No one seemed interested in paying a subscription fee for TV programming they already got at home. Nor were they interested in buying the special MediaFLO phones necessary to receive that broadcast signal. After limping along for three years, Qualcomm shut it down in 2010 and eventually sold its spectrum to AT&T.

Now Qualcomm is back on the live TV bandwagon, beating the drum over a new video and data multicast technology called LTE-broadcast. Recently I had a chance to catch up with Neville Meijers, VP of business development for Qualcomm, and I asked him the obvious: Didn’t Qualcomm learn its lesson with FLO TV?

Meijers readily acknowledged that FLO TV was a failure, but he claimed it wasn’t a failure of technology. Nor did Qualcomm misidentify the demand for live video content, he said. “At the end of the day it came down to economics,” Meijers concluded.

Why FLO didn’t flow

FLO TV failed for many reasons, but the biggest one was the huge ecosystem every participating player had to buy into to make the whole thing work. FLO required specialty chipsets, and thus specialty devices. It required new spectrum and a new network, and it even necessitated the negotiation of content rights to redistribute any program being broadcast. Those are huge hurdles to overcome, requiring big investments from both carrier and consumer.

If FLO had been a cheap service that you could use over any phone, then it could have worked, but the argument is moot, Meijers said. Qualcomm isn’t trying to recreate FLO TV with a new technology. Instead, Meijers said, Qualcomm views LTE-broadcast as a different kind of service proposition altogether: a means of easing congestion on carriers’ mobile data networks to make all kinds of streamed multimedia content more accessible and cheaper for consumers.

Unlike MediaFLO, LTE-broadcast doesn’t require new phones and new networks, and it uses standards-based, not proprietary, technology. What that means is carriers will be able to use their existing LTE infrastructure and spectrum through hardware upgrades for broadcast and future generations of radio chipsets will automatically support the feature.

What’s more, implementing LTE-broadcast doesn’t mean sacrificing capacity on the regular LTE network, Meijers said. If the network isn’t broadcasting content — or if no one in a cell is watching that content — it simply reverts to its normal unicast LTE state. For those reasons operators are much more enthusiastic about LTE-broadcast than they were in MediaFLO’s dedicated network model. The first trial networks will show up this year, but we won’t see LTE-broadcast on a meaningful scale until 2014, Meijers said.

What can you do with a broadcast network?

If LTE-broadcast was just about live TV, it probably wouldn’t work. As I wrote in January, there just aren’t that many live TV events that would get multiple users on the same cell all watching the same program — the Superbowl, the Oscars and the State of Union Address don’t happen every day.

But Meijers said that there is a lot of content beyond video that carriers or third-party content providers can ship to multiple phones simultaneously. For instance, instead of having each phone individually downloading app, device firmware, OS updates; operators could ship a updates in a gigantic batches to all users. Take a widely used app like Facebook — an update to its iOS software could hit hundreds of devices in the same cell simultaneously, eating up a fraction of the cell’s bandwidth.

LTE-broadcast could also be used to provide unique content at specific locations, Meijers said. At a football game, for instance, all of the cells serving the stadium could feature live video from every TV camera pointed at the field.

And while FLO TV may have failed, carriers are still interested in other video models, Meijer said. Instead of trying to convince customers to watch TV on a schedule, carriers could turn phones into miniature DVRs. At set times of the day they would broadcast programming, whether its popular YouTube videos or HBO’s Game of Thrones, which your phone could then would scoop out of the air and store for later viewing – if you have a subscription, of course.

“There are operators that have close alliances with television providers, particularly overseas,” Meijers said. “They want to offer over-the-top video services of their own.”

Right now watching an entire season of Game of Thrones streamed to your tablet over a mobile network is prohibitively expensive given the amount of data you would consume. But what if HBO paid Verizon Wireless to broadcast every new series episode to all of its HBO Go subscribers when the show aired each week? Since the program is broadcast to millions of devices simultaneously and then recorded in memory, it would cost Verizon little in network resources. That would allow it to exempt what would normally be gigabytes of data from its monthly data caps. Now that’s a compelling case for LTE-broadcast.

