Matt Daneman

As in-person events return this summer and fall (see 2103240003), organizers are opting for relatively light-touch COVID-19 health precautions such as spacing out lunch breaks or sessions to try to prevent larger gatherings of attendees, they told us in an unofficial survey of tech and telecom events. Some health experts said mandatory masks or required vaccinations for attendees will be the surest guarantee for safety.

AT&T in hindsight likely wouldn't have bought DirecTV because pay-TV universe subscriber losses were steeper than expected when the carrier started pursuing the deal, CEO John Stankey said Thursday during an Economic Club talk. He said DirecTV didn't generate the value long term that was expected. He said it's "entirely possible" the spinoff of the company's video business (see our report here]) could recapture some lost value, and said the WarnerMedia/Discovery spinoff and combination (see 2105160003) should generate big returns for shareholders, including him. "I intend to leave all my equity in that new business," Stankey said. While the deal goes through regulatory review, WarnerMedia is "full steam ahead" with initiatives such as launch of an ad-supported HBO Max tier this month and work on a CNN streaming product, Stankey said. The $65 billion for broadband the administration and Senate Republicans agreed on (see 2105270072) before talks collapsed potentially "knocks ... out" the rural digital divide problem, though that access likely will use a mix of technologies including wireless and satellite, along with fiber, and won't be as robust as will be found in less-rural areas, Stankey said. Left unaddressed is the affordability issue, which will require about $4 billion annually in subsidies, he said. That money could come from congressional appropriations or from excise or use taxes, he said. Asked about AT&T's $23 billion in 2021 C-band payments, he said it "will not be the last investment we make in spectrum" to meet increasing wireless data demands. Stankey said occupancy at AT&T's Dallas headquarters was about 20% a month ago, and is growing. He said the company will be in its "new hybrid mode" by summer's end, with all employees in one of three categories: in the office a couple of days a month, in the office a couple of days a week, and daily. He said a high percentage of AT&T workers would be hybrid: So far, the company is urging but not requiring worker vaccinations.

Airline broadband connectivity via geostationary orbit (GSO) satellite is on its way out, with low earth orbit (LEO) constellations likely to claim most if not all that market by decade's end, satellite executives said Wednesday during the annual Connected Aviation Intelligence Summit. OneWeb Vice President-Mobility Ben Griffin said many airlines he has spoken with in the past year are "positively anxious" about LEO and its promised capacity, coverage and low latency benefits over GSO. Vice President-Starlink and Commercial Sales Jonathan Hofeller said SpaceX similarly is in talks with several airlines and has its own aviation service in development. He said the company has done some demos and plans to get it finalized for aircraft deployment "in the very near future." Griffin said aviation is "a fairly risk-averse" industry and won't adopt LEO connectivity quickly, as it waits instead to see that networks and constellations are established with a level of credibility. He said LEO connectivity deals likely will start ramping up in the back half of the decade. Hofeller said by the end of the decade, a good number of GSO satellites in orbit will be decommissioned and it's unclear if all will be replaced. He said within 10 years, LEO will be the norm for inflight connectivity. Hofeller said SpaceX has spent considerable time trying to estimate what bandwidth will be needed to serve a particular flight. He said one challenge is that usage will change over time, since usage now on airlines reflects the relatively meager service that's available. Telesat Director-Commercial and Product Development Manik Vinnakota said flights get perhaps 10 to 30 Mbps downlink service, while 50-100 Mbps could easily be needed, and perhaps more for widebody jets. He said links to aircraft also will get more symmetrical as people increasingly send as well as download files. Uplinks of 30-40 Mbps might be needed, he said.

AT&T's spinoff of WarnerMedia and combining it with Discovery (see 2105160003) isn't likely to go through FCC review, we've learned, even though some interest groups critical of media consolidation hope the agency will get involved. FCC acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told reporters no application is pending. In some past mega-deals of this sort, the regulator also didn't get very involved. The agency didn't comment now.

Federal regulators are likely looking closely at possible antitrust action against Amazon, but the company's $8.45 billion buy of MGM announced Wednesday isn't expected to face federal or state antitrust challenges, experts told us. Lawmakers we interviewed questioned the potential monopoly power of Amazon and want the deal scrutinized.

Being vertically integrated with content helped AT&T's domestic connectivity business, but it became apparent its HBO Max platform needed to be global in scale to compete and wouldn't fit with the U.S. focus, hence the spinoff and Discovery deal (see 2105160003), CEO John Stankey said Monday during a JP Morgan conference. He said AT&T's smaller dividend after the DirecTV and WarnerMedia spinoffs will mean more capital the company can invest into wireless and fiber deployment for connectivity.

AT&T's simultaneous spinoff of WarnerMedia and joining it with Discovery is expected by some to skate through regulatory OK. AT&T said the deal announced Monday will result in a huge increase in customers it serves by fiber and its 5G C-band network.

The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency needs to beef up its Joint Cyber Planning Office for wider communication routes between government and industry and Congress “needs to put CISA on a path to being a $5 billion agency,” House Homeland Security ranking member John Katko, R-N.Y., told a Wednesday Cybersecurity Subcommittee ransomware hearing. The past 18 months brought an increased frequency of cyberattacks, plus growing sophistication of threat actors, and larger amounts being demanded of victims, experts said at a Chamber of Commerce webinar, also Wednesday. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called ransomware one DHS' "most-significant priorities."

Charter Communications won't expand plant capacity to accommodate symmetrical broadband anytime soon, CEO Tom Rutledge said Friday. Some customers use more than 1 Tb of data a month, but most of that is via IPTV, and its capacity is sufficient for current upstream uses, he said. He said Charter is capable of upgrading its network, if needed as new products develop. Comcast indicated last week that symmetrical broadband is a priority (see 2104290009). Rutledge said Charter added more than 7 million internet customers in the five years since it bought Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, extended its network past 5 million additional homes and businesses, and spent more than $40 billion on infrastructure and technology. He said over the next six years, Charter will spend $5 billion to reach more than a million unserved customer locations, offset by $2 billion in Rural Digital Opportunity Fund money: That could lead to other "white space" areas of potential customers opening up due to federal investing. He said those rural markets are more expensive capital projects, and payback can take 10-plus years, but the cable ISP is confident it can get good penetration. The public money being targeted toward connectivity efforts like E-rate and the emergency broadband benefit program mean "a huge opportunity, [but] our sense is the states don't know how to spend it all," Rutledge said. Revenue in Q1 was $12.5 billion, up $784 million year over year, Charter said Friday. It has 27.4 million residential internet customers, up 1.9 million; 15.5 million residential video subscribers, down 67,000; 9.1 million residential voice customers, down 247,000; and 2.6 million residential mobile lines, up 1.25 million. Chief Financial Officer Chris Winfrey said the mobile business is scaling up to stand-alone profitability. MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote investors that Comcast showed its mobile business can be profitable even without unloading traffic from its mobile virtual network operator. The analyst said Charter's citizens broadband radio service spectrum is "a clear path for traffic offload" that could reduce costs. He said wireless could eventually pass video as Charter's No. 2 revenue stream.

Symmetrical broadband is a "focus" for Comcast "for the next several years," Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said Thursday as the company detailed progress toward offering multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds while announcing Q1 results. Company CEO Brian Roberts said it's moving toward trials on offloading mobile traffic in dense areas using its spectrum: "That really will prove to be a cost savings if we get it right."