Tag: featured

It is the eve of 5G. Over the next several months, all major U.S. operators will launch some flavor of 5G (Verizon has already quietly rolled out fixed wireless access in select neighborhoods in four cities). During 2019, we’ll also see some limited rollouts in South Korea, Japan, possibly China and possibly a couple of countries in Europe. You’ve all seen the hyperbole from one industry analyst or wireless trade organization or another – 5G will contribute X trillion to the economy, create X million jobs, catalyze entire new industries such as autonomous vehicles, and perhaps cure cancer while doing wireless remote surgery. While I’m optimistic about the prospects for 5G in the longer term, I think we’re in a particular period of pre-5G hype cycle, where a dose of reality is needed.  A key to understand is that it’s going to be very, very different than 4G.

First, a bit of history.  2G allowed for very basic data, and some services such as text messaging. 3G revolved around e-mail, limited web access, and some rudimentary applications/content such as ringtones and games, where operators were really the kings of the hill. But the beauty of 4G LTE, especially after a couple of iterations when one could count on getting 10 MB or better in most locations, was that it allowed for the near replication of the home or office broadband experience, with the beauty of mobility. It also unleashed a wave of innovative applications that leveraged mobile broadband with some of the unique aspects of the phone, such as ‘always with you/always on’, location, and so on. Uber wouldn’t exist without 4G, and companies such as Facebook and Google would be shells of their highly valued and very profitable selves.

But it’s going to be hard to justify the $150+ billion in planned investment in 5G over the next five years in the U.S. (spectrum plus capex) if it’s just a faster, better, more spectrally efficient version of 4G. Let’s face it: a typical 4G connection today (and the average is about 20-30 Mbps) allows you to do pretty much anything you would want to do on a mobile device. And the LTE roadmap in and of itself is highly compelling, with the kitchen sink of carrier aggregation/LAA/CBRS/MIMO/256 QAM firing on all cylinders. The gating issues, really, are coverage, congestion, and economics (throttling typically kicks in at 20-30 GB of usage/month).

So, here are some of the ways 5G is going to be different than 4G.

