Cord-cutting is a real, measurable phenomena and is especially common among those under 30 who don’t care about traditional cable television service.

Those are the views of Verizon’s chief financial officer Fran Shammo, speaking this week at the Wells Fargo 2013 Tech, Media & Telecom Conference in New York.

Shammo told investors Verizon FiOS subscriber numbers showed the company has an excellent position in the broadband market because it is the only national provider other than Google offering fiber-to-the-home service.

Verizon TV customers are regularly encouraged to upgrade to 50Mbps Quantum service with a push of a button on their remote control.

“Broadband is absolutely key,” said Shammo. “Most of our customers are taking our 50Mbps [FiOS Quantum] or higher speed and part of that is because you need that speed inside the home [to support] your wireless devices that run off of Wi-Fi. If you’re running hot water with five people, you are eventually going to slow down the hot water and it is going to run cold. The same thing happens when you are running five wireless devices over your Wi-Fi network.”

Shammo said as more online video becomes available people will gradually shift more of their viewing time away from traditional television.

“We’re also seeing fewer people taking [our cable television] product,” said Shammo. “They really want the broadband speed and if you look at the demographics, those 30 and below don’t care if they have linear TV. They are looking at getting their content through other means.”

Shammo said he doesn’t necessarily have a problem with that because heavy online viewing will stimulate upgrades to faster Verizon FiOS Internet speeds.

“We invested in FiOS for broadband and for television and we think we have a superior product,” said Shammo. “But we’re smart enough to realize that the ecosystem will eventually change and people are bringing content in over-the-top. We want to make sure we have the fastest — the best broadband […] and we believe we have the best linear TV product but we know that over the top video is going to become more popular.”

Moffett

Wall Street is worried the cable industry will not be able to report major subscriber gains going forward because just about every middle/upper-income customer that wants broadband within cable’s footprint already has the service from either the phone or cable company.

Cable analyst Craig Moffett from MoffettNathanson Research predicts singing up the last 20% of Americans who don’t subscribe to broadband service will be challenging. As of today, 73% have the service, up 2.5% from last year. An increasingly anemic growth rate is a sign the marketplace is getting saturated, with only low-income Americans underrepresented, primarily because they can’t afford the asking price. Most of the rest don’t own or want computers or Internet access or live in a rural area where the service is unavailable.

Under these circumstances, it is no surprise broadband providers are reporting lower new customer gains. Time Warner Cable and Cablevision actually lost broadband customers in the third quarter, mostly to Verizon FiOS. For the last five years, the cable industry has picked up most of its broadband customers from phone companies offering only DSL service.

“To be sure cable is still taking share [from telco DSL] but it is doing so at a much more modest pace,” Moffett said.

The industry’s best chance for new subscriber growth appears to be bundling computers or tablets with an entry-level broadband offering targeting the poor.

Although cable companies are not supplying free PCs just yet, many are introducing relatively slow, budget-priced broadband tiers to attract lower-income subscribers.

Time Warner Cable introduced a $14.95 2/1Mbps broadband tier this month the company hopes will attract price-sensitive customers, especially those now subscribed to low-speed DSL.

Comcast has Internet Essentials, a $10 slow speed broadband service for families with children enrolled in the federal student lunch program. It is also rolling out a “prepaid Internet service” directly targeting low-income customers. Prepaid customers pay $69.95 for an activation kit containing a DOCSIS 3 modem and a month of broadband service. Renewals are priced at $15 for a week or $45 for a month for 3Mbps service with a 768kbps upload rate.

Most other cable providers offer entry-level broadband speeds, but usually only as a retention tool. Even if the industry custom-targets low-speed tiers to low-income homes, many customers may never make it past the cable industry’s credit check procedure. Comcast’s prepaid offering avoids that problem.

Behind the 8 ball.

Intel’s plan to launch a competing virtual cable television operation delivering programming over existing broadband connections is dead and the cable industry has tentative plans to bury the technology overseas.

OnCue was to feature dozens of popular cable networks and a large library of on-demand content using hardware that combined live, on-demand, and streaming video. The service was supposed to be up and running this year, but despite months of talks, Intel was unable to announce any significant carriage agreements with major cable networks. Cable programmers were reportedly fearful of alienating their biggest customers — large incumbent cable, telco and satellite companies — potentially leaving networks exposed to retaliation during contract renewal talks.

The cable industry has repeatedly warned that reselling programming to streaming providers dilutes the value of those networks. The clear implication: sell to our competitors and we will demand significantly discounted rates when our contracts come up for renewal.

Intel has reportedly been shopping the remnants of the service to new buyers. A late October rumor that Verizon Communications was a likely buyer has gone unconfirmed. Today, Bloomberg News reports Dr. John Malone’s Liberty Media has shown an interest (since denied by Liberty) in acquiring the service. Other media accounts suggest Verizon and Liberty could jointly buy the service, but Malone is loyal to the cable industry and is reportedly uncomfortable doing business with a telephone company.

