Apple TV (version 4)

The cable industry is on the cusp of saving billions of dollars annually buying and maintaining set-top boxes and cable modems if they can convince customers to buy their own instead.

Cable companies collectively spend as much as $10 billion a year on customer premise equipment (CPE), ranging from simple Digital Transport Adapters for older analog-only TV sets, to the most advanced cloud-based set-top boxes and DVRs.

Cable industry analyst Craig Moffett believes the cable industry will save a fortune and lose one as consumers buy their own set-top equipment like Apple TV or Roku boxes and buy their own modems to avoid monthly rental charges. That means cable companies will likely forfeit a considerable percentage of their leasing/rental revenue.

“The idea that customers will eventually consume video through their own Apple TV or Roku boxes, or simply connect their cable to their smart TVs, Xboxes and Sony PlayStations, is neither new nor far-fetched,” wrote Moffett. “There are good reasons to believe that CPE spending may come down significantly in future (product) generations.”

Most cable equipment is leased to customers and often installed by a cable operator that covers the costs of sending a truck to the customer’s home. After installation, the average American cable subscriber pays $89.16 a year renting a single cable box, and for those with multiple boxes and a DVR, those costs rise to $231.82 a year. A cable modem can be purchased for $50-90 on average, and usually pays for itself in less than one year of rental charges charged by many cable operators.

Comcast X1

Even with more capable consumer-targeted set tops like the latest Apple TV ($149-199) and Roku devices now approaching $100, it will not take long for consumers to recoup their money avoiding rental fees.

Cable operators like Time Warner Cable now carry the majority of their cable channels on apps accessible through devices like the Roku. Customers will not get the flashiest on-screen experience, but they do get a welcome alphabetical channel lineup and a reasonably good picture. Future generations of the boxes are expected to enhance usability and picture quality.

Cable operators like Charter stand to gain the most. If their merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks is approved, all three companies are expected to see reductions in equipment expenses estimated at $2.97 billion in 2015 to as little as $917 million by 2019, according to Moffett. Charter is already expecting to see its capital spending fall more than a billion dollars a year, from $6.97 billion to $5.83 billion by 2019, but consumers should not expect to see the savings passed on to them.

Cable operators can also expect considerable savings after fully deploying DOCSIS 3.1 technology that powers their broadband services. The next generation cable broadband platform offers increased efficiency and flexibility that will allow operators to sell faster speeds.

Comcast may stand apart from others believing deluxe set-top boxes like its X1 are urgently needed to keep cable TV customers satisfied. One of Comcast’s largest planned expenses is deploying millions more of these advanced platforms to customer homes in 2016.

Time Warner Cable customers in the Dallas Metroplex will soon see broadband speeds rise as high as 300Mbps as the company’s Maxx upgrade project arrives, bringing along a metropolitan-wide Wi-Fi network available at no charge to Time Warner Cable broadband customers.

The first noticeable presence of the Wi-Fi expansion will be found at area businesses as Time Warner recruits commercial broadband customers to host its hotspots. As spring arrives, the company will accelerate the installation of Wi-Fi antennas around the metropolitan region.

Home Maxx upgrades will deliver dramatically faster broadband speeds at no extra charge:

• Standard 15Mbps service rises to 50/5Mbps;
• Turbo is boosted from 20Mbps to 100/10Mbps;
• Extreme increases from 30/5 to 200/20Mbps;
• Ultimate, formerly 50/5 is increased to 300/20Mbps.

Existing customers will also be able to swap out their existing DVR boxes for a new Arris Enhanced DVR offering six tuners and a 1TB internal drive.

Because the conversion will drop analog channels, Time Warner Cable is offering free Digital Transport Adapters through April 21, 2016, as long as customers order the boxes by Aug 19. Many Time Warner Cable customers may end up avoiding charges for the DTA equipment even after that. Several packages from Time Warner waive the DTA fees.

The official list of metro Dallas locations getting the Maxx upgrade includes:

Addison, Allen, Arlington, Bedford, Carrollton, Cedar Hill, Cockrell Hill, Colleyville, Commerce, Coppell, Dallas, DeSoto, Double Oak, Euless, Farmers Branch, Farmersville, Flower Mound, Frisco, Garland, Grand Prairie, Grapevine, Greenville, Highland Village, Hutchins, Irving, Kennedale, Lancaster, Lewisville, McKinney, Mesquite, Murphy, Pantego, Plano, Princeton, Richardson, Rockwall, Rowlett, Sachse, St. Paul, Sunnyvale, The Colony and Wylie.

Dallas faces imminent competition from AT&T U-verse upgrades.

Comcast has offered the Commission a vague preview of how it intends to improve cable television service for New York customers, but rarely discloses important details about the costs and limitations their “improvements” will bring.

While Comcast is excited about the proposition of transitioning Time Warner Cable customers away from the current mixed analog-digital platform to an all-digital lineup, Time Warner Cable customers have paid less and avoided costly, unwanted extra equipment as a result of the choices consciously made by Time Warner Cable.