1. There are going to be multiple flavors of 5G. Initial mmWave deployments are going to be ‘5G hotspots’, sort of like a super Wi-Fi, focused on particular venues or geographic zones. 5G in the lower bands, such as that being rolled out by T-Mobile at 600 MHz, will be ‘coverage 5G’. I see this as extending the best of today’s 4G services, outside of cities – think ‘underserved’ locations for mobile broadband. The sweet spot is in the 2.5-4.0 GHz spectrum range, where over time and with additional spectrum allocations, could offer the holy grail of coverage and performance. Major operators will of course own assets across multiple bands, and over time there will be devices that support all these bands.
2. Operator Strategies are Less Monolithic. 4G evolved to, essentially, a mobile version of fixed broadband: $50 per month for unlimited service with an asterisk. 5G will allow the operators to differentiate. Verizon is using mmWave to compete more directly in broadband. AT&T has important DirecTV and content assets that are surely part of their 5G strategy. One can envision Sprint or ‘New T-Mobile’ offering a creative metro-oriented service leveraging their 2.5 GHz holdings.
3. Pricing Will be More Dynamic. It will be difficult to justify the 5G spend in order to merely maintain what has, essentially, been flat-ish revenue per subscriber (ARPU) for several years. As I mentioned in a recent column, operators will have to find a way to charge a premium price for premium services, particularly once certain milestones for coverage and performance are reached. There will be app-specific opportunities to offer variable pricing. Network slicing presents one of the most dynamic opportunities for 5G differentiation.
4. 5G Coverage Will Not Be As Ubiquitous as 4G. Today, some 90% of the U.S. population has access to LTE. The economics don’t work to build out 5G as broadly, particularly in the mid- and mmWave bands. LTE will be the primary coverage layer for the foreseeable future. The aspects of 5G that seem really different from 4G will be very hotspot- or limited geography – centric
5. There Will Be Overlap Between 4G and 5G. Continued advances in the LTE roadmap mean that the higher end of LTE performance (up to 2 GB) will feel very much like low to mid flavors of 5G, at a minimum. Repeating some history of 4G, operators might market the best of 4G LTE as 5G — certainly there will be overlap between the two ‘Gs’.
6. 5G Cannot Rely on Enhanced Mobile Broadband Alone. Operators mainly monetized 4G by getting the vast majority of smartphone users onto a mobile broadband plan. We will need new market segments to develop as 5G gets rolled out: IoT of various flavors, more specific enterprise solutions, machine connectivity – each with potentially substantial revenue streams. In fact, the ability to connect millions of IoT devices with different power and bandwidth requirements is one of key differentiators of 5G versus 4G.
7. Operators Will Have to Take Ownership. In 3G, operators sold Blackberries. In 4G, they sold mobile broadband data plans. For 5G, operators will have to build a sales, and marketing, and partner ecosystem to develop and grow the new market segments that will drive 5G. They’ll also have to be more proactive in developing applications, or working closely with partners, that will help them sell 5G ‘plans’. For example, while an operator might be able to sell you a higher speed data plan for a $10 per month premium, selling a ‘low latency’ plan or feature is a much tougher nut. Instead, operators will have to sell apps or experiences, such as a hot AR/VR capability, multi-player game, etc. that requires this ‘low latency’ capability.
8. 5G is being rolled out much more in phases than 4G was. Many of the most important 5G capabilities, embodied in 3GPP Release 16 (which is not expected to be finalized until late next year), won’t be commercially viable until the early-to-mid 2020s. These are some of the features that will allow for some of the newer and ambitious market opportunities, such as massive MTC, industrial IoT, or autonomous vehicles, where the new 5G core network is required.

5G will evolve very differently than 4G. It will come in phases, in a staggered fashion, in various flavors, and won’t be ubiquitous. I urge folks to not rush to judgement, or declare 5G a ‘failure’ if they’re not getting 10 GB on their smartphones in two years. Patience and a long view will be needed.

About 18 months ago, I was talking to my contacts in Hollywood, and they told me that Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg had become interested in short form videos. The word they used to describe his thinking was “short telenovela’s” that could tell an entire story in about 10-15 minutes. At the time I heard this news from these friends, the smartphone had been on the market for close to 8 years. Moreover, during that time, many had observed how people in Asia were using smartphones to watch locally created soaps on their way to work.

I have been on these commuter trains in Japan and Hong Kong and have observed this type of behavior, especially by Asian youth, as they rode the train to work each morning. Most have commutes of over an hour and before smartphones, they would either read or play handheld games on their way to work. However, once smartphones were able to deliver video, local short form video content became widely available, and most watch their soaps or segments of a movie or TV show on the train to their jobs.

Katzenberg is not the only one in Hollywood who was thinking about this idea of creating short-form videos. There are projects inside all of the major movie and TV studios who have been exploring this idea for a couple of years.

This week, Katzenberg and his partner, Meg Whitman, officially announced their new movie studio called “ Quibi” which is short for quick bites of content. Its primary goal is to create a short-form video for quick consumption when riding to work on public transport or standing in line at the DMV, or anytime or place what you can spare 10-15 minutes to watch one of these videos.

At Vanity Fair’s Establishment Summit last week, Katzenberg and Whitman announced their new venture.

According to Deadline Hollywood, “Katzenberg talked about his rationale for the startup, which has secured an initial round of $1 billion. He said people leave the house each day with a television in their pockets — their smartphones; and they are devoting 70 minutes a day watching videos from these ubiquitous portable screens.

YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Snap all have created an appetite for mobile video and helped to establish a powerful daily habit. Now, mobile video is ready for its HBO moment — a time for a new player to step in and reinvent mobile video with high-quality content from Hollywood’s top talent.” For top talent, Quibi has tapped big-name filmmakers like Sam Raimi, Guillermo Del Toro, and Antoine Fuqua.

Deadline points out that Quibi has big-name backers as well. This includes Disney, eOne, Fox, Lionsgate, MGM, NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, Viacom and Warner Media. Tech investors include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Liberty Global and Madrone Capital.

When I initially heard about Katzenberg’s interest in short form videos, the snarky side of me called it “short attention span” theatre. However, over the last two years, I have found myself watching short video clips from Facebook videos and even short videos I found on Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube when waiting in long lines and when I ride the train to meetings in San Francisco once in a while. However, most of the videos I watch are tied to things like music videos, America’s Best Talent or American Idol or things that are funny or amusing.

What Katzenberg and Whitman are doing is launching high-quality mobile storytelling in which an entire story is told in a relatively short time span. I see this as a significant inflection point in mobile computing history. We already know that 70% of video is already being consumed on mobile devices. Also, most of these videos in the west are like the examples I gave above. However, in Asia, this type of short form mobile storytelling has been going on for years.

Now Quibi is set to deliver high-quality video that will tell a story in a short “bits” or create short stories in the form of weekly episodes like what we already have on TV or as stories that can be linked together perhaps by chapters. More importantly, the shows from Quibi will be movie theater quality given the high powered movie directors who will create them. This will raise the bar for mobile video in that movie quality content breaks new ground and could change the mobile movie game field in useful ways.

Other companies are also doing some of their short videos. Digiday reported on why Netflix and Amazon are experimenting with short-form video earlier this year. Here is what they wrote:

“Netflix, for instance, announced this week that it will air a new documentary series from BuzzFeed News called “Follow This,” which will follow BuzzFeed News journalists as they report interesting stories. The show will span 20 episodes, with each episode running for roughly 15 minutes. Amazon, too, is venturing into short-form video. Last fall, it commissioned three original digital shorts from Funny Or Die through its Prime Video Direct program, which allows video creators of all types — including those that specialize in short form — to upload videos to the Prime platform. This was the first time Amazon funded any original and exclusive content through the Prime Video Direct program. Hulu, meanwhile, hasn’t picked up any short-form video series, but is exploring the format as part of its original content strategy, a source said.”

How successful Quibi will determine how this part of mobile storytelling develops and gets accepted by the masses. They will not compete with the short videos we already have on YouTube or Facebook Videos, much of which is user created. This represents a new phase in mobile video, and it will be up to the writers and directors to craft their stories in this short form format, which is no small task. I have consulted on movie and TV projects in the past with scriptwriters as a technical consultant and know how hard it is to write a screenplay, especially for television, where the content represents only about 22 minutes. Now they have to tell a story in under 15 minutes, and it will take new levels of writing skills and creativity to achieve this.

I see Katzenberg’s and Whitman’s new company as essential trailblazers who will be delivering movie quality storytelling for small screens. If successful, it has the potential of raising the bar on next generation videos we will consume, especially on smartphones, and could be the catalyst that pushes other serious video creators to new levels of quality and innovation.

Magic Leap this week held its first-ever developer conference called LEAPCon, where the company made a wide range of interesting and promising development and product announcements. But the company, its executives, and its partners also did something unique during the opening keynote: They asked developers not to merely rush into the creation of new content for the platform they call spatial computing, but to stop and think about why they are creating it, and what they can do to make it more inclusive.

New Platform, New Possibilities
Over the years, I’ve been publicly skeptical of Magic Leap’s ability to deliver upon some of the outsized promises it seemed to make around its technology. When the company’s first developer hardware kit, the Magic Leap One, shipped in August, many saw it as proof it had radically overpromised what it could do. I was a bit more forgiving, seeing it as the first hardware step on a long journey. At LEAPCon, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz and company did something equally important to shipping that first piece of hardware: They talked about the future they hope people will build with this new technology.

