Cox Contour TV

Cox Communications is planning to launch a new cloud DVR service targeting the 25% of customers who use the company’s Contour set-top box, which is powered by Comcast/Xfinity’s X1.

The new service will launch later this year, according to Light Reading, but exact pricing and storage options are not yet known.

Assuming Cox follows other licensees of the X1 platform, which include Rogers and Shaw Communications, the new service will likely  bundle a cloud storage option for its current DVR set-top box customers. Comcast offers its current DVR customers 60 hours of free cloud storage, which is less than the 150 hours of local storage usually available on Comcast’s set-top DVR boxes. Rogers’ “Ignite TV” offers 200 hours of HD or 4K storage with a maximum recording storage time of one year, and Shaw’s BlueSky TV will launch its own cloud DVR add-on service later this year under a similar licensing agreement with Comcast.

The biggest benefit of cloud storage is remote access to DVR recordings on portable devices when streaming away from home, a major advantage available to streaming cable TV customers subscribed to DirecTV Now, YouTube TV, Hulu, and others. Because of copyright considerations, cable companies follow a more complicated path to provide subscribers with remote access to their DVR recordings. Comcast customers “check out” recorded shows to downloaded for mobile viewing much the same way Amazon.com allows customers to offer friends the chance to “borrow” a Kindle book. The customer accesses a recorded show, chooses the option to download for remote viewing, and then watches on the go. When finished, a customer “returns” the show, allowing it to be seen on the set-top DVR once again.

Ironically, Charter Spectrum customers are likely to be among the last to see cloud DVR service, despite the fact Charter’s current CEO, Thomas Rutledge, was instrumental in helping clear the way for U.S. cable operators to offer cloud DVR service. In 2006, Cablevision sought to introduce a remote storage DVR and immediately ran into lawsuits, coordinated by Time Warner (Entertainment)’s Turner Broadcasting. Two years later in 2008, Cablevision won a key appeals court victory allowing cloud storage DVRs to be introduced. Charter Spectrum customers may have access to cloud DVR service late this year, or sometime in 2020.

The most expensive set top box you will ever rent.

At all three public informational meetings, a Comcast representative promoted the benefits of Comcast’s new X1 set-top box/platform which can provide enhanced features and integrate with the Internet to provide more detailed programming information and social media interaction.

The Comcast representative did not mention that customers must pay up to a $99 upgrade fee for the privilege of renting Comcast’s X1 platform.[1] That is well in excess of the cost of an entire month of cable TV service.

Time Warner Cable does not charge an upgrade fee for its set top boxes, including the latest models.

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[1]http://www.multichannel.com/news/content/comcast-details-x1-upgrade-fee/356207

Comcast will increase capital spending in the first half of 2014 to hasten the rollout of its advanced X1 set-top boxes and new wireless gateways that provide public Wi-Fi from customer homes.

Comcast told investors Tuesday its increased spending will likely be offset by increased earnings from more subscribers and room for further price hikes over the course of the year.

First quarter consolidated revenue increased 13.7% to $17.4 billion over the past three months. Almost $11 billion of that comes from Comcast’s cable business. The company boosted cable earnings by 5.3% in the first quarter. Most of that came from a 4.5% increase in the average customer’s cable bill. Comcast subscribers, on average, pay $134 per month. They will pay even more by the end of the year.

Although Comcast’s head of its cable division Neil Smit noted the company implemented lower rate increases during the first quarter, there is room to boost prices further.

“I wouldn’t read any trends into it,” Smit said. “We took rate increases across the smaller percentage of our footprint this quarter than last year as well, but we target different offers to different customers and I don’t think we’re seeing it topping out. In the competitive arena, the offers are in the same ballpark, the promo prices go up and down, but the destination pricing is fairly similar across these various competitors.”

Roberts

Comcast continued to buck cord-cutting trends and added 24,000 new video customers in the quarter, a major improvement over the 25,000 it lost at the same time last year. Comcast believes its new X1 platform and aggressive customer retention efforts are responsible for winning and keeping cable television customers. Ongoing speed enhancements in Comcast’s broadband division won the company 383,000 new Internet customers in the last three months. Broadband is Comcast’s biggest money-maker, and revenues increased a further 9% during the quarter owing to customer growth, rate hikes, and customers choosing higher-speed tiers. By the end of the quarter, 38% of Comcast’s residential customers subscribed to at least 50Mbps service, showing growing demand for higher speed Internet.