TVs photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Peter Sobolev

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The term Wi-Fi refers to interoperability compliance with specific IEEE 802.11 standards, and is a designation controlled by the Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization that certifies Wi-Fi gear. The Wi-Fi Alliance is not happy about the term “Super Wi-Fi” had this to say in a press release last year, “The technology touted as “Super Wi-Fi” does not interoperate with the billions of Wi-Fi devices in use today.” In addition, they state, “Wi-Fi is a registered trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance and the term ‘Super Wi-Fi’ is not an authorized extension of the brand.” So let’s just call it “white-space” network, which is the origin of this technology.

Since it’s not Wi-Fi, it needs new radios

Because super Wi-Fi isn’t a new band and has a new radio standard, existing Wi-Fi radios in phones, tablets, and laptops won’t work with these white-space networks. Any user wishing to connect over a future white-space network will need entirely new equipment, most likely a USB form-factor modem. Another possibility would be a wireless router that connects to the white-space network and provides Wi-Fi connections as a hot spot; however, that newly created Wi-Fi hotspot is then subject to all the congestion frailties we currently experience on Wi-Fi networks today.

Another important issue is the radio standard itself. There are two different standards being developed for white-space spectrum, IEEE 802.11af and IEEE 802.22. IEEE 802.22 was just recently completed but IEEE 802.11af is still in development. It’s not at all clear which of these standards will prevail in the market, or whether something entirely new will come along. Dueling standards generally serve to confuse and delay markets.

Now let’s try to understand the “super” part of this technology, since I don’t really see anything that “super” about it. First, it’s quite slow compared to existing Wi-Fi technologies, limited to a peak rate of 29 Mbps. In contrast the latest Wi-Fi standard, IEEE 802.11ac which is still under development but available in commercial product, can deliver throughput rates close to 1 Gbps (800 Mbps) in a base configuration, and over 6 Gbps in its most advanced configuration.

Who will build the networks?

Second, claims about its superiority are based on an assumption that as-yet-unidentified service providers will deploy networks to operate on this white space spectrum all over the country and offer wireless broadband service. Policymakers seem to hope that these new networks will somehow alleviate the mobile broadband capacity crunch that we are experiencing.

This notion, however, is flawed. First, it is extremely unlikely that any entity will invest billions of dollars in massive amounts of network infrastructure to use unlicensed spectrum to support commercial wireless broadband services. The carrier’s inability to guarantee service quality, predict and manage capacity, and eliminate or prevent interference render unlicensed spectrum an inferior solution for providers who compete based on quality of service and ability to support bandwidth-hungry apps and devices.

Add to this the possibility of different technologies using this band and it looks like an even less attractive basis for a significant capital expenditure which needs a return on the investment. For example, an IEEE article states that there is likely to be heavy degradation of 802.22 performance if it operates alongside an 802.11af network.

One thing we have learned over the least twenty years of building wireless data networks is that large volumes of users, whether its consumers, business users, or even M2M applications, subscribe to a wireless network technology only if they can obtain really broad coverage. Wireless network technologies with limited coverage have achieved only limited commercial success, including technologies such as Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD), Metricom Ricochet, and most recently Sprint/Clearwire’s WiMAX network.

The Google white spaces database in action.

White-space networks will be similarly limited in its coverage, but will further be complicated by being suited only for fixed operations. This is because the technologies currently envisioned to operate in the white space spectrum rely on the modem’s current location to query a database to learn what frequencies it is authorized to use.

Is LTE a better bet for this spectrum?

In contrast, wireless data technologies that have enjoyed wild success, such as EV-DO, HSPA, and LTE are technologies with extremely broad coverage, coverage achieved from tens of thousands of base stations covering almost all of the population. It may seem to be an apples to oranges comparison to compare a commercial LTE network with a white space network, yet it is exactly this comparison that needs to be made, because the spectrum being contemplated will end up being used for LTE networks or for white-space networks. There is no middle ground currently under discussion or development.

I believe one effective basis for such a comparison is to consider the aggregate capacity the two different networks might provide. The math for this is straightforward. Simply consider the number of possible sites, multiplied by the amount of spectrum, and multiply that by the spectral efficiency.

According to CTIA, there are some 285,000 cell sites. Assuming the spectrum was auctioned, cellular operators would likely deploy the spectrum across most of these sites, but a conservative estimate would be half these – 142,000 sites, each with 3 sectors. Taking 30 MHz of spectrum under consideration and average LTE spectral efficiency of 1.4 bps as per my studies and writing on this topic, that amounts to 17,640 gigabits/second (Gbps) of additional national mobile data capacity.

