NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service app is now finally available on Roku devices and Roku-enabled televisions, almost 10 weeks after the new streaming service launched.

Peacock’s appearance on Roku came after NBCUniversal and Roku reached a deal guaranteeing NBCU’s networks (and corresponding apps for 11 NBCU networks, 12 NBCU-owned local stations, and 23 Telemundo-owned local stations) will remain available on the Roku platform and in return, Roku will support Peacock. The deal was seen as crucial by analysts, because Roku has an installed user base of over 43 million accounts, with an estimated 100 million viewers in households across the country.

“We are pleased that NBC agreed to a very positive and mutually beneficial partnership to bring Peacock to America’s No. 1 streaming platform,” said Tedd Cittadine, Roku’s vice president of content acquisition. “We are excited by the opportunities to integrate NBC content within the Roku Channel while we also work together with Peacock on the development of a significant and meaningful advertising and ad tech partnership. This is a great outcome for consumers and we look forward to growing together with Peacock as they bring their incredible content to the Roku platform.”

Roku is also pleased whenever a significant content provider signs a deal with the company. Roku traditionally takes a 20% cut of all subscription revenue when a customer signs up for a service on the Roku platform. It receives at least 30% of the advertising time on free streaming services, allowing Roku to sell advertising and keep the money. NBCU appeared to be reluctant to accept those terms, and that is likely what caused the delay in debuting Peacock on Roku. Neither party would disclose the terms in the contract. Comcast is the parent company of NBCU.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said last week Peacock had signed up at least 15 million new users over the last two months. But Roberts would not disclose how many were actually paying for the service. Peacock’s free, ad-supported tier offers over 13,000 hours of classic and current NBC programs, including entertainment, news, and sports. A small catalog of original series and other premium content is also available for $4.99 a month (or $49.99/yr), and users who want it all — without ads — can pay $9.99 a month (or $99.99/yr). Roberts likely needs a much larger subscriber base to make Peacock a viable proposition, making its availability on the Roku platform crucial.

Some analysts fear carriage disputes like this could open a new front in the “retransmission consent” wars, where national and local networks are blacked out when cable or satellite providers refuse to pay their asking prices. If Roku insists on being compensated in return for making services available in its app store and if content providers cannot reach an agreement, services could suddenly disappear, or never appear at all. HBO Max is still unavailable on Roku because parent company AT&T has yet to sign a contract with Roku, and Peacock remains unavailable on Amazon’s Fire TV platform and Samsung’s Smart TVs.

A week after the cable industry signaled it was slowing down speed and system upgrades, Google Fiber has once again antagonized the cable industry with word their customers will soon be able to upgrade to 2 Gbps speeds for $100 a month, $30 more than what customers pay for Google Fiber’s 1 Gbps plan.

Google Fiber is testing its new 2 Gbps tier with interested “trusted testers” in Nashville, Tenn., and Huntsville, Ala., along with a new Wi-Fi 6 router and mesh extender capable of supporting reliable gigabit Wi-Fi speeds. Regular customers in those cities will get access to the faster tier sometime later this year, with Google Fiber and Google Fiber Webpass customers in other cities getting 2 Gbps available in early 2021.

“This year has made this need for more speed and bandwidth especially acute, as many of us are now living our entire lives — from work to school to play — within our homes, creating unprecedented demand for internet capacity,” according to an article on Google Fiber’s blog. “2 Gig will answer that challenge. At $100 a month, it’s double the top download speed of our 1 Gig product (with the same great upload speed) and comes with a new Wi-Fi 6 router and mesh extender, so everyone gets a great online experience no matter where they are in the house.”

Google Fiber also emphasizes the tier will come with no data caps or speed throttling. Google’s announcement may have come in part because cable and phone companies have gotten comfortable with their existing product offerings and have opted to slow down investment in upgrades. Some industry observers predict Comcast, and possibly Charter and Cox will perceive Google’s announcement as a competitive threat and reconsider plans to delay the introduction of DOCSIS 4, which allows cable operators to offer up to 10 Gbps. The announcement also calls out competitors for their anemic upload speeds, which are still a fraction of download speeds on cable broadband platforms. Google Fiber’s new tier will support 2 Gbps uploads.