Abovitz kicked off the keynote by acknowledging something few CEOs would: a troubled world. “Today our world feels divided. It feels broken. Our new medium of spatial computing is fresh; it doesn’t carry the baggage and negative headlines that are dominating the news today,” he said. “As a creative collective, we can refuse to perpetuate the baggage that weighs down traditional mediums that came before like radio, television, and film. They are great, but there is all this baggage. Spatial computing can be a safe haven, and a creative space to include all who respect each other.”

Abovitz then ceded the stage to his Chief Marketing Officer, Brenda Freeman, and CEO of Funomena, Robin Hunicke. Freeman noted that at present, the “magic verse” is a blank slate that affords creatives the opportunity to do things differently. To create an ecosystem that’s “vibrant, future forward, and culturally relevant.”

Hunicke acknowledge that the world today often feels overwhelming and uncertain and that people don’t always feel empowered to make change. “We are here today to talk and think and dream about adding a new dimension to our reality,” she said. “The possibilities are infinite, and the landscape of this work is fresh and new. It is relatively unexplored. This means the power we have to shape the future is incredible.” She went on to ask a question that not enough people in technology ask themselves: “What does that power mean, and how are we going to use it?”

“When platforms like radio, television, and film were first developed, diversity and inclusion weren’t part of the Zeitgeist,” she said. “When the internet, game consoles, and cell phone technology were first invented we were not yet quite honest with ourselves about how our unconscious biases would shape these new forms of communication, perpetuating stereotypes that alienate people from one another and sometimes from themselves. It may have been harder then to predict what such unbalanced representation in our creative, financing, marketing, and promotion structures would do to the industries that sprung up around these powerful technologies. Or how this unbalanced representation would tax our society long term. But this is no longer the case. We have a precious opportunity to ask ourselves some very important and difficult questions about what we build, why we build it, and who we build it for.”

“We can and should hold ourselves accountable to a higher standard,” she said. “To discuss and debate not just what is possible for the technology, or who will be in the marketplace, but what is ethical, important, and universal about this new dimension of reality.”

Thinking Before We Leap
It’s easy to be cynical about aspirational comments like these, especially when it comes from a company that’s hasn’t always lived up to some of the ideals being discussed. And we don’t have to agree with all the backward-looking cause and effects discussed to acknowledge that the technology industry often build new tools, platforms, and mediums without fully contemplating the impact they may have on the world. Too often, we build it because we can.

I’ve been talking about the possibilities of augmented reality for a few years now, and I continue to think this technology will have a world-changing impact. I’m an optimist, and I think that change can be for good, but there is no doubt that when we bring together the real world and the digital world this way, there is risk involved. This week there was a heartbreaking story about bullying on Instagram. Now imagine that happening on a platform where digital and physical worlds are merged together. And these are just kids; imagine what’s possible in the broader world with truly bad actors at work.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t create these technologies. It means we have to do so with open eyes. I find it heartening that Magic Leap devoted time at the beginning of its keynote to discuss these important topics. Will the company or the broader augmented reality industry always get it right? Probably not. But at least they’re thinking about these questions now, at the beginning, when there is still the opportunity to build it right the first time.

One of the better parts of working in the technology industry is that it transcends politics. Most of the time. With the advent of the tariffs that have progressively been put in place by the Trump administration on goods produced in China, that has shifted. What started with an emphasis on materials like steel has now muddied the water for the PC ecosystem, and in particular, the segment that depends on individual components like DIY consumers and enthusiast gamers.

The impact of tariffs on the final pricing of products for consumers in the PC space has been discussed for months at this point, with several component vendors proactively reaching out to the media. The hope is that by talking openly about the situation and how it might affect the market that we could prepare readers for the future they are going to be a part of, limiting surprise and anger. Or at least, redirecting it towards the politicians and policy makers rather than channel partners and manufacturers.