White-space networks could have comparable spectral efficiency and could also be deployed in 3 sector configurations. The only variable in question to determine the total capacity delivered by white-space networks using the same amount of spectrum is the number of sites (access points). Given my previous arguments of interference concerns, it’s inconceivable that anybody would build out white-space networks with density equivalent to cellular network.

White spaces are for local networks, not national ones

White spaces might be good for coffee shops?

It’s all well and good to create experimental networks and to foster innovation, but the 600 MHz band represents a precious resource at a time when providing sufficient capacity to foster the mobile broadband revolution is crucial, and a time when new sources of spectrum seem ever more challenging.

I believe applying that spectrum to technologies that will use it the most fully will provide the greatest societal and economic benefit. Right now, those technologies include LTE and LTE-Advanced. We should continue to foster innovation and experimentation with white space spectrum and Wi-Fi, but not at the expense of also expanding the base and capabilities of our best-in-class, commercial wireless broadband networks that depend on licensed, exclusive use spectrum for their core operations.

Peter Rysavy is President of Rysavy Research, a wireless network engineering firm.

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In a statement, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said that the decision was driven by “our sense of optimism for the future prospects of NBCUniversal and our desire to capture future value that we hope to create for our shareholders.” Roberts also said that he believes Comcast is in a “strong and unique position” to build value in the combined company.

The Comcast deal will not have to be approved by federal regulators, who fined the cable company $800,000 last year for failing to meet some of the conditions it placed on the original purchase. Comcast said it expects the deal to close by the end of March.

As part of the acquisition, NBCUniversal will also buy the buildings that it uses at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York and CNBC’s headquarters in New Jersey for about $1.4 billion. According to the New York Times, a “clash of cultures” was partly responsible for speeding up Comcast’s decision to buy the remaining part of the company.

Comcast also announced its fourth-quarter financial results ahead of schedule, and said its earnings climbed by 19 percent from the same period a year ago, while revenue rose by 6 percent to $16 billion and operating income grew 13 percent to $3 billion. The company said it will increase its dividend by 20 percent and will repurchase $2 billion worth of stock this year.

This story was corrected Tuesday evening to clarify that the deal is not subject to federal approval, as originally stated.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock / Cedric Weber

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By broadcast, McAdam was referring to LTE-broadcast, one of the many multicast technologies that’s been kicking around the wireless industry for years. LTE-broadcast would turn cell towers into the equivalent of mini-digital TV towers that could multicast video, audio and even data to multiple users simultaneously.

Right now mobile multimedia works through an on-demand unicast model. Every time you stream a video or a song to your smartphone, you get your own dedicated portion of the cell’s capacity to deliver your content, even if the guy right next to you is watching the same program. That unicast model and video’s intensive bandwidth demands explain why mobile video is such a network hog.

LTE-broadcast, however, would turn a portion of a network’s bandwidth into a multicast network, sending a single video or audio stream to multiple devices similar to the way TV and radio towers broadcast their programming.

If this all sounds familiar, you’re probably recalling Qualcomm’s FLO TV service of the last decade, which shut down in 2010 for lack of subscribers, devices and compelling content. Or perhaps the TV broadcasters’ own Dyle mobile digital TV initiative, which appears to be going nowhere very slowly. But there are some pretty key differences between those efforts and the LTE-broadcast technology that McAdam is talking about.

Qualcomm’s FLO technology required (and Dyle requires) a special receiver and therefore a dedicated TV handset to receive their respective transmissions. That pretty much doomed them from the beginning. But LTE-broadcast is based on the evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) technology being standardized for LTE. Chipmakers like Qualcomm have already committed to supporting eMBMS in their future radio silicon. That means future handsets will be pretty much eMBMS-ready whether carriers chose to use the technology or not.

eMBMS also uses the same LTE radio infrastructure, requiring only upgrades to the network core. So if a carrier decides to get into the broadcast business, the equipment is largely in place. The barriers to entry are much lower for LTE-broadcast, but there’s still one big question: will consumers actually use it?