Google Fiber is enrolling people to help test its 2 Gbps service, starting in Nashville and Huntsville next month and in our other Google Fiber cities later this fall. Customers can join the Google Fiber Trusted Tester program to get early access to the new speed tier.  Sign up here to be among the first to test 2 Gbps in your Google Fiber city.

(Reuters) – Verizon Communications said on Monday it will buy pre-paid mobile phones provider Tracfone, a unit of Mexican telecoms giant America Movil in a $6.25 billion cash and stock deal.

Tracfone, which serves about 21 million subscribers through more than 90,000 retail locations across the United States, said more than 13 million of its subscribers rely on Verizon’s network under an existing agreement. Verizon is the largest U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers.

The U.S. wireless industry is concentrated in the hands of three mobile carriers due to several mergers in recent years: T-Mobile, which in April completed its $23 billion merger with Sprint to solidify its position in the United States; AT&T, and Verizon.

America Movil, which was created from a state monopoly, is Mexico’s largest telecoms operator by far and is controlled by the family of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the Latin American nation’s richest man.

Verizon has not historically invested in prepaid compared with its rivals, such as T-Mobile, which revamped its MetroPCS prepaid brand and bought Sprint, which had a large prepaid business.

Verizon’s purchase of Tracfone comes at a time when the pandemic has ravaged the economy and Americans are cutting back on spending.

Tracfone had become popular with the lower end of the ultra-competitive U.S. telecoms consumer market and Verizon plans to provide new products for that segment after this “strategic acquisition,” said Hans Vestberg, chairman and chief executive of Verizon.

“This transaction firmly establishes Verizon, through the Tracfone brands, as the provider of choice in the value segment, which complements our clear leadership in the premium segment,” added Ronan Dunne, executive vice president and group CEO, Verizon Consumer Group.

Shares of Verizon were up more than 1% in morning trading. American Movil shares jumped more than 3.5% when the Mexican market opened.

The deal includes $3.125 billion in cash and $3.125 billion in Verizon stock.

Credit Suisse is acting as financial adviser to Verizon on the deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2021.

Reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru and Drazen Jorgic in Mexico City; Additional reporting by Sheila Dang; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi, Will Dunham and Dan Grebler

Facing no significant new competitive pressure, Charter Communications has put DOCSIS 4, capable of bringing dramatically faster internet service to Spectrum customers, on hold until 2022.

Speaking at today’s Bank of America 2020 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference, Charter chief financial officer Chris Winfrey reassured Wall Street Charter had no plans to surprise shareholders with unplanned increased investment in its broadband service and is in no hurry to deliver DOCSIS 4’s faster internet to its customers.

“We’ll continue to develop the path for DOCSIS 4.0, but […] there’s no rush,” Winfrey said. “There’s still a lot to be excited about DOCSIS 3.1. It’s relatively untapped in terms of the throughout it can give us.”

Charter’s last significant upgrade effort was rolling out DOCSIS 3.1, a project that ended in 2018. Since that time, Charter has done little to raise internet speeds for all of its customers. Spectrum residential customers in some areas of the country receive 100/10 Mbps service while others receive 200/10 Mbps for the same price. Spectrum has dragged its feet on upgrading the remaining half of its footprint to 200 Mbps service, and there is no sign if or when it will upgrade the rest.

At the same time, Charter is petitioning the FCC to end important pro-consumer deal conditions that were required as part of the FCC’s approval of the 2016 merger between Charter and Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. The company is seeking to end a prohibition on implementing data caps. 

Although the company denies it has any immediate plans to implement compulsory data caps, Charter’s announcement it has no plans to announce any new material spending on DOCSIS 4 for the next two years might leave customers with stagnant internet speed and the eventual introduction of data caps.

Winfrey assured investors the company does not have to rush investment on DOCSIS 4.0 upgrades.