Coverage of the tariffs has been steady, but I would argue not aggressive enough. Outlets like GamersNexus have done a great job of laying out the details while also presenting the thoughts of hardware vendors telling their side of the story. Mainstream outlets like CNBC have also touched on the subject with a lean towards the financial implications to major players like NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel.

The biggest component of concern when it comes to the tariff implementations is graphics cards. These are easily the most expensive products (on average) produced in China that will see price increases with the tariff implementation. NVIDIA and AMD will both be impacted to some degree, but it will be how they plan to work with board partners that produce, ship, and sell to the end-user that will be most interesting. It is well understood that NVIDIA and AMD make the majority of the margin in the graphics card and GPU pipeline, with companies like EVGA and ASUS making less than 10% (and supposedly MUCH less in many cases). The tariffs are technically imposed on the company that brings the goods into the US for sale, meaning that the board vendors are on the hook.

But graphics cards aren’t going to be the only casualty here. Most every level of component will have tariffs applied, from power supplies to computer chassis to motherboards. Even coolers and storage devices are on the list. This translates into higher import costs for companies like Corsair, NZXT, Gigabyte, MSI, and many others, throughout their product stacks. Expect to see higher prices that are passed on to the consumer because of these trade policy changes.

Impact of this might extend even beyond the components and companies with direct ties to the tariffed products. We saw a similar situation during the mining craze of 2018, where secondary components saw reduced demand and sales because higher prices on graphics cards were driving away upgraders and new system builders. I foresee the same thing occurring here – if the cost of graphics cards, motherboards, cases, and power supplies all go up by 10-25% in the next quarter, resulting sales of complimentary products like CPUs, memory, keyboards, and accessories could drop.

Interestingly, the tariffs in place with this third iteration of Trump’s policy do not affect complete, pre-built systems. This means that computers that ship from China with a case, GPU, power supply, etc. included and assembled are not required to pay the 25% import fees. Though not useful for large scale operations, it could be an avenue for smaller unit transactions to save.

For these vendors and manufacturers that now must balance the bottom line of their financials with the goodwill and consumer impact of big price hikes, there are only a few options they can consider. The first of which is a direct cost pass-through to the consumer. Rather than paying $400 for that new Radeon or GeForce graphics card, you should expect to see $500. Future product releases will likely include the tariffs in stated MSRPs, something that Europeans are familiar with because of VAT.

The short-term solution in the ramp up to the initial 10% tariff and the pending 25% tariff on these products was to import as much product from China prior to the tax implementation. Companies that had the capability were (and still are) ramping up production and shipping to hoard as many power supplies, cases, and motherboards as possible in stateside warehouses. But being the field that it is, technology changes quickly with new chipset, graphics processors, and designs releasing frequently. It’s near impossible to speed up development of something like a new line of graphics chips to prevent additional taxation.

A long-term option will be for these companies to move production facilities to countries other than China. Ironically, that is the goal of such a tariff, to encourage these vendors to manufacture more in the United States. But no company I spoke with, or that I have seen quoted anywhere else, has indicated that would be the best option. Instead I am hearing that board production will see increases in other Asian countries like Singapore, Vietnam, and even some increase in Taiwan. But this kind of move takes time, months at least, years perhaps.

For now, vendors appear to be pessimistic on the outlook for tariff resolution. Enthusiasts and DIY consumers are equally concerned about how this will affect them. For better or worse, this problem is much bigger than graphics cards and motherboards, and our market is simply caught up political storm of our time.

Despite the positive reviews from the Wall Street analysts about Facebook’s ability to survive and prosper after Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress, I was not surprised to see the revealing data that Ben posted this past week. In fact, I found it somewhat refreshing in that it demonstrated how Facebook users are smarter than many think.

