Contributors   |   Messages   |   Polls   |   Resources   |  

Disney Takes the Wheel at Hulu

50%
50%

Also in today's roundup: AT&T's big network pledge, Arista's new 400G routers, SES demos 8K video and the US government moves more paper around.

  • AT&T will deploy a nationwide "true, high-speed Internet network" within the next three to five years, using a mix of fiber and 5G, CEO Randall Stephenson told an investment conference today. These comments marked an evolution of Stephenson's thoughts from January 2019, when he said during an earnings call that 5G would be a "true replacement opportunity" for fixed broadband services, wrote Light Reading's Mike Dano. (See AT&T Taking Broadband Nationwide in 3-5 Years via Fiber & 5G.)

  • The Walt Disney Co. and Comcast Corp. said Disney will immediately take operational control over Hulu and will pay at least $5.8 billion to NBCUniversal for its 33% share in the video-streaming service by January 2024 or beyond. This "put/call" agreement means either party -- Comcast or Disney -- can require NBCUniversal to make the sale to Disney for "fair market value," which will be assessed by independent experts. Disney has, however, guaranteed a sale price for Comcast that represents a "minimum total equity value of Hulu at that time of $27.5 billion," the company said in its press release. This deal gives operational control to Disney and also ensures that Hulu will continue to have access to NBCU content for a few years. (See Disney Takes Full Operational Control of Hulu .)

    • Disney & Comcast: Long-Term Partners
    The House of Mouse and Comcast's sprawling conglomerate, including NBCUniversal, have a deal that crosses years and divisions.
    The House of Mouse and Comcast's sprawling conglomerate, including NBCUniversal, have a deal that crosses years and divisions.

  • The US House of Representatives unanimously passed "Access Broadband," new legislation designed to increase access to broadband services, would establish the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. This office would simplify access for small and midsize businesses and communities, potentially offering educational seminars and other resources. The legislation itself, written by Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., and Rep. Paul Tonko, D-NY, is designed to help underserved areas get broadband and make it simpler for small businesses and local economic developers to get federal broadband resources -- such as those available from FCC and USDA.

  • Arista is unveiling second-generation 400G routers, and these are designed to meet the increased bandwidth needs of emerging technologies including 5G, edge, network functions virtualization and IoT, the company said. Instead of requiring service providers to deploy separate devices for networking, telemetry and security, operators can run everything on one router. (See Arista Ships Smarter 400G Routers.)

    • Streaming in High-Def From Far Away
    Samsung, Spin Digital and SES partnered to deliver 8K content via satellite.
    Samsung, Spin Digital and SES partnered to deliver 8K content via satellite.

  • SES kicked off its annual two-dayIndustry Days event in Luxembourg by demonstrating an 8K signal broadcast to a flat-screen TV with a built-in satellite receiver. The 8K content is broadcast via SES' ASTRA 28.2 degrees east orbital slot; Spin Digital encoded the high-quality 8K signals, SES provided the bandwidth to broadcast the signal and Samsung developed the 8K flat screen that directly received and decoded the signal. The TV soon will be available in Europe.

  • TI Sparkle has named Alessandro Pansa its new chairman. TI Sparkle, the international services arm of Telecom Italia, thinks Pansa's experience in the public sector will help the company address Italy's "golden power" legislation. This law allows the Italian government to exercise special powers in matters deemed to have a bearing on national security" and how it relates to issues such as 5G. And, one would imagine, fiber. (See Eurobites: Vodafone UK Names the 5G Day.)