The age of personalized multimedia

The problem is that an increasingly technically savvy public is moving away from broadcast models completely when it comes to digital content. Consumers are personalizing their radios with Pandora and Spotify. The reason HBO Go rocks is we don’t have to be at home a pre-determined hour –- or set our DVRs –- to watch the next episode of Game of Thrones. We just pull content out of the air whenever we please.

There are still plenty of people consuming broadcast video and audio on their TVs and car stereos, but on smartphones and tablets streaming is king. By imposing a broadcast model, carriers would be going against mobile data trends.

That’s why McAdam highlighted the Super Bowl as the ideal use case for LTE-broadcast. Blockbuster live events would attract hundreds of thousands of simultaneous viewers that would best make use of the technology. Verizon already streams entire NFL games through its NFL Mobile app, so being able to multicast those games would save it enormous amounts of network capacity — or so you might think.

There are a lot of cells out there

The thing about mobile networks is that they’re much denser than TV broadcast networks. Instead of using a single tower to cover a whole city, hundreds if not thousands of towers — each sporting multiple sectors — blanket any given metropolis with mobile broadband. Even if thousands of people in the same city are watching the same game on their phones, chances are few of them are going to be in the same cells at the same time. Multicasting effectively becomes unicasting if there is only one person receiving the transmission.

Nokia Siemens Networks’ conception of a heterogeneous network

What’s more, cells will start shrinking and multiplying as carriers begin deploying small cells and heterogeneous network (HetNet) architectures. The more cells in the networks, the less chance you’ll have users simultaneously streaming the same content in any given cell, unless you’re talking about big events. But playoff games and the State of the Union Addresses don’t occur everyday.

According to a new research report from iGR, carriers are weighing those factors, and some of them are leaning towards deploying LTE-broadcast selectively, targeting venues where people are most likely to stream the same content. Airports would be a good example, but so would a sports arena. Ticketholders might be watching the same games live, but they could all view the same replay videos simultaneously.

The iGR report also proposes that LTE-broadcast could turn our phones and tablets into mobile DVRs. We could subscribe to particular TV programs on apps like HBO Go. At set times, the LTE-broadcast network would schedule the download of various shows, beaming them down to thousands if not millions of devices simultaneously and caching them for later consumption. There’s nothing to prevent LTE-broadcast from being used for other types of media or data like digital magazines or device OS updates.

iGR projects that mobile video will account for 71 percent of mobile network data traffic in 2016. By utilizing LTE-broadcast, the study concludes, carriers could reduce capacity demand on their networks by 12.5 percent overall and by 15 percent at peak hours, the study found. The bottom line is unicast on-demand video will remain supreme, but a 15 percent capacity savings when the network needs it most is certainly nothing to scoff at.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Peter Sobolev

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In the interview, Costolo also talked about the evolution of founder Jack Dorsey’s role at the company, although he didn’t discuss reports published by the New York Times and others that said Twitter’s creator had to reduce his day-to-day role overseeing product design because people found him difficult and indecisive. And he remained circumspect about when (or if) the company plans to go public, as he has been in other interviews, saying only that it’s “not on our radar right now.” But Costolo also talked about what he sees as the most compelling feature of Twitter — namely, its ability to turn the news inside out and show us what others like ourselves are thinking about a global news event:

“We used to have a filtered, one-way view of events in the world from the media — whether it was a sporting event like the Olympics or an event like the presidential debates last week. America’s perspective of it, or the world’s perspective of that event, would be seen through the lens of the way that the media described it to them… now with Twitter, people want to know what everyone else thinks and we’re getting this inside-out, multi-perspective view of what’s going on right now as it happens from everybody else that’s watching the same thing we’re watching.”

What’s interesting about Costolo’s description of Twitter’s key feature are the examples that he chooses to focus on: the Olympics and the presidential debate. Both were huge traffic drivers for both Twitter and the broadcast networks who aired them — according to the Twitter blog, there were more than 10 million tweets sent during the two hours that the presidential debate was on, and the Olympics sparked about 150 million tweets, according to the company. Although some have argued that Twitter as a “second screen” is a distraction during such events, it’s obvious that plenty of people disagree.