While I had no market data of my own, I had a strong sense that the company’s support would erode, just based on simple common sense and a basic understanding of what makes a product successful. There’s no denying that as a product Facebook has had much going for it. It’s been able to provide a lot of value to those that want to keep in touch with relatives and friends in a new light-touch way – something between a yearly holiday letter and personal interactions. Customers loved it and brought their friends on board in record numbers.

But then something happened. Yes, we all know about Cambridge Analytica and the Russians. As disgusting as that was, it raised awareness and an opportunity to hear what Facebook was going to do about it. Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress with all eyes glued to his testimony. Up to that point many of us might have forgiven him, as disappointed as we were. But in his appearances before Congress and in subsequent interviews, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg flubbed their test.

In all their appearances they both managed to create a distaste for their personal characteristics as they dodged the questions and responded with obviously rehearsed responses. They both came across as insincere, evasive, and at times unlikeable. They feigned ignorance and kept saying they’d have to get back with answers. And they said that trite phrase, “We take this very seriously,” but then never showed it in their actions. They came across as being well-rehearsed with canned answers, clearly overly coached by their PR team.
And it hasn’t stopped. Just this past Wednesday in an op-ed piece in the NY Times, Dr. Zeynep Tufekci wrote,

“Last month, Ms. (Senator Kamela) Harris further grilled Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, on this point, demanding to know how much inauthentic Russian content was on Facebook. Ms. Sandberg had her sound bite ready, saying that “any amount is too much,” but she ultimately threw out an estimate of .004 percent, another negligible amount.”

What Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg completely miss is understanding why people use a product. Yes, it’s the value that the product provides, but it’s also the company behind the product. Users want to like those companies they do business with. When they find strong distaste for the company, it doesn’t matter how good the product is. People will desert them.

As I speak with other Facebook users, just an anecdotal sample among family and friends, the consistent reaction I get is disgust with Facebook and its executives’ behavior, a loss of trust and an increasingly distaste for the product.

Facebook is no longer a place many feel comfortable hanging out. Users feel vulnerable to every like or click and now wonder how they’re being taken advantage of. It’s the same feeling you get wandering down a dark alley at night unsure of what lies ahead or lurks around the next corner.

With each new revelation after the Congressional testimony, we learned Facebook was doing things that were much worse than we even imagined then. They are not only tracking and selling their users’ data as we expected, but they’re also tracking people across the web, including those that are not Facebook users. Then we learned that they’re accessing members’ address books, ostensibly to help them better connect with their friends, only to harvest the address book data and sell that to advertisers without permission or clear disclosure. And most recently we learned that 50 to 90 million users had their logins and other information stolen.

Whenever they had the opportunity, they compromise privacy for profit without telling us or asking us for permission. With each action, they erode trust further, to a point where more and more are saying “enough is enough.”

Choosing to use a product always involves a balance between the product’s value versus its cost, whether it’s the cost to buy or the cost to one’s privacy. Facebook’s behavior has shifted that balance so that the scale now tilts in favor of just abandoning them forever.

I expect we’ll see an increasing number of users abandoning Facebook. These graphs provide proof that it’s begun when more than half are uncomfortable about the company and a quarter believe it’s become a toxic place to hang out. It didn’t have to be, but their executives thought they were invulnerable and greatly miscalculated the intelligence of their users.

It was not long ago that Comcast was being regularly and quite publicly lambasted for poor customer service, high prices, and outdated technology, vulnerable to the growing wave of OTT options. But the company deserves a lot of credit for what I think is a successful turnaround of its Xfinity TV-Internet-Phone business (this column mainly pertains to Xfinity – rather than Comcast’s broader business that includes NBC Universal, Sky, etc.)

Now, most tech reviews are focused on new gadgets, such as the latest iPhones, or innovative new services, such as 5G. But every once in a while, it’s useful to check in on an established service provider, especially when the market is changing so much around them. As an industry analyst and consultant, I follow Comcast as a company, and have done some work with them in the past. But my recent personal experience as a returning Xfinity customer provides a window into a company that has improved on numerous fronts, and also made some smart strategic moves.