Sources tell Stop the Cap! Comcast intends to further expand its trial of usage caps (Comcast prefers to call them “usage thresholds”) to more markets this year. Comcast has settled on 300GB usage allowances for most broadband products in current test markets, charging $10 for each additional allotment of 50GB as an overlimit fee. Comcast has avoided trials of usage caps in areas where Verizon FiOS delivers significant competition. Verizon has no usage caps on either their DSL or fiber broadband products.

Comcast also picked up 142,000 new phone customers in the quarter, mostly from those subscribing to aggressively priced triple play service bundle promotions. Around 155,000 new triple play customers signed up over the last three months.

At the end of the first quarter, 68% of Comcast customers took at least two products and 36% took three products, compared to 33% at the end of last year’s first quarter.

Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, said there were several factors that fueled Comcast’s growth during the quarter, starting with its advanced X1 set-top box platform, which offers a better television experience and makes finding things to watch easier. If customers have an X1, Roberts told investors, they are less likely to drop cable television service.

X1

“These positive early results reinforce our decision to accelerate our X1 deployment this year, and we are now adding 15,000 to 20,000 X1 boxes per day, which is double our rate of deployment from just six months ago,” Roberts told analysts. “Additionally, we are now rolling out a new XFINITY TV app, which enables our customers to live stream virtually their entire television lineup on any IP device in the home and watch DVR recordings in the home or on the go.”

Although usage caps remain controversial, Comcast has been aggressive about increasing broadband speeds at least once a year.

“In broadband, we recently increased speeds again for the 13th time in 12 years,” Roberts offered. “Doubling speeds in our Blast products to 105Mbps, while our Extreme tier moved up to 150Mbps for customers in the northeast. And we’re not stopping there. Our focus on wireless gateway deployment is adding utility to our customers while at the same time helping us create the largest Wi-Fi footprint in the U.S. with over one million public Wi-Fi hotspots currently available to our customers.”

Although Comcast’s first quarter capital expenditures increased $51 million (or 4.6%) to $1.1 billion (10.6% of cable revenue versus 10.7% in the first quarter of 2013), the cable company returned even more money to shareholders. In the first quarter, the company boosted return of capital by 35% to $1.3 billion. Comcast repurchased its own shares of stock totaling $750 million and paid $508 million in dividends for the quarter.

In 2014, Comcast will invest 14% of cable revenue (compared to 12.9% in 2013) to accelerate the deployment of X1 and wireless gateways, increase network capacity and continue to invest in expansion of business services and XFINITY Home. But it will spend far more than that placating shareholders. If Comcast wins support to buy Time Warner Cable, Comcast intends to increase its stock repurchase plan by $2.5 billion. The company earlier committed it would spend $3 billion on repurchasing its own shares, for an expected total of $5.5 billion during 2014.

When a company repurchases its own shares, it reduces the number of shares held by the public. That in turn means that if profits remain the same, the earnings per share increase. It also boosts the value of the massive portfolios of Comcast stock held by executives as part of their compensation packages.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast Introducing the X1 Platform from XFINITY 4-14.mp4[/flv]

Comcast produced this video showing off its X1 platform and new set-top boxes. (1:47)

Comcast’s new X1 platform (Image courtesy: BWOne)

Comcast is introducing a new upgrade fee ranging from $49.99 to $99.99 for existing customers seeking an upgrade to the company’s X1 cloud-based set-top box.

• “Commencing March 15, 2014, a one-time X1 Platform Upgrade fee of $49.99 may apply to existing XFINITY customers upgrading to the X1 services platform.” — Comcast bill in Pennsylvania
• “Beginning February 3, 2014, a one-time X1 Platform Upgrade fee of $99.99 may apply to existing XFINITY customers upgrading to the X1 services platform.” — Comcast bill in Chicago

Comcast’s website explains what the new fee is all about:

The X1 Platform Upgrade Fee is a one-time fee of up to $99 that is assessed, with limited exceptions that vary by market, when a customer signs up for the X1 Platform. This fee enables us to continue developing and enhancing the features of the X1 Platform, which today include:

• Enhanced search
• Last nine programs viewed
• Voice controls through your mobile device with the X1 Remote app
• Apps on your TV including Weather, Stocks, News, Facebook and Pandora
• Personalized recommendations

Comcast offers the X1 throughout its service area and is distributing Pace and Arris set-top boxes that include a DVR that can record six channels at once. Later on, Comcast will upgrade X1 customers to a cloud-based platform, dubbed internally as “X2.”

