might affect spending later in 2014, wary that TWC might decide to pull the purse strings tighter during this coming period of uncertainty. “Vendors are doing a wait and see on what’s going to happen here,” Stanzione said. The ink is barely dry on the mega-merger, but so far it’s been “business as usual,” Stanzione said in his first public comments about the proposed deal since it was announced on February 13. Stanzione said he was not surprised to see a new deal for TWC emerge after Charter Communications made its initial bid and rumors follows that Comcast was somehow getting involved.

[Commentary] As cable operators such as Comcast push ahead with policies that turn home gateways into quasi-public hotspots, it’s becoming clear that a big challenge ahead will be centered on educating consumers and allaying their fears, and less so on the technology that's driving it.

When Comcast announced in 2013 that it was starting to broadcast a separate, public “XfinityWifi” in a growing number of home-side Wi-Fi-capable gateways in select markets, I figured it wouldn’t be long before stories in local markets started to surface detailing consumer concerns about this budding home-as-a-hotspot idea, which has already taken firm root in markets such as Europe.

While some consumers clearly understood the network-expanding benefits of an approach, many others were upset that it was an opt-out program, or were fearful that a gateway emitting this separate network ID was somehow siphoning some of the bandwidth they were paying good money for. Still others had security concerns or flat out didn't trust Comcast and were sure that company was in some way up to no good. And many of those are valid concerns, of course. But they are also concerns that Comcast has tried to address in its communications to customers when this capability got turned on.

It’s clear that Comcast is trying to get the message out and to get out ahead of these concerns. But it’s similarly clear that not everyone bothers to read them the first time through, meaning it will take a prolonged effort to educate consumers, hammer home these messages, and (maybe) put these worries at ease.