Comcast and Time Warner Cable have different philosophies about how to best deliver the bulging cable television packages most cable systems now offer:

• Time Warner Cable adopted “Switched Digital Video” from BigBand Networks, a technology that lets Time Warner deliver only the digital signals that are being watched in a service group or node, instead of the entire lineup.[1] Since it is unlikely subscribers are watching every niche channel on offer, Time Warner has been able to reclaim unused bandwidth. As a result, customers using older cable-ready televisions can continue to access analog television channels without the use of a costly, often unwanted set top box.
• Comcast has more aggressively chosen a  path to all-digital television service, moving most of their television channels to encrypted digital technology that requires a Comcast set top box, a less costly Digital Transport Adapter (DTA) designed for secondary-use televisions, or a CableCARD. Customers must choose one of these technologies, usually at an added-cost to access their cable television service.[2]

Time Warner Cable also began deploying DTA equipment in certain areas to free up additional bandwidth on its cable systems while still leaving most analog channels intact. The DTA boxes are supplied free of charge during an introductory phase lasting up to a year, after which a $0.99 monthly charge for each box is imposed.[3] (That fee has recently been raised in certain markets, including New York City, to $1.50/mo.[4] [5])

In contrast, Comcast customers were initially entitled to receive up to three no-cost DTAs to install on televisions not equipped with a Comcast set top box.[6]

On January 1, 2013 Comcast began informing subscribers a new $1.99/month “additional outlet service charge,” now applied for each DTA installed. [7]

Public officials in Eagan, Minn., responding to consumer complaints about the new charge, suspected Comcast was attempting an end run around the Federal Communications Commission’s prohibition of “excessive fees for cable equipment.”[8] The additional outlet fee was deemed by Comcast to be a service fee, not an equipment charge.[9]

Attorney Mike Bradley was hired by a group of suburban Minneapolis cable commissions to investigate the legitimacy of Comcast’s new DTA service charge. If the fee were classified as an equipment charge, Comcast would charge 50 cents per DTA based on rate forms filed with the Minnesota cable commissions he represents, Bradley told The Pioneer Press.[10]

For the average Comcast subscriber, the result was another rate increase in return for digital television service. Subscribers with three DTA’s now pay up to $5.97 extra per month in order to continue to receive the exact same programming on the same number of televisions within their household – a $25 annual surcharge per DTA, $75 if the customer uses three DTA’s, complained Eagan, Minn. Mayor Mike Maguire in a letter to Sen. Amy Klobuchar.[11]

Comcast’s fees, in addition to being well in excess of the actual cost of the equipment, will earn the company at least $550 million annually in new revenue – all for equipment that costs the company around $50 per unit.[12] Because Comcast is encrypting its lineup, even televisions equipped with QAM tuners, capable of receiving digital television signals without a set top box, will also eventually need the new equipment to unscramble television signals.

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[1]http://www.cedmagazine.com/news/2009/09/time-warner-cable-serves-up-sdv-in-n.y.,-dallas,-l.a.

[2]http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/cable-tv/how-bill-will-change-with-digital-migration

[3]http://www.cedmagazine.com/news/2012/01/time-warner-cable-wraps-up-all-digital-conversion-pilot-in-maine

[4]https://newsroom.charter.com/

[5]http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/residential-home/support/faqs/faqs-tv/basictvencryption/what-will-the-digital-adapter-cost.html

[6] http://www.twincities.com/ci_22617153/comcast-fee-plan-cause-confusion-controversy

[7]http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/cable-tv/how-bill-will-change-with-digital-migration

[8]http://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/News_Releases/nrcb4009.txt

[9]http://stopthecap.com/2013/02/21/comcast-calls-1-99-charge-for-digital-adapters-a-service-fee-to-avoid-fcc-complications/

[10]http://www.twincities.com/ci_22617153/comcast-fee-plan-cause-confusion-controversy?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com

[11]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9008/pioneerpress/yourtechweblog/Eagan%20-%20Sen%20Klobuchar%20ltr%20re%20Cable%20Rate%20Concerns%203-5-13.pdf

[12]http://cisco-news.tmcnet.com/news/2011/04/25/5464600.htm

Set-top box-less Time Warner Cable subscribers in parts of New York City will find more than 90 percent of the basic cable lineup missing from their QAM-equipped televisions as the cable company completes a transition away from analog cable television and begins encrypting almost all its digital channels.

The Federal Communications Commission changed the rules last year allowing large cable operators to begin encrypting basic cable, requiring customers to rent cable boxes or CableCARD units to keep watching.

Time Warner Cable began the all-digital, encrypted channel conversion earlier this year in Mount Vernon, Staten Island and Bergen County, N.J., and is now switching on encryption in the New York City region on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.

The switch renders televisions useless for receiving cable channels without extra equipment supplied by Time Warner Cable. Encryption is deployed as an anti-theft measure, but it also inconveniences customers who have to rent equipment for each of their televisions. Encrypting basic channels also benefits Time Warner Cable by allowing service authorizations and disconnects to be handed from the office, reducing in-home appointments.

