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.”

The median bandwidth use slowdown (Image: BTIG Research)

Despite perpetual cries of Internet brownouts, usage blowouts, and data tsunamis that threaten to overwhelm the Internet, new data shows broadband usage has leveled off in North America, undercutting providers’ favorite excuse for usage limits and consumption billing.

Sandvine today released its latest broadband usage study, issued twice yearly. The results show a clear and dramatic decline in usage growth in North America, with median usage up just 5% compared to the same time last year. That is a marked departure from the 190% and 77% growth measured in two earlier periods. In fact, as Richard Greenfield from BTIG Research noted, mean bandwidth use was down 13% year-over-year, after the second straight six month period of sequential decline.

Companies like Cisco earn millions annually pitching network management tools to providers implementing usage caps and consumption billing. For years, the company has warned of Internet usage floods that threaten to make the Internet useless (unless providers take Cisco’s advice and buy their products and services).

“Demand for Internet services continues to build,” said Roland Klemann from Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group. “The increasing popularity of smartphones, tablets, and video services is creating a ‘data tsunami’ that threatens to overwhelm service providers’ networks.”

Providers typically use “fairness” propaganda when introducing “usage based pricing,” blaming exponential increases in broadband usage and costly upgrades “light users” are forced to underwrite. A leveling off in broadband usage undercuts that argument.

A Cisco White Paper intended for the eyes of Internet Service Providers further strips the façade off the false-“fairness” argument, exposing the fact usage pricing has little to do with traffic growth, pricing fairness, or the cost of upgrades:

In 2011, broadband services became mainstream in developed countries, with fixed-broadband penetration exceeding 60 percent of households and mobile broadband penetration reaching more than 40 percent of the population in two-thirds of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

Meanwhile, traditional voice and messaging revenues have strongly declined due to commoditization, and this trend is expected to continue. Therefore, operators are now relegated to connectivity products. The value that operators once derived from providing value-added services is migrating to players that deliver services, applications, and content over their network pipes.

As if this were not enough, Internet access prices are dropping, sales volumes are declining, and markets are shrinking. The culprit: flat rate “all-you-can-eat” pricing. Such a model lacks stability—sending service provider pricing into a downward spiral—because it ignores growth potential and shifts the competition’s focus from quality and service differentiation to price.

While Klemann was spouting warnings about the dire implications of a data tsunami, Cisco’s White Paper quietly told providers what they already know:

Maximum Profits

“[Wired] broadband operators should be able to sustain forecasted traffic growth over the next few years with no negative impact on margins, as the incremental capital expenses required to support it are under control.”

If usage limits and consumption billing are not required to manage data growth or cover the cost of equipment upgrades, why adopt this pricing? The potential to exploit more revenue from mature broadband markets that lack robust competition.

“In light of the forecasted Internet traffic growth mentioned earlier and competitiveness in the telecommunications market, Cisco believes that fixed-line operators should consider gradually introducing selected monthly traffic tiers to sustain [revenue], while a) signaling to customers that “traffic is not free,” and b) monetizing bandwidth hogs more sustainably.”

Cisco makes its recommendation despite knowing full well from its own research that customers hate usage-based pricing.

“The introduction of traffic tiers and caps—especially for fixed broadband services—is not welcomed by the majority of customers, as they have learned to ‘love’ flat rate all-you-can-eat pricing. Most customers consider usage-based pricing for broadband services ‘unfair,’ according to the 2011 Cisco IBSG Connected Life Market Watch study.”

Cisco teaches providers how to price broadband like trendy boutique bottled water and blame it on growing Internet usage.

But with competition lacking, Cisco’s advice is to move forward anyway, as long as providers initially introduce caps and consumption billing at prices that do not impact the majority of customers… at first. In uncompetitive markets, Cisco predicts customers will eventually pay more, boosting provider revenue. Cisco’s “illustrative example” of usage billing in practice set prices at $45 a month for up to 50GB of usage, $60 a month for 50-100GB, $75 for 100-150GB, and $150 a month for unlimited access — more than double what customers typically pay today for flat rate access.

Usage billing arrives right on time to effectively handle online video, which increasingly threatens revenue from cable television packages.

Sandvine’s new traffic measurement report notes the increasing prominence of online video services like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, and Amazon Video.

“As with previous reports, Real-Time Entertainment (comprised of streaming video and audio) continues to be the largest traffic category on virtually every network we examined, and we expect its continued growth to lead to the emergence of longer form video on mobile networks globally in to 2014,” Sandvine’s report noted.

Sandvine found that over half of all North American Internet traffic during peak usage periods comes from two services: Netflix and YouTube. YouTube globally is the leading source of Internet traffic in the world, according to Sandvine.

An old excuse for usage caps on “data hogs” – peer-to-peer file-sharing, continues its rapid decline towards irrelevance, now accounting for less than 10 percent of total daily traffic in North America. A decade earlier, file swapping represented 60 percent of Internet traffic.

Cisco’s answer for the evolving world of popular online applications is a further shift in broadband pricing towards “value-based tiers” that monetize different online applications by charging broadband users extra when using them. Cisco is promoting an idea that well-enforced Net Neutrality rules would prohibit.