Two years ago, after many years as a modestly dissatisfied subscriber, I ditched Comcast in the Boston market for a competitor called RCN. They offered a classic Triple Play service — competitive channel lineup, Showtime and HBO thrown in to hook me, TiVo interface, and 150 MB internet — for an attractive initial price of $119 per month, all in. Well, as these things do, the promotion period ended, random fees kicked in, $119 became $209, customer service deteriorated, and the technology platform felt increasingly antiquated. So, time to re-evaluate.

I really thought I’d end up with a Millennial-esque broadband-plus-OTT package. Options have massively multiplied and improved, right? So I went through the usual time-consuming evaluation of “these guys offer this but not that” matrix that one must painfully and time consumingly subject oneself to when evaluating OTT (sorry, vMPVD) options. Will I be able to watch the baseball playoffs? Will my spouse get her beloved [Comcast-owned] New England Cable News? Etc., etc. Well, it turns out that the yawning gaps and compromises of OTT Phase I have shored up considerably over the past couple of years, with DirecTV Now and YouTube TV being the best of the bunch, in my view. But yet, these services are in the $40-50 per month range, added to the now unbundled $70-80 Broadband Internet (where are you Starry?), plus Netflix plus HBO, plus, plus…and all of the sudden you’re in $160-170 per month territory. And you still have to sort of piece things together, the UI isn’t great, and things tend to glitch out periodically.

So where did I land after this several-week ‘research’ process? Comcast! (sorry, Xfinity). Huhh?

It was striking to me how these guys have upped their game, in a relatively short period of time, across many aspects of the customer experience, while becoming more competitive on price. It started with customer service.  I spoke several times with a very knowledgeable rep, at a call center not just in the good ‘ol U.S. of A, but in New England! He knows what NESN and NECN are! I could leave him a voicemail…and he would call me back! He was super-knowledgeable about the landscape, liked working at Comcast, and was really impressed with the company. How much shock will be registered when I say that my recent customer service experience has been way better with Comcast than with Apple?

On price, Comcast has adjusted their Pay TV offers in order to be more competitive with vMPVDs. One can more easily change services without wacky fees. And there is more flexibility vis a vis contracts – one can pay $10 more a month for no contract, or within contract there is more flexibility to switch services/plans. And with the rise of Smart TVs, one can save on the $10 per month cable box rental by downloading the Xfinity app (although it’s still a bit rough and one loses some of the benefits of the X1 interface). So, my all-in price: $156 – for 400 MB internet, phone, plus all major TV channels, including Showtime and Netflix. Now, maybe that’s $10-20 more than OTT land, but for many it’s worth the modest premium for some other benefits such as better technology, UI, and less hassle factor than vMPVDs. There are some additional benefits, such as the Xfinity Wi-Fi hotspots, and the opportunity to buy discounted wireless service through their MVNO with Verizon.

But what strikes me most is that this has become more of an ecosystem play. Xfinity is moving closer to resembling the Apple model than it is the cable/telco model. Their X1 interface is, bar none, the best overall UI. Theirs is the real TV OS, not Apple’s.  So much so that cable companies worldwide are licensing it. It is intuitive, features cloud DVR, and an excellent search capability, integrating content across platforms into a single view. The customer increasingly gets the sense that is a premium service — from the X1 interface to advanced DVR, to some of the most advanced router/modem products available. In my mind, it’s worth the extra $20-ish a month for the UI and technology.

I’m also impressed with how Comcast has recognized the new world they’re in with regard to OTT. They’ve done a great job of integrating Netflix and other OTT services (Hulu, YouTube, and, soon Amazon) into X1, which vastly improves search and provides the most straightforward approach for a customer to wade through the vast TV content landscape. Heck, Netflix is even included in some bundles. They’re also playing the other side, offering Xfinity as an app for those with smart TVs. The idea is, Comcast wants you as a customer, and is more flexible about how that actually happens.