Customers will need a traditional set-top box, a Digital Transport Adapter (DTA), or a CableCARD to get the channels back. DTA boxes are being provided at no charge until 2015, after which they will cost $0.99 a month each.

Some customers also complain Time Warner is testing “copy protection” permissions, preventing some channels from being recorded. In Queens, one customer noted copy protection was active on C-SPAN, preventing recordings of the network. Some programmers may insist on copy protection technology being implemented as part of future cable carriage contracts. Most expect pay-per-view and on-demand events will be the first blocked from recording, potentially followed by premium movie channels.

At this time, Time Warner Cable says its encryption initiative is limited to the New York City area.

Comcast may be attempting to get around Federal Communications Commission regulations governing what cable companies can charge for cable equipment by recasting the monthly fee as a “service charge.”

The cable operator’s decision to start charging $1.99 a month for digital transport adapters (DTAs) — small boxes that can convert digital signals into analog for older televisions — has at least one Minnesota city up in arms.

Eagan city officials met with outraged residents Tuesday to discuss the fee hike and hear a number of complaints about how Comcast does business in the community.

“It really ran the gamut, from concerns about losing stations, to concerns about being bait and switched, to having gotten boxes for free and worried that you had to pay for them in the future,” Eagan Mayor Mike Maguire told WCCO-TV.

Comcast customers in Minnesota are receiving letters from the cable operator some call deceptive. The letter warns “digital equipment is needed on all your TVs to receive channels,” despite the fact many televisions manufactured after 2007 are equipped with QAM tuners that will receive the digital signals without extra equipment, at least for now.

Only in fine print at the bottom of the letter does Comcast admit QAM-equipped sets won’t need the equipment, saving $1.99 a month per set.

Letters have also been sent to customers who have used DTA equipment provided by Comcast at no charge… until now.

Comcast earlier announced it intends to collect $1.99 a month from each subscriber using DTA equipment, even if those customers previously had received the equipment for free.

But Comcast’s decision to charge $24 a year in perpetuity for a box with a wholesale cost of less than $50, depending on the model, may run afoul of Federal Communications Commission regulations that forbid cable operators from charging excessive amounts to lease cable equipment:

Cable operators may require their subscribers to use specific equipment, such as converters, to receive the basic service tier. They may include a separate charge on your bill to lease this equipment to you on a monthly basis. This monthly rate must be based on the operator’s actual costs of providing the equipment to you. Operators may also sell equipment to you, with or without a service contract. If an operator provides a choice between selling and leasing the equipment, the monthly leasing rate will be regulated but the sales price will be unregulated. If an operator only sells equipment and does not also lease equipment, then the sales price must be the actual cost of the equipment plus a reasonable profit, and any service contract should be based on the estimated cost to service the equipment. If the customer buys the equipment but does not purchase a service contract, the customer can be charged for repairs and maintenance. Cable operators may not prevent customers from using their own equipment if such equipment is technically compatible with the cable system.

Eagan Mayor Mike Maguire

In a possible attempt to avoid regulatory language regarding cable equipment, Comcast has declared its new $1.99 fee is actually an “additional outlet service charge,” not an equipment fee.

“The deployment of DTA technology allows us to bring more value to our customers through additional HD channels and faster Internet speeds, both of which are used by the majority of our customers,” said Mary Beth Schubert, vice president of corporate affairs. “These types of enhancements require significant investment, and we feel the nominal fee now being implemented for DTA additional outlet service on our digital tiers reflects the additional value of the service.”

“There is no charge for the first three DTA devices,” said Schubert. But she quickly added, “After the digital transition in March and April, those TVs will not have access to these channels unless they are paying the $1.99 DTA additional outlet service fee.”

Michael Bradley, an attorney representing 20 local communities, is investigating to see if Comcast’s language about its new fee violates FCC rules.

The new charge is expected to be lucrative for Comcast, earning the company at least $550 million annually in new revenue.

Comcast intends to boost that even further as it embarks on encrypting its digital lineup, making QAM-equipped televisions useless to receive scrambled cable channels.

“These customers will eventually need to connect a digital device to their QAM tuner equipment at a future date as we implement additional network security features,” warned Schubert. “Customers will be provided complete information well before any additional measures take place.”

The FCC previously negotiated an agreement with cable operators intending to encrypt their cable lineup to keep customers from experiencing bill shock from new, mandatory equipment fees:

But by recasting new fees as unregulated “additional outlet fees,” Comcast and other cable operators may have successfully outwitted the FCC’s good intentions, earning billions in new revenue annually as a result of a simple language change.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WCCO Minneapolis Comcast Fee Causes Outrage in Minn 2-20-13.mp4[/flv]

WCCO reports the city of Eagan held an informational meeting Tuesday about Comcast’s newest fee for digital boxes required on older televisions. Comcast customers nationwide will soon pay the new $1.99 “DTA additional outlet service fee” for each television equipped with the digital set top DTA box “to offset increasing programming and operational costs.”  (2 minutes)