Citing the bottled water market, Cisco argues if some customers are willing to pay up to $6 for a liter of trendy Voss bottled water, flat rate “one price fits all” broadband is leaving a lot of money on the table. With the right marketing campaign and a barely competitive marketplace, providers can charge far higher prices to get access to the most popular Internet applications.

“Research from British regulator Ofcom shows that consumers are becoming ‘addicted’ to broadband services, and heavy broadband users are willing to pay more for improved broadband service options.”

Wharton School professors Jagmohan Raju and John Zhang concluded price is the single most important lever to drive profitability.

The political implications of blaming phantom Internet growth and manageable upgrade costs for the implementation of usage caps or usage-based billing is uncertain. Even the “data hog” meme providers have used for years to justify usage caps is now open to scrutiny. Sandvine found the top 1% of broadband users primarily impact upstream resources, where they account for 39.8% of total upload traffic. But the top 1% only account for 10.1% of downstream traffic. In fact, Apple is likely to provoke an even larger, albeit shorter-term impact on a provider’s network from software upgrades. When the company released iOS7, Apple Updates immediately became almost 20% of total network traffic, and continued to stay above 15% of total traffic into the evening peak hours, according to Sandvine.

Some other highlights:

• Average monthly mobile usage in Asia-Pacific now exceeds 1 gigabyte, driven by video, which accounts for 50% of peak downstream traffic. This is more than double the 443 megabyte monthly average in North America.
• In Europe, Netflix, less than two years since launch, now accounts for over 20% of downstream traffic on certain fixed networks in the British Isles. It took almost four years for Netflix to achieve 20% of data traffic in the United States.
• Instagram and Dropbox are now top-ranked applications in mobile networks in many regions across the globe. Instagram, due to the recent addition of video, is now in Latin America the 7th top ranked downstream application on the mobile network, making it a prime candidate for inclusion in tiered data plans which are popular in the region.
• Netflix (31.6%) holds its ground as the leading downstream application in North America and together with YouTube (18.6%) accounts for over 50% of downstream traffic on fixed networks.
• P2P Filesharing now accounts for less than 10% of total daily traffic in North America. Five years ago it accounted for over 31%.
• Video accounts for less than 6% of traffic in mobile networks in Africa, but is expected to grow faster than in any other region before it.

Frontier Communications’ new simplified pricing with no equipment fees or surprise contracts was well-timed for the phone company as it picked up a growing number of disgruntled Comcast and Time Warner Cable customers fed up with increasing modem rental fees.

Frontier depends a great deal on its residential broadband service to win back revenue the company has lost from years of landline cord-cutting. The company reported slowing revenue losses, now down to less than one percent for the quarter ending Sept. 30. Frontier’s profits reached $35.4 million this quarter, reduced by increased investment in broadband upgrades and pension fund-related expenses.

The independent phone company is still losing residential and business phone customers, but those losses have begun to stabilize. Frontier has 2.82 million residential customers and 275,000 business customers. While Time Warner Cable lost customers during the recent quarter, Frontier picked up 27,000 new ones. For all of 2013, Frontier added 84,500 new broadband customers. Nearly 84 percent of them added broadband as part of a bundle, which leads analysts to suspect most of Frontier’s new broadband customers are located in rural areas that never had access to broadband speeds before.

Frontier’s greatest opportunity is in the rural residential broadband business, and the company’s investment in improved broadband speeds has made a major difference in growing market share especially where it has a cable competitor. Currently, Frontier has 20-25 percent market share in most of its service areas. It wants 40%, but is unlikely to achieve it selling broadband speeds that often top out at around 10Mbps. Winning customers back to a landline provider has also proved difficult without an attractive bundled offer. In all but a few cities, Frontier bundles landline service with DSL broadband and a satellite television package.

Wilderotter

In rural markets, Frontier has had better success, particularly in areas formerly served by Verizon.

With help from the federal government’s Connect America Fund (CAF), Frontier invested over $21 million to expand rural broadband service in 2013. In the third quarter, the company expanded service to another 37,000 possible homes and businesses, with 30,000 more on the way in the fourth quarter. The company applied for $71.5 million in CAF funding for 2014.

Broadband speeds have also gradually increased in an expanding number of communities. As of today, 45 percent of homes can receive 20Mbps or better, 58 percent are capable of 12Mbps. A year-end commitment to offer at least 3Mbps speeds to 85% of customers in the most rural areas also appears within reach. Customers can upgrade to the next speed level in $10 increments.

But not every customer has gotten speed upgrades. In their largest legacy market — Rochester, N.Y., DSL speeds have remained unchanged in many areas. At the headquarters of Stop the Cap!, Frontier pre-qualified us this afternoon for the same 3.1Mbps DSL speed they offered in 2009, despite being blocks away from the city line.

Those increasing speeds have led to more traffic on Frontier’s broadband network, but the company says it has enough capacity to handle it.

“The average usage of all our customers across both fiber and the copper has grown to about 24GB per month at this point, and we see that increasing and people are comfortable with [our] facilities as well as our backhaul to support that growth,” said chief operating officer Dan McCarthy. “We’ve seen that grow virtually every month as we move forward.”

