- NCTC plans to unveil a new streaming platform for its broadband service providers to offer to their customers
- The offering could help staunch the bleeding as operators continue to hemorrhage video subscribers
- More details will be revealed at next week’s Independent Show in Nashville, Tennessee
The National Content & Technology Cooperative (NCTC) wants to help small broadband operators staunch some of the bleeding of video subscribers. NCTC and ACA Connects will be hosting their annual Independent Show for smaller broadband operators next week in Nashville, where NCTC plans to unveil a new over-the-top TV offering called NCTC Broadband TV.
NCTC aids its members by using their group-purchasing power to negotiate deals on their behalf. For example, last year it negotiated a deal with AT&T and the mobile virtual network enabler Reach Next to give its members a turnkey platform to offer wireless services.
This year, NCTC is focusing on helping its members offer streaming video services.
As everyone knows, cable customers have been cutting the cord for years as they pivot to more streaming video subscriptions. Some smaller operators have exited the video business entirely. But the NCTC wants to help operators offer a skinny bundle of channels to retain as many video subscribers as possible.
“Giving customers who are unbundling their services a video option as a broadband customer — that is high value,” said Lou Borrelli, CEO of NCTC.
He gave Fierce Network a little preview of the program that he will be introducing to members at next week’s show. He said NCTC Broadband TV will provide about 35 familiar channels at a reasonable price. Although NCTC doesn’t set prices, he said, “my guess is it will be $20 per month or less.”
In terms of the technology for NCTC Broadband TV, he said the service will run as an application on the public internet and can be used with a variety of different customer premise equipment, including TiVo boxes, traditional cable TV boxes, Amazon TV Fire Stick or Evolution Digital devices.
“The key here is that it will work on whatever technology the service provider wants to use,” said Borrelli. “It’s going to be platform agnostic. The important thing is it’s about the customer experience and the opportunity to access channels they [customers] want.”
NCTC Broadband TV will be launched later this year.
MVNOs and AI
It’s been more than one year since NCTC rolled out its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) initiative. Earlier this summer, the telecom analysts at S&P Global put out a report, suggesting that small cable operators who get into the wireless business don’t have a very good chance of success. But Jared Baumann, VP of Technology Innovation at NCTC, clapped back with some rebuttals.
Last week, Borrelli told Fierce, “Our MVNO rollout continues, and we’ll have more to talk about at the show.”
NCTC is also working on helping its members navigate the artificial intelligence (AI) landscape. It’s setting up an AI Center of Excellence to help members vet AI applications.
“If you’re a mid-sized company and you keep hearing about how AI is going to help your business, but you don’t really have any internal resources, we will in effect vet different types of applications and negotiate on behalf of the members an advantage rate,” said Borrelli.
Regulatory policy
The other host of the Independent Show is ACA Connects, a group that focuses on regulatory policy for small broadband providers.
Recently, ACA Connects was happy to see the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals stay net neutrality — a ruling it considered a big win for small operators that don’t want more regulatory burdens.
Grant Spellmeyer, president and CEO of ACA Connects, said that during the upcoming show, “There’s going to be a little bit of gloating going on,” but “just because the court has issued an injunction doesn’t mean we’ve fixed net neutrality.”
He expects to spend a lot of time talking to members about the policy landscape in 2025, and all the possible outcomes, dependent on who wins the presidential election. ACA Connects members are concerned about bulk billing rules, digital discrimination requirements, broadband label mandates, the Universal Service Fund and the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.
Of the BEAD program, Spellmeyer said, “I continue to wrestle with [NTIA Chief] Davidson about a series of policy choices related to a number of things — labor standards, affordability mandates.”
The organizers of this year’s Independent Show expect a crowd of “close to 1,000” attendees, which will be perhaps 100 less than last year. They attribute the small decline to the fact that they moved their date a little closer to the start of the school year, so it wouldn’t conflict with the recent Fiber Connect conference.
