Playstation Vue

[Pastormac1usa]

We've been PS Vue subscribers for the better part of a year now and have no major complaints. I'm curious if there would be any interest in Apple acquiring one of the streaming services rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. I am certainly interested in what T-Mobile (I'm a subscriber) will do but I have to believe Apple is also paying close attention to the existing teams on the field. DTVN is already AT&T, Sling is Dish Network (possible acquisition target in itself by Big Cable), Vue is Sony, and there's a number of others like Philo.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I've longed believed that DISH would be a good acquisition target for Apple. One of the great problems for Apple media services is that there are these middlemen players between iCloud (and iTunes servers) and end users. The middle men have names like Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon, etc, none of which are likely to roll right over and support Apple taking their cable TV-type business if Apple made a good push.

So the key becomes bypassing those middle men. That begs for figuring out how to connect consumers to iCloud without a broadband cable pipe. The 2 ways to do that right now in a broad way are cellular or SATT. Cellular has most of the same (names) in the middle, so Apple would just be (maybe) swapping one middle man for another... but then face the same basic issue again.

However, acquire DISH and maybe repurpose that SATT bandwidth and the connection between iCloud and consumers could go direct. Of course this is only an America (and parts of Canada) solution but it does cover the bulk of America.

Yes, we can pile up "old tech", "I don't want dishes on my roof", etc crits of the idea but then I take it right back to the same place: all streamers (be that Vue, Netflix, YouTube, Sling, etc) ALL completely depend on the pipe, generally owned and fully controlled by entities that have the most to lose if any of them become very, very successful. And since there is typically nowhere else for many to turn, they don't have to actually lose- they can always opt to make up for any cable TV service losses with higher broadband rates.

Until there is a bypassing solution, even the mighty Apple is always at the mercy of big cable which could, at any time, flex their dominant control to make all cord cutter options more expensive than having cable, and most consumers would have nowhere to turn.

Buy DISH. Repurpose it. And facilitate the potential for a direct connection between Apple and Apple customers that doesn't require any favors or facilitations by the likes of Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, Verizon, AT&T, etc. Until then, there is always the risk of those Empire's 'striking back' at any time.

 

[Pastormac1usa]

However, acquire DISH and maybe repurpose that SATT bandwidth and the connection between iCloud and consumers could go direct. Of course this is only an America (and parts of Canada) solution but it does cover the bulk of America.

We think alike. I've been saying Apple has a Last Mile problem and they are hostage to the various content distribution networks to the home or business. Satellite has some inherent weakness in that there is the occasional weather issue, i.e. rain fade, but the big one is the bird itself. It's beyond the ability to fix something if there is a transponder failure. I suspect that's why DirecTV is shutting down their satellite business for DTVN. It's expensive to launch a replacement and launch schedules are months in planning. I do not know where in the life expectancy of DTV's birds fall but it's a couple hundred million bucks to put a new one in orbit.

5G cellular networks are about to transform terrestrial connectivity. Dish does have valuable wireless spectrum acquired in FCC auctions. This spectrum has made many sit up and take notice. It was thought that maybe Sprint or TMUS might buy that spectrum but the fly in the ointment is Charlie Ergen who is a very difficult guy in negotiations. He wants control and I suspect any discussions TMUS had likely fell flat because Charlie insisted on some form of continuing control. I thought actually Apple might be interested in acquiring TMUS, if not Deutsche Telekom in its entirety, to become Apple's distribution network. DT's world wide network would be ideal for Apple. Problem there is the German gov't is a very significant shareholder. TMUS has the resources & is quickly building out capacity and 5G is very close. As soon as the 3GPP working group approves hardware standards you'll really see movement.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I'm not seeing it with cellular- even 5G. I think there's much too much established precedence that about 2GB of cellular data should cost each person about $40-$55/month. I don't see 5G getting commoditized enough to make it an effective competitor for "the last mile." Verizon, AT&T etc will cling much too hard to allow "their" networks to be commoditized. Personally, I think 5G is more about pushing users to data limits FASTER, so the gatekeepers can bill more to users... vs. being some big benefit to users.

Thus, again, I go back to the SATT idea. There is a LOT of bandwidth to potentially repurpose. Repurposed as a data connection to iCloud won't care much about rain fade. It bypasses the middle man for the entire United States and part of Canada in a single acquisition. It would put Apple logos prominently on little satt dishes AND make Apple a space-oriented company with- eventually- Apple SATTs being put into orbit.

If AT&T follows through on doing away with the SATT side of DirecTV, those SATTs will be sold to someone too. A combined DISH plus DirecTV fleet of SATTs is even more "bypass the middleman" bandwidth available to a deep-pocketed buyer.

The main issue I see with this concept is that it's localized to North America and Apple is a global company with a desire to connect the globe to iCloud. But still, North America is not exactly a small market. And there are other SATT companies in other parts of the world if Apple wanted to take this "cut out the middleman" approach to much of the rest of the world.

Otherwise, shifting "last mile" dependencies from copper gatekeepers like Comcast & Cox to wireless gatekeepers like Verizon & AT&T seems to be swapping out one devil for another. I don't foresee some big consumer gain there. In fact, I see copper still being the more economical connection with a new "competitor" at higher-to-much-higher pricing. I foresee a nearly nill scenario of a price war between broadband via copper vs. broadband via 5G. If anything, I expect the 5G option to be crazy expensive (relatively) and copper broadband rates continuing to rise as part of replacing "cord cutter" (TV subscription) revenue with higher broadband rates for all. The only real "competition" priced substantially higher will leave copper broadband plenty of room to increase pricing and still be cheaper.

Full circle: a great consumer solution is one that cuts all such players out of the equation. If- at the end- there's still a Comcast or Verizon in the middle and on which consumers have a complete dependency to make ANY streaming service work, those consumers and the new cable-like competitors are entirely at the mercy of those middle-man gatekeepers... exactly as it is today.