The NBC and Comcast logo are displayed on top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, formerly known as the GE building, in midtown Manhattan in New York July 1, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Comcast Corp is planning to rebrand and expand a streaming video option for broadband subscribers who do not want to pay for a traditional cable package, sources told Reuters on Monday.

The service, dubbed Xfinity Instant TV, will be priced as low as $15 a month to roughly $40 a month, sources said. It will include major broadcast networks as well as sports channels like ESPN and Spanish language channels such as Telemundo and Univision.

Xfinity Instant TV is expected to be available in the third quarter to more than 50 million homes within Comcast’s footprint, which includes cities such as Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

The company is changing its video offerings to be more targeted as viewer habits evolve. Xfinity Instant TV will be aimed at high-speed Internet subscribers who cannot afford or do not want to pay for bigger cable bundles, sources said. The hope is that subscribers will eventually upgrade to Comcast’s X1 platform.

Comcast has already given a $15-a-month streaming video service known as Stream a trial run in Boston and Chicago, sources said. Xfinity Instant TV is a revamped version of that offering and will be rolled out nationwide in Comcast’s territories.

Other pay-TV providers including Dish Network Corp and AT&T Inc have started online streaming services for “cord cutting” consumers, or those who are dropping their cable packages for other options.

Comcast’s service is different in that it is limited to its territories and to its own broadband subscribers. It has yet to offer an over-the-top streaming service more broadly nationwide.

(Reporting by Anjali Athavaley; Editing by Bill Trott)

A San Antonio homeowner was upset when she discovered two AT&T subcontractors installing a fiber line in her backyard were instead engaged in what seemed to be a fight/wrestling match/comedy routine.

“Caught this sissy ass fight on my security camera today in my backyard,” the unidentified homeowner wrote on her Facebook page. “These idiots are supposed to be installing AT&T fiber wire not getting into a lovers’ quarrel. It’s a full on chick fight, about the sissiest fight I’ve ever seen in my life. I could have done a better job at kickin’ those boys tails.”

Only in Texas.

“‘Honestly, I couldn’t tell if they were playing around and wrestling or what,” she complained. “Then I saw some sissy hair pulling and thought, ‘Oh no way! This is for real!’ Two grown men rolling around pulling hair like a bunch of sissy pants.”

An embarrassed AT&T sent the Houston Chronicle a statement about the unfortunate incident.

This involved employees of a company that was hired by one of our contractors, and obviously didn’t meet our requirements of how they conduct themselves… The contractor has assured us they will no longer use this company when working for us.

In response to the story, a local company offered the duo free fight lessons.

“If either of these guys want to learn to fight, shoot us a message,” wrote Genesis Jiu Jitsu SA. “We offer a free month of lessons on the house.”

AT&T Subcontractor Fight Club: A San Antonio homeowner’s video security system picked up this encounter between two workers that were there to install a fiber cable. She posted the fracas on her Facebook page. (1:30)

Consumer Reports is having a hard time handing out high scores to America’s cable and phone companies after its recent editorial overhaul that replaces simple numeric-only scores with a simpler color code that ranks good companies in green, fair companies in yellow, and downright lousy ones in red.

In its most recent rankings (subscription required), only three internet providers managed to win green ratings: a publicly owned municipal utility in Chattanooga, Tenn., a private ISP serving northern California communities in and around San Francisco, and Google Fiber, which shows every sign of stopping further expansion of its fiber to the home network.

EPB Fiber is the runaway winner of Consumer Reports’ ongoing ratings of America’s top telecom providers, scoring 92 and getting excellent ratings for value, reliability and speed. Sonic, which still primarily offers DSL service, achieved second place despite being limited in selling higher speeds available over AT&T’s wireline telephone network. Google Fiber made third place and is a regular favorite for offering affordable gigabit speeds for around $70 a month, not much more expensive than what some ISPs charge for 60Mbps for less.

The fact a public utility like EPB offers America’s best broadband service must give fits to the telecom giants like Comcast, Charter, and AT&T that only dream of achieving similar scores and have a history of opposing public broadband and in some cases have financed lobbying efforts seeking to ban it.

Providers achieving “yellow” ratings were almost exclusively small, regional independent cable operators and overbuilders like WOW and RCN. Verizon and Frontier’s versions of FiOS also made the cut, although it seems both suffered ratings drops attributable to decreased scores for value and customer service. Both companies have eliminated some of their most aggressive promotions that used to lure customers with a very low price for service.

The list of lousy-scoring companies is larger than ever, and encompass all the familiar large operators most Americans have to do business with. Since Stop the Cap! started in 2008, Mediacom is still rated the lousiest of the lousy cable companies, achieving a score of just 51. Only HughesNet, a satellite internet provider, scored worse, and not by much — achieving a 47 score.

DSL providers other than Sonic performed dismally as well: FairPoint (52), Windstream (53), Frontier (53), Verizon DSL (54), TDS (55), AT&T DSL (55), CenturyLink (57), and Cincinnati Bell DSL (57).