Now, cable still finds ways to sorta piss you off. Like the ridiculous ‘surcharges’ for Broadcast TV, Entertainment, and Sports. Umm…isn’t that what I’m buying? Does one incur a ‘baseball playing’ surcharge when at a ball game, or a ‘movie content’ fee when attending a film? Why don’t they just bundle it in?  Other random, fees, or the need to buy ‘X plus’ something in order to just get ‘X’ remind you that these guys still can’t, upon occasion, help themselves. Or little gotchas, such as the need to have Xfinity internet in order to access their streaming service on platforms such as Roku.

So, it still isn’t perfect. But after a few years on hiatus as a customer, it was impressive to see how much has changed. Leading-edge, technically. Better customer service. More competitive on price. Embraced and leveraged OTT rather than fought it. Saw the writing on the wall with Pay TV and made it more about the customer experience and the ecosystem. Overall, some impressive moves in an industry that’s experiencing a lot of changes.

This week Verizon became the first company to deploy a 5G service for consumers. Rolling out in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, it is called Verizon 5G Home and promised to bring speeds “up to 1 Gbps” for internet access over cellular wireless technology. Service should “run reliably” at around 300 Mbps, peaking at that 940 Mbps level during times of low utilization and based on your homes’ proximity to the first 5G-enabled towers.

The problem is that Verizon 5G Home is not really a 5G technology. Instead, Verizon admits that this configuration is a custom version of the next-generation network that was built to test its rollout of 5G in the future.

It is called “5G TF” which includes customizations and differences from the 3GPP standard known as 5G NR (new radio). As with most wireless (or technology in general) standards, 5G NR is the result of years of debate, discussion, and compromise between technology companies and service providers. But it is the standardization that allows consumers to be confident in device interoperability and long-term success of the initiative.

5G TF does operate in the millimeter wave part of the spectrum, 28 GHz to be exact. But 5G isn’t limited to mmWave implementations. And the Verizon implementation only includes the capability for 2×2 MIMO, less than the 4×4 support in 5G NR that will bring bandwidth and capacity increases to a massive number of devices on true 5G networks.

Upcoming 5G-enabled phones and laptops that integrate a 5G NR modem will not operate with the concoction Verizon has put together.

Verizon even admitted that all of the 5G TF hardware that the company is rolling out for infrastructure and end user devices will need to be replaced at some point in the future. It is incompatible with the true 5G NR standard and is not software upgradable either. From an investment standpoint you can’t help but wonder how much benefit Verizon could gain from this initiative; clearly this will be a financial loss for them.

But what does Verizon gain?

The truth is that Verizon is spouting these claims for the world’s first 5G network as way to attach itself to a leadership position in the wireless space. Marketing and advertising are eager to showcase how Verizon is besting the likes of AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint with a 5G cellular rollout in the US, but it’s just not accurate.

Take for example the AT&T “5G Evolution” that was actually a 4G LTE service with speeds up to 1.0 Gigabit. An amazing feat and a feature worth promoting, but the carrier decided instead to message that it was part of the 5G transition.

Both of these claims do a disservice to the true capability and benefits of 5G technology while attempting to deceive the us into believing each is the leader in the wireless space. As a result, consumers end up confused and aggravated, removing yet another layer of trust between the customer and service providers. For other companies that are taking care with the 5G story, whether it be competing ISPs or technology providers like Qualcomm, they suffer the same fate through no fault of their own.

These antics should come as little surprise to anyone that followed along with the move from 3G to 4G and to LTE. Most insiders in the industry hoped that we had collectively learned a lesson in that turmoil and that 3GPP might be able to help control these problematic messaging tactics. Instead we appear to be repeating history and it will be up to the media and an educated group of consumers to tell the correct story.