When the upgrades are complete, X1 owners will have a cloud-based DVR that stores recordings remotely and allows playback on a variety of portable devices. The platform will also enable customers to use a built-in app to watch live cable TV programming on mobile devices connected to the home network.

New customers are not likely to be charged the upgrade fee, and existing customers may be able to negotiate a waiver in return for a service upgrade. Some customers may also be able to get an X1 by swapping out equipment at a Comcast store. Ask a Comcast representative about your options.

Comcast usually requires a service call to install the X1 to make certain the new platform functions properly.

Comcast last week told Wall Street three important facts:

1. They have plenty of capacity to handle increasing broadband traffic and can deliver faster speeds;
2. They are reducing the amount of money they invest in broadband;
3. They are still moving forward on usage caps and usage billing experiments.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told investors the company was well positioned to handle increasing broadband traffic and monetize its usage.

Wall Street liked what it heard. Valuentum Securities Inc., called themselves “big fans of Comcast’s cash flow generation.”

“We’re big fans of the firm’s Video and High-Speed Internet businesses because both are either monopolies or duopolies in their respective markets,” Valuentum concludes. “Further, we believe that both services have become so sticky and important to consumers that Comcast will be able to effectively raise prices year after year without seeing too much volume-related weakness.”

An other way to raise prices is to cap broadband usage and charge customers extra for exceeding their allowance, a plan Comcast has begun testing.

“As you know we announced two different flavors of plans,” Roberts said. “One was capacity linked with the tier that subs are buying and [the other] was just being able to buy blocks of capacity.”

Roberts is referring to Comcast’s pricing experiments now being rolled out in markets like Nashville. The tests will determine whether customers will pay higher prices for different tiers of broadband based on variable speed and usage allowances or whether a flat cap with an overlimit fee is the better way to go.

Roberts

“[Hard] caps are gone,” Roberts said. “We raised the amount people could consume to 300 gigabytes as a base limit. We have not announced the markets for the roll outs yet but I would expect something shortly.”

Comcast used to have a 250GB hard cap which, if exceeded, could result in termination of a customer’s account. Now the company is pondering whether a consistent 300GB cap with an overlimit fee is a better choice.

But Roberts also acknowledged Comcast has plenty of capacity and flexibility to adjust its broadband offerings to compete.

“[…] We have a great network that has tremendous flexibility and capacity to offer more speeds than we offer today and we’re constantly hoping that new applications and needs develop,” Roberts said in response to a question regarding potential competition with Google Fiber.

Comcast added 156,000 new high speed data customers, an 8% increase, over the last quarter. At the same time, the company lost 176,000 video subscribers.

The importance of Comcast’s broadband service was underlined by the fact broadband revenue was the largest contributor to cable revenue growth in the second quarter, with revenue increasing 9%. Comcast attributes that to rate increases, a growing number of new broadband customers, and the 27% of current subscribers upgrading to higher speed services.

Comcast does not and will not have to spend a growing amount of its capital on its broadband service. Comcast cut spending on its network by 5% in the second quarter to $1.1 billion. That represents 11.4 percent of cable revenue earned by Comcast. So far this year, capital expenditures have dropped 2.4% to $2.2 billion — 11.2% of its total revenue.

These days, much of Comcast’s capital expenses support the company’s expansion into business services. The company also expects considerable reductions in spending from completion of its transition to digital — freeing up capacity on existing cable systems instead of spending money to upgrade them. For the full year, including its business services expansion, Comcast expects spending on its own network to be flat.

Comcast’s new X1 platform (Image courtesy: BWOne)

In other Comcast developments of note:

• In June Comcast rolled out its new X1 cloud based set top platform in Boston and is currently launching X1 in Atlanta. Comcast is marketing the upgraded platform first to HD Triple Play customers, who can upgrade for a one-time installation fee. The company plans to roll out the new upgraded platform in five major markets by the end of this year, with a greater expansion in 2013;
• Comcast has increased broadband speeds, particularly in competitive markets, for no additional charge;
• Streampix now offers twice as many titles as the product offered at launch in February;
• Comcast has rolled out its marketing partnership with Verizon Wireless to 22 markets nationwide;
• The company’s ongoing rebranding under the Xfinity name now has a new catchphrase: Xfinity — The Future of Awesome;
• Nearly 75% of Comcast’s customers now take at least two products and almost 40% are signed up for the company’s triple play package;
• Comcast has saved more than $8 million by reducing the number of occasions the company will send technicians to customer homes. The cable company is heavily promoting self-install kits, which has brought a 65% increase  in the number of customers who install Comcast equipment and services themselves.