Twitter is complementary to media, Costolo says

But the Olympics were more than just an event; they were also the subject of a carefully choreographed partnership between the official broadcaster and Twitter. There was a custom news hub curated by Twitter staff (geo-gated, of course, due to NBC’s licensing restrictions) and in the wake of the Games, the company’s head of media partnerships boasted to the New York Times about how much the Twitter partnership had increased viewership for NBC’s broadcast, saying “What we saw is that it was an amazing daytime-teaser trailer, driving people into prime time.”

That partnership also caused some controversy after a Twitter staffer alerted NBC to the fact that a British journalist had posted a senior executive’s email address without his permission, which is against Twitter’s privacy rules. The journalist’s account was quickly suspended, which left Twitter with a bit of a black eye from a public-relations perspective, since its motto has always been “let the tweets flow” and both Costolo and general counsel Alex Macgillivray have talked about how Twitter is the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party.” Some said Twitter had lost its users’ trust.

What seems clear from Costolo’s discussion on Marketplace is that this kind of corporate partnership with existing media outlets, and likely television networks specifically, is where the company’s future lies — for better or worse. As he described it:

“I view it as very, very complementary to the news outlets. In fact, one of the things we saw during the Olympics is that Twitter actually… drove tune-in to the Olympics. [and] what was happening was people would see on Twitter something like, wow, the U.S. women’s 4-by-100 meter relay team just broke the world record — and then they would make sure they tuned in that night to watch it, when they might not otherwise even know that women’s track and field was going to be on that night. So I think it is incredibly complementary to news and media in a way that maybe other technologies haven’t been in the past.”

Costolo also talked in the interview about how the company fights on behalf of its users when they are involved in court cases like the one involving Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris, in which the New York district attorney forced Twitter to provide personal information about Harris, including content that he had posted on Twitter. But when it comes to the kind of media model that the company seems to be pinning its hopes on, it sounds like being the “second screen” for public events broadcast by existing media players is the future. Whether that will bring Twitter fame and fortune remains to be seen.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users George Kelly and Giuseppe Bognanni

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Court filings show that the first hearing dates are set for May 30 and May 31 in New York. At this time, studios like Fox (NSDQ: NWS) and NBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) will try to persuade U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan to shut down Aereo with a temporary injunction while the case heads to a full trial.

Aereo is already live in New York City and its main investor, media mogul Barry Diller, says he plans to roll it out in hundreds of more locations soon.

The service works by charging subscribers $12 a month for a remote personal antenna that streams broadcast TV to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) devices. In a new court filing, Aereo produced a picture of the antenna to show that it is the size of a dime:

In practice, the dime-size antenna means that iPhone owners can watch about a dozen live TV shows anywhere they go. Studios have taken a dim view of the technology and early this month joined together in lawsuits to stop Aereo.

The studio complaints, which also represent Spanish stations and public broadcaster PBS, were filed in two bundles on successive days. But they are essentially the same lawsuit and will be consolidated for the May hearing.

The broadcasters say that Aereo is infringing their copyright by retransmitting their signal. Aereo has rebutted the charge by saying they are not broadcasting to everybody (which would be infringement) but simply providing a service that allows people to set up their own antennas to watch and record TV.

This “one person, one antenna” theory held up in a recent appeals court decision in which the Cartoon Network sued a remote DVR service (legal eagles, see this Alison Frankel post for details). The studios blasted the claim as a technicality: “No amount of technological gimmickry by Aereo or claims of sophisticated ‘rabbit ears’ change the fundamental principle of copyright.”

Who is right? The answer will take time as Judge Nathan is unlikely to rule from the bench at the May hearings, and will probably hand down a written ruling weeks or months later. To obtain a temporary injunction, the broadcasters will have to show they are likely to incur “irreparable harm” if Aereo is not shut down immediately.

Meanwhile, Aereo is asking the court for a declaration that its technology is legal. If the matter is not resolved at this this stage, the broadcasters could press on to trial but that would take years.

In the meantime, Aereo users can safely enjoy Dr. Phil on the go for another few months at least.

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As promised, Aereo lets “live TV meet the internet .. on devices you already have” for $12 a month, and requires no additional cords, buttons or antennas. The service simply requires a subscriber to enter a user name and password into its website and — voila! — all the bad television you can watch. (Well, that’s not really fair. I chose to test drive the service between 2pm and 3pm and drank deep from Family Feud, Days of Our Lives and Miffy the Bunny.)

