Mobile is hip, happening and whatever, but a small little mobile screen is just that – good enough to play games on, maybe FB..but I cannot imagine watching a mega hit like avatar on a mobile or a tablet screen, with a bunch of pals lounging around, and feeling great about it!

Of course you also talk about using “mobile as a modem” and piping content from it. Am afraid that this is not going to be a smart solution in the coming 3-5 years – for various reasons. Big screens are not mobile, so you can always find a cheaper way to pipe in the content to a big screen – ethernet (the whole point of this blog!) and cable/satellite/terrestrial will continue to be more cost-effective and offer better quality. In conclusion, mobile will not kill TV, even if (hypothetically) spectrum becomes dirt-cheap.

The one area that looks like an exception is sports programming, because those fees have gotten so high. As an example, Viacom’s CEO has noted that ESPN’s carriage fees (per month, per subscriber) are higher than those for all Viacom channels combined. In most areas, the 3 or 4 most expensive networks are all sports networks. If those went a la carte, people who don’t watch sports would see a discount.

The answer here is a combination of core cable networks and on-demand for everything else. Do you need to waste spectrum showing Murder, She Wrote on Hallmark and other networks four times a day when you could simply put the entire show library up for on-demand viewing? What about Discovery’s endless mini-nets that exchange content between themselves? Why not have one Discovery Channel with on-demand access to their library of content?

A-la-carte is a great concept, but the industry will not toss out their current business model, so the pay-per-channel retail rate will be outrageous and result in little savings. A better option might be a theme pack of similar networks. Don’t want sports? Don’t add the sports channel pack. Want news but no music? Buy the news/info pack of channels and not the music pack.

Niche networks can still come along for the ride and get needed compensation to survive, but consumers also can delete entire groups of channels they absolutely will never watch.

Carriers are already adopting usage limits and throttles to discourage video apps. Ground based wi-fi may supplement spectrum-short 3G/4G service, but when users share the connection, speeds drop quickly.

This reminds me of people who used to say WiMAX was going to solve everything — don’t bother with fiber. Now carriers can’t run away from that outdated technology fast enough.

For at least the next 25 years, fiber to the home service offers the most robust bandwidth, fiber to the curb can be a budget-minded incremental way to get closer to that, cable broadband DOCSIS 3 (and forthcoming 4) will keep cable in the game, and phone companies will ditch ADSL except in rural America. Wireless will be heavily rationed until cell companies adopt a different model (smaller cells, neighborhood-based antennas, major increase in Wi-Fi, antenna tech upgrades, etc.) With the natural usage growth curve, these solutions will only help keep up. Widespread Hi-Def video over wireless will remain out of reach for all but the most casual users who can stay within the caps.

Phillip Dampier
stopthecap.com

The future of ALL entertainment is … cellphones. Cellphones have taken over “old” tech (anyone here still possess and use a pager?), is taking over current tech (video-on-demand’s biggest growth area is “mobile”, a.k.a. cellphones), and will take over future tech (and be it). Fortunately, this means LOTS of competition between them. You don’t like caps on your downloads? Fine, there’s an app for … sorry … there’s a competitor for that.

It is only a matter of time before cellphone companies come out with a USB cellphone that you can plug into the USB port on your computers and TVs. Bye, bye, cable TV companies.

As for content, you can also forget about pay TV (a la carte or whatever) since the future of TV is free TV. Corporations sponsoring shows and paying for product placements in them. This free content coming over the Internet.

The only thing Congress can do is damage the transition to the above future. Congress isn’t the answer but part of the problem. Contrary to what politicians believe, you cannot legislate utopia. The marketplace will work all this out IF left alone to work it out.

ObtW: Pricing Delivery (Internet) separately from Content (cable channels) would most likely drive down the cost of programming to under $30 per month for Extended Basic cable. More reasonable in most users eyes. In fact, one HUGE pipe that delivers all services would most certainly be more efficient and lower the costs of such services. In addition,it would be flexible for the introduction of new uses we have not thought of yet.