Cable companies also live in the ratings basement – Comcast/XFINITY (54), Charter/Time Warner Cable (55), GCI (60), Comporium (60), and Atlantic Broadband (60). Charter Communications just barely made it out of the red section with a score of (61), also shared by Cox and Cable ONE. Altice’s Cablevision, AT&T U-verse, Blue Ridge Communications, and Consolidated Cable managed scores of just 63. Charter/Bright House and Service Electric got a 64, and Altice’s Suddenlink managed a surprising 66.

The consumer magazine’s conclusion – most Americans still loathe their cable and phone companies, their prices, their bundles, and are greatly dissatisfied with the state of competition. That is unlikely to change considering the industry’s current trend of consolidation, which further reduces customer choice.

One of America’s handful of cable overbuilders that provide competing cable television service will be ripe for an acquisition or merger after launching an initial public offering that could raise as much as $750 million and make them a juicy target for a takeover.

WideOpenWest, which customers know better as WOW!, provides almost a half-million customers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee with a choice of a second cable company. It has consistently won reasonably high scores in ratings issued by Consumer Reports and often offers better speed and service than incumbent providers. WOW has been quietly and slowly expanding service, but in the last two years has attracted the interest of private equity firms and Wall Street banks. One of those equity firms — Crestview Partners, invested $125 million in WOW 18 months ago. UBS Investment Bank and Credit Suisse have teamed up to manage the IPO.

Jeff Marcus, who also happens to be a partner in Crestview, has been named chairman of WOW. Avista Capital Partners still owns almost 60% of the company.

By entering the public market, WOW could quickly come under pressure from Wall Street analysts to get out of the cable business by selling the company and profiting investors. The drumbeat for mergers and acquisitions has only intensified with a corporate-friendly Trump Administration that has sought to appoint “hands-off” regulators at the FCC and Justice Department. There are several likely buyers — the various cable companies that face direct competition from WOW and would like shut the company down and upstarts like Altice, which has targeted smaller cable operators like Cablevision and Suddenlink.

Marcus has telegraphed he is isn’t in a hurry to spend investors’ money, which could leave WOW flush with cash, something else attractive in a takeover. Multichannel News reports that one of WOW’s “main directives” would be to offer “video, voice, and data services in packages that consumers want,” — hardly a revolutionary concept. In a July interview, Marcus made it clear there was ‘no burning need to increase scale.’ That tells would-be buyers the company hasn’t any immediate plans to spend a lot of money or expand service, things that could drive away some buyers.

“It’s all opportunistic,” Marcus said. “When I started Marcus Cable with 18,000 subscribers, I had no idea that it would get to 1.3 million. One thing led to another and we took advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves. I think that’s what is going to happen here.“

A wealth opportunity for Marcus would be collecting significant proceeds selling the operation. There is a good chance WOW will either buy other companies or be bought itself as the cable industry consolidation wave continues. Other operators about its size — Cable ONE and until recently NewWave Communications, have been considered takeover targets for years. NewWave was acquired by CableONE in January for $735 million in cash, coincidentally slightly less than the potential upper limit of WOW’s proceeds from an IPO.

Comcast could kick the door open on the traditionally closed cable-TV monopoly.

Comcast has a “Plan B” in case rival online-TV streaming providers start a major wave of cable TV cord cutting: the right to offer its own online cable TV replacement nationwide.

Bloomberg News reports Comcast is quietly acquiring national online distribution rights from cable networks, which gives the cable giant the right to sell cable TV-like packages outside of its cable company service area.

Comcast maintains “most favored nation” clauses in its contracts with cable programmers, which means if those networks agree to online distribution of their programming over online competitors like Sling TV, AT&T DirecTVNow and PlayStation Vue, those same rights are also available to Comcast.

For now, insiders claim Comcast has no immediate plans to start competing outside of its home service areas, but it wants to accumulate the necessary rights to hedge against online rivals.

“When you really try to evaluate the business model, we have not seen one that really gives us confidence that this is a real priority for us,” Matt Strauss, Comcast’s executive vice president for video services, said at a conference in November. “There is significantly more upside and profitability in going deeper and deeper into our base first versus following a video-only offering OTT,” he added, using the industry term for nationwide online video.

Comcast has been gradually picking up online distribution rights as it renews contracts with the networks it carries. A sign Comcast may imminently launch a competing product similar to DirecTVNow would come if it chooses to renegotiate contracts before they expire. Comcast last negotiated with CBS in 2010 and ESPN in 2012. Both contracts don’t expire until 2020. Without renegotiation, any online offering from Comcast would not include networks owned by those two companies.

Comcast is downplaying any interest in breaking the traditional cable television business model, which depends in part on friendly relations with other cable companies and staying out of their territories. The prospect of Comcast selling cable TV service in Charter’s service area would threaten a still lucrative source of revenue if a price war develops. Video represents about 50% of Comcast’s cable sales.

For now, Comcast’s most evident online competitor is AT&T’s DirecTVNow which has added 200,000 subscribers nationwide since launching in November. But that remains just a fraction of Comcast’s 22 million cable-TV customers, a reason why Comcast may be in no rush to enter the online streaming cable-TV business. That may change when two high-profile online video providers get into the business later this year. YouTube and Hulu are both expecting to launch cable-TV alternatives in 2017.