For now, the most important observation is that the service is easy and more or less works. To choose a show, a user simply taps an item from a TV-guide like menu. Aereo then prompts the user to hit play or record the show for later with the DVR feature (which stores up to forty hours).

Every time I tested it, a show played within two to ten seconds except for two occasions when it didn’t load at all. The overall picture quality is terrific and Aereo includes a feature that lets a user adjust the video quality or simply set it to automatic. The service also lets users tap a single button to tell Twitter and Facebook friends that they are watching Miffy.

Overall, Aereo seems ready for prime time but will anyone sign up? In our own happy cable-cutter home, we watch an occasional show on over-the-air TV plus a healthy dose of Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and MLB streamed through a Roku box. I’m not sure we need TV on our other devices even at only $12 a month.

Aereo may find favor, though, with those who don’t have a TV at all or who have poor over-the-air reception. It will also be appealing to those who have a 3G iPad and want to watch TV at the cottage or during a long car ride. (While the iPhone offers the same thing, the screen is just too small to feel like TV). The device isn’t yet available on non-Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) platforms but is expected to be soon.

For now, Aereo is live only in New York City but the company plans to roll out in hundreds of other cities before long. To gain traction, Aereo announced today that it is offering a free 90-day trial to all new subscribers.

They’d better hurry. Broadcasters hate the service and are trying to stamp it to death in court. Aereo is holding its ground by saying that its micro-antenna technology qualifies for a legal loophole in copyright that distinguishes between transmitting to one or many devices. The court fireworks will likely begin in May.

Update: Check out how Aereo appears on the iPad…

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For $12 a month, Aereo is promising New Yorkers access to a remote dime-sized antenna that will stream broadcast networks live over broadband across devices, along with storage space on a cloud-based DVR. The company is housing thousands of the HD-quality antennas in data centers. The company has raised $20.5 million and is slated to launch as an invitation-only service in New York March 14. Fox (NSDQ: NWS), Univision and PBS are already suing to stop it.

Diller is a summa-cum-laude graduate of the old school who in another life might well have been one of the execs lining up against the idea of a service that bypasses cable and satellite to deliver broadcast networks to consumers. Now he’s the one claiming broadcasters “forgot a longtime ago” how they got a free broadcast license in the first place. “They have the right to say where and when they want programming they own to be displayed,” he admits. But the man who created Fox contends they don’t have the right to insist on intermediaries they approve as the conduit to consumers. “I don’t think it’s on the side of settled law or on the side of the angels.”

When they ask for retransmission fees to allow Aereo to operate, Diller says he tells them, “When you get Radio Shack to pay you a slice of profit for selling an aerial, we’ll pay you.”

Diller argues that Aereo avoids legal issues others have faced by leasing the antenna to consumers, who then “control” it via devices they already own. A win in court — not the most likely of outcomes given how the courts have reacted so far to efforts to stream networks without agreements — doesn’t guarantee a business win. During the on-stage interview with CNN’s Ali Velshi, Diller enthused about the idea but added, “We don’t know yet. We don’t know anybody’s going to want to do this.”

(To which I’d add, even if enough people in NYC, where broadcast signals can be impossible to receive without third parties, pay to make it work financially in that market, there’s no guarantee it would be viable in other major cities. Those most likely to pay $12 a month for Aereo or something like it are already paying for cable or satellite and think they could save money by mixing broadband broadcast delivery with other offerings like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Hulu Plus or ad-supported options.)

This is what Diller calls the essence of the internet: “Push a button and you publish to the world. so long as you have an idea, nothing between you and the consumer. That is a profound change of how media has been for the last 100 years.”

But he doesn’t use his own “button” — ie a Twitter feed. Diller says he regrets not starting with Twitter early on but thinks it’s too late now. That doesn’t stop him from being “very admiring” of Rupert Murdoch, who he sees using Twitter during a difficult time to get away from having his message managed and make his own voice heard.

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For many consumers, these regional sports channels are a key, and perhaps under-recognized determiner as to why they don’t ditch their cable, satellite or telco TV service. Plain and simply, cut out cable and they’d have to go to a sports bar or buy a ticket to see their favorite club’s home games.