“We’ll make sure [upgrades occur on] a normal cycle as opposed to a big bang upgrade,” Winfrey said. “I don’t think it will dramatically change our capital intensity profile.”

AT&T, one of Charter’s largest competitors, has concluded its fiber expansion project, which means Charter’s only new, near-future competitive threat will come from a handful of independent fiber overbuilders that offer gigabit internet speed in some cities at competitive pricing. But most overbuilders are capital constrained, limiting the pace of their expansion. That may explain why Charter does not feel any pressure to upgrade service, especially when the only alternative is slow speed DSL service from the phone company.

A Quebec-based cable company is the target of a hostile takeover by a pair of larger American and Canadian cable operators that would like to divide up the assets for themselves, but have met strong resistance from the family that controls Cogeco and Quebec politicians worried about job losses in the province.

Altice USA, which owns Cablevision/Optimum and Suddenlink in the United States, made an uninvited bid of $7.8US billion on Wednesday to take control of Cogeco, a Canadian cable operator that offers service in parts of Ontario and Quebec, and also owns American subsidiary Atlantic Broadband. If the takeover is successful, Altice has agreed to sell Cogeco’s Canadian assets to telecom giant Rogers, Canada’s largest cable operator.

Louis AUDET, head of Cogeco

The Audet family, which holds 69% of Cogeco’s voting rights and 82.9% of the voting rights at Cogeco Communications through subsidiary Gestion Audem, Inc., quickly rejected the offer.

“Members of the Audet family unanimously reiterated that they are not interested in selling their shares. The family takes pride in its stewardship role in both companies, offering high-quality services to its customers, enriching the communities in which they operate and creating superior returns for shareholders through sound growth strategies,” said Louis Audet, who serves as president of Gestion Audem, Inc.

Cogeco has been a frequently rumored target for an imminent corporate takeover, much like America’s Cablevision was when it was controlled by the Dolan family. Ongoing consolidation among telecom companies in Canada and the United States have disfavored medium-sized cable and phone companies, making them ripe for takeover bids. Cogeco’s unique position in territories where much larger Rogers Cable operates in Ontario and Videotron in Quebec has inspired near-constant rumors that Rogers would acquire Cogeco to complete cable consolidation in Ontario and gain entry into parts of Quebec. Rogers already owns 41% of the subordinate shares of Cogeco and 33% of those of Cogeco Communications, which gives them a minority stake and voice in the company. Partnering with Altice USA to do a deal would spare Rogers from having to arrange a sale of Cogeco’s American operations.

In addition to strong resistance from the Audet family, the transaction immediately was ensnared in the cultural and economic hornet’s nest involving Ontario and Quebec provincial politics. Quebec politicians are highly sensitive to takeovers involving Quebec-based companies, especially those coming from Ontario. In 2000, Rogers’ attempt to acquire Videotron stirred controversy over moving the cable company’s headquarters out of Quebec in favor of Ontario. The fact Rogers is based in English-speaking Canada also did it no favors. French Quebec’s Quebecor acquired Videotron instead.

Once again, political differences between anglophone Ontario and francophone Quebec quickly re-emerged after news of the offer went public.

In an interview with Quebec City radio station CJMF, Quebec’s Premier François Legault immediately dismissed the takeover bid.

“It is out of the question to let this Quebec company move its head office to Ontario,” Legault said. “We talked this morning with Louis Audet […] and we’ll do whatever it takes to keep the head office here.”

Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor, which owns Videotron, also slammed the deal on Twitter, claiming Rogers would eliminate Cogeco’s major corporate presence in Montréal Place Ville Marie, and move everything to Toronto. Péladeau noted Cogeco’s most valuable and experienced employees are not “flying whales” prepared to uproot their lives and relocate to Ontario.

The sensitivity of watching job losses in Quebec in return for job gains in Ontario is not likely to be missed by Quebec’s politicians and could bring significant opposition to a deal if Altice USA sweetens its offer to a level deemed acceptable enough by the Audet family to sell.