Pay TV is changing rapidly

Not really after their last couple of launches. They should be good for more than another decade overall. If not longer. And launching a new satellite is still cheaper that the costs of upgrading a network around the country and getting it into people's homes. And even less expensive if looked at on a cost per subscriber. Same reason everyone ones to create fixed wireless networks instead of running lines to houses in the middle of nowhere.

 

initial costs of upgrading the network may be more expensive, but if done right with fiber you would be set for decades.

long term it would be cheaper than launching new satellites

 

what i could see happening is the big guys build out the network and they jack the prices of bandwidth up so much that the cost of barrier is too high for the majority of streaming companies to enter the market

 

i think this article pretty much sums up the mindset of internet providers
WOW: Broadband Caps, Not 'If' but 'When' | Light Reading

with zero rating and data caps becoming the norm among fixed line broadband providers, any streaming site that doesn't have their own network will have an even tougher time.

 

There really isn't any high speed internet for large areas of the country - I live in Maine and a great deal (area wise) of the state doesn't even have cell phone service and only has land line because the government forces it. I'm sure there are plenty other areas of the country that are similar. Satellite is really the great solution and I'm sure will continue to be great for years.

20 years out - who can tell what technology will be and do by then - something we all don't even conceive of yet.

 

Yep, this is the same thing that happened with data services for telcos. ISDN was always priced sky high because it not only provided 128 kb (better than the dial up modems of the day) but two phone lines. So they priced it about on par with two business lines, making a non-option for most residential customers (which made the equipment cost really high as well)

When I first had DSL back in 1997, I had read an article about how someone was ordering 'alarm circuits' from their telco for DSL. Assuming the end to end run from ISP to home was short enough it would work and didn't require any help from the telco, you just needed DSL modems on either end. I showed it to a couple friends who owned an ISP that just happened to be across the street from the central office, and they were off and running getting samples from vendors and testing them at my house since I was about a 9000 ft run end to end. One of the guys even climbed the pole behind my pose to snip the bridge tap on my line he was able to see with his oscilloscope!

So I got free DSL for years, and they were able to offer it as a product about five years before Qwest offered it here. But once they did, they stopped letting him order those dry pair / LADS / alarm circuits because they didn't like the competition. They only allowed them to be ordered by companies that were actually offering burglar / fire alarms that needed it. Eventually Qwest was able to convince the state regulators to let them cut off all those circuits not being used for their intended purpose, so I had to start paying for my DSL

The reason Comcast and other cable companies have started rolling out caps is because they know the cord cutters will come eventually. They can't be seen as adding the caps in reaction to that, so they have put them in place in plenty of time. Mostly they aren't enforced, but when it becomes necessary they'll enforce them to protect their juicy TV revenue. Another way they can protect it is to make the price of internet service higher while making TV cheap to add in a double play package - something they've been doing for years but will probably double down on.

Some will claim that fixed wireless broadband will come to the rescue, but not really. There isn't enough bandwidth to offer this in more densely populated areas like in cities. Sure, it'll work great out in rural areas where customer density is low, but it'll never work in the suburbs where everyone is crowded together on 1/4 acre lots so you have a couple thousand houses per square mile. If they offer it in such areas at all, they give it a low enough cap it won't be useful for watching much TV.

 

i don't think fixed wireless will be the answer in most rural areas either. The truly independent WISP's are extremely localized and performance by those companies vary. Some are great and some are terrible

Sure AT&T and some of the other big companies might start offering it, but that will just allow them to jack the prices up to make up their tv revenue

 

There is constant upkeep on a fiber network just as their is a sat based network.

 

You have to pay a ton to get your network setup and also build connections to all the channels feeds and such as well. Why do you think DIrectv owns a massive fiber network that rings this entire country? Because you have to have proper connections to everything, as well as backups..

 

Sure, a majority of the money held overseas is held by tech companies. But they are companies like Apple, Microsoft and Facebook, not AT&T and Verizon. Apple isn't going to bring cash back and build networks. In fact, I doubt much of that money would get invested by companies - it will most likely be used for debt retirement, share buybacks and dividends.

The fantasy the money would be used for investing in the US was the reason behind the foolhardy repatriation done under Bush. That repatriation is the direct cause of why so much money is left overseas now - companies like Apple are willing to wait however many years it takes for the US to either have another repatriation holiday (TERRIBLE idea) or making a permanent change that provides more incentive to bring money back (how it should be done)

Lowering the US tax rate will help, since so long as money has been taxed at or near the rate in the US, there is no reason not to bring it home. But if it is has been taxed much more lightly (some overseas schemes allow money to be taxed as low as 2%, depending on the type of income and where it was earned) so even if you lower the rate to say 15% companies will start piling up that 2% taxed money by the billions waiting for another foolish repatriation holiday.

 

I always love things that talk in % and give you no proper scale.

 

Great that someone wants to carry service to rural places in Maine - most of the state doesn't even have any AT&T service today.

I really wonder about how they will make money when they may only have 1 customer in a 10 sq mile area.