It is a safe bet that the U.S. communications business will look significantly different in a few years, as a potential wave of big mergers--most likely of a vertical sort--reshuffle assets in a way that positions access providers higher in the protocol stack and elsewhere in the value chain.
The biggest moves will involve mobile assets, one way or the other, as virtually everyone believes T-Mobile US, Sprint and Dish Network are likely partners (more as sellers than buyers). Some potential buyers (AT&T and Verizon) might be inhibited by debt issues related to prior big acquisitions. That leaves, in the buyer category, well-capitalized app providers of several types.
Though some horizontal combinations could occur, those are likely to be almost incidental to acquisitions and mergers that have access assets combined with content, application, retail or transaction assets.
The potential combinations could have spectrum owners combining or partnering with other entities that bring network access assets. That could be as true for a Dish Network as for a Comcast.
On the other hand, access providers might also seek to add application, content or platform capabilities. Or, just as plausibly, app providers might seek deals to vertically integrate access platforms and capabilities.
And it has been a long time coming.
“We've been talking about wireless for 20 years,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts recently said. Roberts also emphasized that the new mobile offering (sometimes cable executives talk about wireless as referring to the network of Wi-Fi homespots or even premises Wi-Fi) is aimed at current and prospective Comcast customers, in region, where Comcast has fixed network footprint.
So it does not immediately appear that Comcast is interested in making a bigger play in nationwide mobility at the moment. It is not so clear that all other big cable companies have the same strategy, so a big combination of a cable TV and a mobile provider is not impossible.
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