Should Liberty Media acquire the technology, cable companies in the United States can stop worrying about OnCue as an online competitor. Liberty Media would only deploy the technology as an advanced set-top box offered through its owned and operated European cable systems.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Is Intel Abandoning Web-TV Project 10-30-13.flv[/flv]

Bloomberg senior West Coast correspondent Jon Erlichman reports that Intel may be turning over its web-TV project to Verizon and looks at possible reasons why the company may be abandoning the project and what it could mean for Verizon. He speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” (2:28)

With snow on the ground in parts of southern Ontario this morning, seeing beautiful beaches and bathing suits on Grand Cayman, Puerto Plata, Holguin and St. Maarten isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Devoting a cable channel to covering one Canadian airline’s ground crews might be.

Rogers Cable this week announced the takeoff of WestJetChannel, a 24/7 network capturing baggage handlers tossing luggage into the airline’s fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft. If that isn’t enough, watch gripping live coverage of airplane wranglers with light sticks pushing a plane away from the terminal.

“This is an amazing opportunity to pull back the curtain and show people what we do and how we do it,” said David Soyka, WestJet’s director of marketing. “We’re looking forward to taking viewers behind the scenes at our airports as well as to some of our most spectacular destinations, without ever having to leave the comfort of their couch. We’re always in the air — and now we’re on the air, too.”

It’s another example of “Slow TV” Rogers has embraced with open arms, adding “real-time” coverage of mundane things to your cable TV lineup.

An early example of American “Slow TV”

If WestJetChannel doesn’t fly, viewers can sink or swim with the Aquarium Channel, showing nothing but tropical fish. If that is all wet, dry off by the fire — Swiss Chalet’s Rotisserie Channel, featuring slowly roasting chickens. Unable to get away on holiday? Rogers customers could instead spend quality time with The Cottage Channel. Now they can watch WestJet take other people to the places they wish to see, but can’t afford to visit after paying the cable bill.

Rogers isn’t responsible for inventing “Slow TV.” WPIX-TV’s “Yule Log” was one of the earliest examples, treating apartment-bound New Yorkers to a roaring fire at Gracie Mansion beginning Christmas Eve, 1966. The original three-hour program was actually a 17-second 16mm film loop accompanied by a simulcast of WPIX-FM, which provided accompanying traditional Christmas music. In 1970, the original worn-out film was replaced with a 7-minute 35mm film loop shot in California and still seen today.

Norsk rikskringkasting, the Norwegian Broadcasting Company has made “Slow TV” their own, much to the delight of Scandinavian viewers.

In 2011, NRK broadcast 134 hours non-stop of a cruise ship going up the Norwegian coast to the Arctic, winning the world record for the longest continuous TV program. Millions of Norwegians tuned in. In February, it aired a 12-hour show on firewood, featuring discussions about stacking and chopping and a debate on whether the bark should face up or down. At least 20% of Norwegians watched the event.

Last Friday, Norway’s biggest broadcaster aired 12 hours of knitting, complete with needle tips and a how-to on knitting a cover for a Harley Davidson motorbike. The event started with  sheep shearing in the studios of NRK2 followed by teams furiously trying to break the world record for the fastest knitted sweater.

“You can argue that the national knitting night is the feminine response to the firewood show,” said NRK spokeswoman Sidsel Mundal.

“We’ll dive deep into the world of knitting, then from midnight, we’ll turn down the pace, if that’s even possible,” said producer Rune Moeklebust. “We’ll watch the arm of a sweater get longer and longer; it will be fascinating, but pretty strange TV.”

Who needs 5-Hour Energy when you can watch that.

The National Knitting Evening turned out to be such a ratings smash, rights for the concept have been sold to U.S.-based LMNO Productions for reconceptualization.

Norwegians celebrate “Slow TV” partly as a backlash to artificial drama generated by the reality-TV craze that has swept across Europe and North America.

Flying until Feb. 2, 2014, WestJetChannel can be found on Ch. 206 on Rogers Cable in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WestJetChannel Promo 11-12-13.mp4[/flv]

A promo for WestJetChannel, now on your Rogers Cable lineup. (0:42)

Are you getting the mobile broadband speeds your provider advertises for its whiz-bang 4G network? How do you know which carrier really delivers?

The Federal Communications Commission is hoping you can help them find out with a free Android app to be unveiled on Thursday.

The FCC has successfully used volunteer crowdsourcing before to keep wired Internet Service Providers honest through its “TestMyISP” speed measurement project for home broadband connections. When the first results were announced, an embarrassingly bad rating for Cablevision forced the cable company to quickly beef up its broadband infrastructure to match the speeds it promised customers.

Now the FCC’s new chairman Tom Wheeler hopes a similar effort will help the federal agency understand whether the promises wireless carriers make to customers are actually being kept.

With wireless broadband gaining in prominence, the FCC wants to do a better job monitoring a service most Americans use in some form while on-the-go. If providers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless are caught dramatically underperforming in coverage and speed, the agency may take that into account as part of its mission of regulatory oversight.

Consumers will also benefit from having an unbiased source that can offer regular analyses on the speed and performance of each carrier — useful information to have before being locked into a two-year contract.

Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint are among the carriers agreeing to take part in the speed test project.

The FCC Speed Test app will initially be available for Android smartphones. There are no details about the release date of an Apple iOS version of the app, but the FCC’s Mobile Broadband Speed Test home page shows links (not yet active) for both versions of the app.