Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s campaign has sent personal invitations to some of the telecom industry’s most powerful lobbying groups asking them to attend an “information session” that will give the lobbyists “an inside look on the work underway on planning for the transition,” should Donald Trump become the next president of the United States.

Communications Daily reports the secretive meeting will be held at the powerhouse D.C. law firm Baker Hostetler, and will feature Trump transition team leader Chris Christie, the current governor of New Jersey.¹

The Trump campaign has remained almost totally silent on telecom public policy issues, but the meeting will give some of the country’s biggest telecom companies face time to influence an incoming Trump Administration on telecom issues ranging from wireless spectrum to Net Neutrality to competition and regulation matters.

Transition team member Andrew Bremberg, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sent the invitations. Likely to attend are lobbyists from NCTA-The Internet Association (cable lobby) and the CTIA (the wireless industry’s principal lobbyist). Also expected are individuals representing some of the largest telecom companies in the country. Up to 100 lobbyists are expected to attend.

The Trump campaign has refused to confirm the event and efforts to reach lobbyists expected to attend to confirm the meeting have also been rebuffed.

Such meetings give lobbyists invaluable face time with important incoming administration officials and often stimulate political campaign contributions. Consumers or their representatives are never invited to attend.

The Trump campaign has proven elusive about the candidate’s views on telecom policies. The Clinton campaign has been more forthcoming, released dozens of pages outlining a comprehensive telecom policy with claims the candidate favors Net Neutrality and wants to spend a considerable sum of taxpayer dollars on enhancing rural broadband.

¹Telecom Officials Likely on Deck for Next Week’s Trump Transition Meeting – Communications Daily/Comm Daily® Notebook, 30 Sep 2016, Ref: 1609290070 – (Subscription req’d.)

Researchers from Portugal’s Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC) report success delivering high-speed internet access powered by helium balloons attached to buoys, vessels, or even windmills.

The Bluecom+ Project demonstrates the viability of delivering internet access using a broadband mesh network operating in the 500MHz band, currently occupied by UHF television channels 19-34. Researchers created a wireless internet network from shore that achieved more than 100 kilometers of coverage offshore, providing access to Wi-Fi and 4G technology-powered internet in the Azores, an archipelago in the mid-Atlantic.

The islands, an autonomous region of Portugal, were selected to test the capability of providing affordable enhanced communications for vessels at sea. Currently, most ships rely on satellite-based communications services, which come at a high cost.

The relatively low frequencies used are capable of penetrating buildings and achieving longer distance coverage, which make them especially suitable for wireless broadband. In the United States, mobile providers are seeking additional spectrum now used by UHF television stations to further expand their wireless networks. In rural areas like the Azores, there is plenty of open channel space to support wireless broadband, as there would be in rural communities currently not served well by DSL or cable broadband.

The project hopes to achieve complete coverage of the Azores, as well as offshore areas around the islands, within the next five years. Bluecom+ is a jointly funded project of Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein through European Union grants.

For the first time, the average American now pays over $100 a month just to watch television.

Leichtman Research Group, which has measured cable television rates annually for years, just released a report finding the average amount paid for cable television is now $103.10 a month. That’s an increase of about 4% over last year, the lowest annual increase in five years. But it’s still a 39% increase from 2011-2015, which is nearly eight times the rate of inflation.

As rates rise, customers are increasingly cutting cable’s cord for good. More than 800,000 Americans said goodbye to cable TV in the second quarter of this year alone, according to cable industry researcher SNL Kagan. eMarketer says the biggest reason customers are leaving is obvious: higher bills.

“About 82% of households that use a TV currently subscribe to a pay-TV service. This is down from where it was five years ago, and similar to the penetration level eleven years ago,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “The rates of those exiting the category, or intending to leave, are actually similar to recent years. The decline in penetration is also due to a lack of those who are coming into the category, and the industry not keeping pace with movers and related rental housing growth.”

Customers are no longer fooled by promotional rates that offer cable TV for $30-50 a month, usually expiring after one year. Once their first bill arrives, they are unhappy to discover growing mandatory equipment fees and bill padding charges for sports programming, local stations, fake official-sounding surcharges like “regulatory recovery fees,” and more.

“Once the XFINITY bill arrives, my $60 television promotion is $104 after the $5 fee for local stations, $3 for sports, additional outlet charges, equipment rental fees, and taxes/surcharges,” said Comcast customer Dan Ho from central California. “You almost have to take the internet and phone service just to feel like you are getting anything of value for your money, because the bundle price seems like a better deal.”

The cable industry argues cord-cutting won’t save consumers much money, but as Fortune magazine reports, those arguments are traditionally based on temporary rates that never tell the whole story,

“Too often, the comparisons quote a low, promotional, or entry-level price for the cost of a cable TV package instead of looking at the real prices people actually pay,” wrote Fortune author Aaron Pressman. “Left out of the superficial analysis all too often are set-top box fees, regional sports network fees, fees dressed up as faux taxes, and actual taxes.”