Frontier analyzes what customers do with their broadband connection and found 30 percent of customer usage is online video. That number is growing. Customers upgrading to the fastest speeds are often telecommuters or have a home full of avid broadband users.

“On the residential side [these high-end customers] are usually working at home, they are VPNing, they are gamers, and they are very active on video services and social media as well,” said CEO Maggie Wilderotter.

The average Frontier DSL customer still subscribes to 6Mbps service, which Wilderotter said was adequate for Netflix, web surfing, and e-mail. But the company is preparing to market speed upgrades to these customers to earn extra revenue.

So far, Frontier’s broadband growth has gone relatively unnoticed by their cable competitors.

“We really haven’t seen any sustainable programs that cable has put against us in the market and we do know that several cable operators have said they’re going to do more in those areas,” said Wilderotter. “We are very well prepared for that. We are giving everyday low pricing to the customer that’s simple and predictable and there are no add-on fees or modem rental costs.”

Most Frontier customers are offered $19.99 or $29.99 broadband pricing that can be bundled with other products for discounts. There is no term contract.

“Time Warner Cable has increased their modem fees [to] between $6 and $9 a month,” said Wilderotter. “That’s a huge price increase for a lot of customers. You compare that with Frontier which has no modem cost and customers understand where price value lies.”

Wilderotter noted Comcast has raised rates as well. Frontier intends to remind cable customers they have a choice, and will tailor offers to continue to increase market share.

Netflix and the rise of online video has taken its toll on what used to be a household name in DVD rental.

DISH Network Corporation today announced its subsidiary Blockbuster will close its 300 remaining retail rental locations and end its DVD-by-Mail rental service in mid-December.

“This is not an easy decision, yet consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment,” said Joseph P. Clayton, DISH president and chief executive officer. “Despite our closing of the physical distribution elements of the business, we continue to see value in the Blockbuster brand, and we expect to leverage that brand as we continue to expand our digital offerings.”

At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster had nearly 60,000 employees and more than 9,000 video rental stores. The company’s inadequate response to the rise of Netflix, which rented out its DVD’s by mail, caused revenue to plummet and Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in September 2010.

Legendary investor Carl Icahn called Blockbuster “the worst investment I ever made.” DISH may feel the same way.

After acquiring the remnants of Blockbuster for $233 million and assuming $87 million in debt and liabilities at a 2011 bankruptcy auction, DISH found itself quickly in retreat, closing 200 Blockbuster rental stores in 2011, 500 more in 2012, and another 300 this year. Despite efforts to compete head-on with Netflix, Blockbuster’s DVD-by-Mail business never achieved much success because Netflix maintained a better selection and faster delivery from a more extensive network of regional distribution sites.

Today’s announcement marks the end of Blockbuster’s retail rental experience and its DVD rental distribution centers will close by early January as customer DVD rentals are returned in the mail.

Over the past 18 months, Blockbuster has divested itself of assets in the United States, as well international assets, including operations in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. DISH will continue to support Blockbuster’s domestic and international franchise operations, relationships and agreements.

DISH will keep licensing rights to the Blockbuster brand, and key assets, including the company’s significant video library. DISH will focus on delivering the Blockbuster @Home service to DISH customers, and on its streaming service, Blockbuster On Demand.

Or maybe not.

A New York hedge fund manager wants Outerwall, Inc., operator of Redbox movie kiosks, to sell, spinoff, or shutdown a streaming movie service that has failed to compete effectively with Netflix.

Redbox Instant by Verizon has proven not to be much of a threat, said JANA Partners’ co-founder Barry Rosenstein. The hedge fund controls a 13.5 percent stake in Outerwall, Inc., (formerly Coinstar) best known for its change counting machines and Redbox DVD rental kiosks.

Some analysts predict JANA Partners will attract several other shareholders disenchanted with the disappointing earnings results.

Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, told his clients the group will likely force Outerwall’s management to focus on cash generation. The alternative is a forced sale of some or all of the company’s businesses.

Redbox Instant is 65% owned by Verizon, and could eventually be owned outright by the phone company or shut down. Outerwall entered the video streaming venture with Verizon to cut the company’s dependence on Redbox kiosks, which provided 87 percent of 2012 revenue (with Coinstar coin-counting kiosks and other vending machines covering much of the rest).

Netflix has de-emphasized its DVD by mail rental service in favor of a less-costly online video alternative. Redbox still depends primarily on customers visiting a nearby kiosk to exchange DVD rentals.

In September, Outerwall reported disappointing results and predicted earnings per share would be as much as 40 percent below expectation. Shares plummeted 20 percent after the earnings predictions were made.

Most of the problems are from “heightened promotional discount activity,” which translates: an excess of coupons and promo codes that attracted new customers that never spent much. Expect the company to curtail promotions and focus instead on profitability.

Also on the hedge fund’s chopping list: Seattle’s Best Coffee-branded “Rubi” coffee kiosks in grocery, drug and mass merchant stores. It seems there isn’t much interest in on-demand, fresh ground coffee selling for $1-1.50 a cup.