As perhaps its most popular and perishable video product, sports is rightly considered TV’s most resilient asset when it comes to the forces of digital video recorders and cord-cutting. Fans generally prefer not to time-shift sports, and they don’t “catch up” with their favorite teams via Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) viewing binges in the same way they would with, say, a cable original series like The Walking Dead.

Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) officials stated that this was a key consideration when they recently ponied up $4.4 billion to retain Olympics broadcast rights. “Sports,” said Steve Burke, CEO of Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit, to Forbes this week, “is how we’re going to move forward with the rest of the company.”

With Major League Baseball offering over-the-top subscription services that don’t require the authentication of a cable subscription, and broadcast platforms like NBCU offering big-ticket sports events like the Super Bowl and the upcoming London Olympic Games on digital devices for free, live sports would seem to be moving nicely into TV’s emerging world of unbundled, a la carte programming options. You can see a lot of the action without paying a cable bill.

But if you really love sports, and you have a favorite local team, you’re still stuck. In that case, you’re advised to keep paying your cable bill, because your team’s home games probably are licensed exclusively by a regional sports channel and won’t be available on an over-the-top subscription service anytime soon. Locked into multi-year broadcast licensing deals with professional teams and collegiate athletic conferences that extend into the billions of dollars, regional sports networks currently receive some of highest carriage fees in the cable business. And they don’t appear eager to disrupt the current model.

Last month, for example, as the hoopla surrounding New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin put a spotlight on a carriage dispute between the team’s regional channel operator, the MSG Network, and multi-system operator Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), a number of Knicks fans who found themselves shut off from the team’s televised home games suggested that they’d happily pay a subscription fee for a digital on-demand viewing option.

But shortly before reaching an agreement with Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Cable that put Knicks games back on the service in the New York area, we asked an MSG representative if the company was even considering such an over-the-top alternative. “That’s not in our plans right now,” the rep told us.

Given the carriage fees MSG receives from cable operators like Time Warner, it’s easy to understand why. Even prior to the renegotiation of its carriage agreement on one of its most important platforms, the MSG Network received, on average, $2.63 per subscriber per month from cable operators, research company SNL Kagan estimates. So that’s 2.8 million Time Warner subscribers alone paying over $30 a year for access to Knicks games, as well as New York-area pro-hockey teams, and most of them aren’t even fans who would consider paying for a premium subscription service.

That figure is less than the $2.99 per-subscriber average collected by the country’s top-earning regional sports channel, the YES Network, which last year took in revenue of $474.8 million.

As shown during the Time Warner/MSG standoff, MSOs have tried to draw a line in the sand in terms of escalating carriage fee demands — MSG was asking for fee bumps of more than 50 percent, for example — but these carriage disputes often turn into very public controversies. And MSOs, which have already faced with huge subscriber defections, are usually put in a no-win postion, cast as the villain who’s keeping the local team away from its fans.

Meanwhile, these regional channels’ financial commitment to local teams is huge and longstanding. For example, starting next NBA season, Time Warner Cable will pay the Los Angeles Lakers $3 billion over the next 20 years to show not just Lakers home games, but all pre-season and regular-season games that are not shown by national NBA broadcast rights holders Turner sports and ABC Disney (NYSE: DIS). In the process, Time Warner will launch a new regional sports channel — one that it’ll charge its subscribers — and those of competing MSOs — to carry in a bundle.

With regional sports channels also using their popularity among subscribers to leverage carriage deals for smaller siblings — in its negotiation with Time Warner, for example, MSG was able to also secure carriage for the lightly watched music channel FUSE — they may be helping to create an unsustainable model for the cable business.

“They can’t just keep raising their fees and adding channels and expect subscribers to keep paying,” said Keith Nissen, principal analyst for research company In-Stat. He believes the proliferation and clout of regional sports channels are a key reasons why the average price of a cable subscription is increasing at a rate of around 6 percent a year. At this rate, he said, the price could hit $200 a month by the end of the decade.

“As a result of this, I do think there will be a restructuring down the road of the cable package into a more a la carte offering,” he said.

One possible outcome, Nissen added: regional sports networks will evolve into premium subscription channels. “If cable becomes too expensive, and subscribers start moving to other services, they’re going to follow the money to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) TV or wherever and make themselves available there,” he said.

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