Fortune adds every year is a new record high for cable television bills.

Leichtman Research reports that once consumers cut the cord, an increasing number never look back, while those still subscribed to cable are often earching for a better deal:

• Overall, about 3% of TV households last subscribed to a cable/pay-TV service 1-3 years ago, about 6% subscribed over 3 years ago, and about 6% never subscribed to a pay-TV service;
• 7% of current cable subscribers did not subscribe to a TV service for more than a month at some time over the past two years;
• 25% of those who moved in the past year do not currently subscribe to a cable TV service — a higher level than in previous years;
• 12% of cable subscribers are likely to switch from their provider in the next six months — similar to 11% in 2015, and 12% in 2014;
• 6% of pay-TV subscribers are likely to disconnect from their provider and not subscribe to any TV service in the next six months — similar to 7% in 2015, and 7% in 2014.

The average American broadband-equipped household now uses 190GB a month, more than 95% of which is online video, according to a new report from iGR Research.

The detailed 125-page study of broadband speeds and usage, priced at $1,950, included some surprising changes in usage patterns.

In the past, as consumers upgraded their broadband plan to get faster speeds, their corresponding usage also increased. But iGR Research found that trend is no longer true as speed increases accelerate.

Iain Gillott, president of iGR Research, noted households with higher-speed connections don’t necessarily consume more data than those with lower-speed connections. Once broadband speeds achieve a rate fast enough to support high quality online video, further speed increases don’t always result in substantially higher consumption.

Gillott pointed out his own family recently upgraded to a 200Mbps connection and found little change in their monthly usage. That could be a problem for internet providers that cap customer usage while blaming increased demand.

“If we download a movie, it used to take 20 minutes to get HD. Now it takes three,” Gillott told Telecompetitor. “But it doesn’t mean we use any more data; it’s just that it took longer.”

Gillott noted customers upgrading from a slow speed DSL connection are another matter. Because DSL may only be able to support one or two concurrent video streams, many customers intentionally limited their simultaneous use of the internet to maintain usability. But once speeds increase to manage online video demands, usage often increases.

The report, U.S. Home Broadband and Wi-Fi Usage Forecast, 2015-2020, does forecast advancements in online video are likely to drive usage substantially higher than the current broadband allowances offered by many providers. The growth in 4K video alone could spike usage to as much as 500GB a month.

“What drives usage is more high-definition [content],” commented Gillott. “It doubles the amount of data used.”

Online video is driving almost all the usage growth in the United States. Gillott points to a cultural change in how television programming is being viewed in the United States. In short, fewer people are sharing time together watching the same show. Today, many people watch their own shows on their own devices.

“TV has become a personal activity,” said Gillott. “If you have four people in a household now, that means four times the data going in.”

The Federal Communications Commission should redefine broadband as speeds of at least 50/20Mbps, according to the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.

The advocacy group argues that the FCC’s current definition of 25/3Mbps is too slow to support the growth of high-bandwidth online applications including high-definition video, cloud computing, and online gaming.

“People use their connections for many reasons, and often multitask,” the group writes in a filing submitted to the FCC this month. “It is easy to see how multiple people with multiple devices engaging in multiple online activities on the same residential connection can quickly lead to buffering, slow load times, and frustration even with a 25/3 connection.”

In general, consumer groups want the FCC to push providers to offer faster speeds, particularly telephone companies still relying on ADSL, a technology that first became widely available in the 1990s. There are millions of consumers still reliant on DSL technology on copper wire phone networks that can only support speeds of 6Mbps or less. Many of those are Verizon and AT&T customers, particularly in suburban and rural areas bypassed by Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-verse. Almost no AT&T or Verizon ADSL customers come close to achieving the FCC’s current minimum definition of broadband: 25/3Mbps.

The OTI argues that it isn’t just the speed required by applications, it is also the number of concurrent connections. As emerging technology like the Internet of Things introduces new devices that will share a user’s home broadband connection, faster internet speeds may be needed.

“The general consensus around IoT is that, with potentially billions of new devices connecting to the Internet via Wi-Fi or cellular signals, capacity will need to increase,” the organization writes.

But the OTI will have to contend with provider opposition to redefining broadband speeds upwards. The NCTA – the Internet and Television Association, the nation’s largest cable lobbying group, wants the current definition maintained by the FCC.

“The current benchmark accommodates the expected needs of even those households using an atypically large amount of bandwidth, accounting for multiple streams of bandwidth intensive applications like HD streaming video, in addition to web browsing, email, and other applications,” the NCTA wrote. “The Commission should reject the notion of adopting a future-oriented, ‘aspirational’ benchmark, which would be necessarily divorced from the realities of the marketplace.”

Many NCTA members already offer speeds in excess of 50Mbps, although many cable companies also cap their customers’ usage.