    • Related posts:

    — Alison Diana, Editor, Broadband World News. Follow us on Twitter or @alisoncdiana.
    Latest Articles
    Organization extends popular TR-069 standard for use in smart homes, looking to simplify and standardize market for vendors, operators and end users.
    By slashing subscriber pricing by more than $30 billion annually, Low Earth Orbit satellite companies led by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk as well as OneWeb have the potential to usher in a whole new era of broadband.
    While it continues to pull back from the European continent, Liberty Global is rolling out faster broadband speeds and next-gen WiFi and mobile services to beef up its market position.
    Acquisitive private network, cloud and hosting provider BSO expands worldwide customer base of wholesale service providers, ISPs, content providers and networks with purchase of IX Reach.
    Ability to deliver copper- and fiber-based technologies to service providers around the world helped DZS beat expectations and boost revenue to start 2019.
    Partner Perspectives - from our sponsors
    Radio Shows
    In this insightful Light Reading radio show, Kurt Raaflaub, Head of Strategic Solutions Marketing, will outline the key service provider challenges, deployment considerations, next-gen Gigabit technologies, and service models to win market share in the rapidly growing MDU market.
    Sponsored Video
    Ronan Kelly, ADTRAN CTO, EMEA & APC, shares his thoughts on industry operators leveraging virtualization, disaggregation and open SDN control, ...
    Network slicing promises to be a panacea, but the biggest hurdles are not technological. The grand ambition of enabling intelligent, adaptive, ...
    F-Secure has been providing security for endpoints for 30 years, and using AI and machine learning algorithms, for example in the labs to automate ...
    Fahri Diner, CEO and Co-founder of Plume, unveiled a new open source initiative, OpenSync, at Broadband World Forum 2018. Announced together with ...
    Talking to Light Reading's Iain Morris, Sebastian Richter from devolo explains why operators have to think beyond delivering high bandwidth and ...
    All Videos
    Information Resources
    All resources
    Industry Announcements
    More Industry Announcements
    Flash Poll
    Webinars
    ARCHIVED
    Tuesday, May 21, 2019
    11:00 a.m. New York / 4:00 p.m London
    Win MDUs: Playing With Loaded 9-Sided Dice (archive available soon)

    The MDU market continues to face fierce competition among service providers due to tech-savvy residents (i.e., millennials), demand from building owners and management companies, plus the favorable economics of bulk contracts. However, no MDUs are the same, so service providers must use multiple technologies and inconsistent deployment models, increasing operational complexity and rollout costs.

    The MDU market itself is evolving as residents adopt smart-home technologies, generating rising demand for smart apartments with built-in connected thermostats, keyless entryways and doors, and video doorbells. This evolution presents both new challenges and opportunities. In other words, service providers must consider innovative service-delivery strategies to compete and win.

    In this Broadband World News and ADTRAN webinar, Kurt Raaflaub, Head of Strategic Solutions Marketing, will highlight emerging MDU broadband Internet trends and challenges. In addition, Kurt will outline the next-generation service creation and delivery platform, built on open standards, that allows service providers to connect millions of underserved MDUs, enables creation of user-driven services, and reduces operational complexity and costs.

    Plus, special guest, Alice Lawson, Broadband and Cable Program Manager for the City of Seattle, will discuss Seattle’s B4B-Build For Broadband initiative that addresses best practices in planning for MDU telecommunication infrastructure.

    Video
    Alternative UK fixed-broadband network operator Community Fibre is deploying ADTRAN gear to take 10 Gbit/s to London users at aggressive prices.
    At Broadband World Forum 2018 there's a lot of chat about the shift towards software-defined access networks, but how tough and how expensive ...
    What are the hot talking points in the fixed broadband sector right now? Gigabit over copper as well as fiber, software-defined access and more, ...
    Light Reading's pro-European, Berlin-lovin' editors Ray Le Maistre and Iain Morris discuss some of the hot topics from BBWF 2017, including Gfast ...
    The UBB2020 community has had a great first four months thanks to a market that's on the up!
    All Videos
    Broadband World News
    About Us     Contact Us     Help     Register     Twitter     Facebook     RSS
    Copyright © 2019 Light Reading, part of Informa Tech,
    a division of Informa PLC. Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy | Terms of Use
    in partnership with