A new company with a revolutionary idea appeared on my radar yesterday. If it works as advertised, Air5’s technology could be the cable TV industry’s solution to restarting growth in the broadband business, an area that has become a target for new technologies and new competitors.
Air5 CEO Jeff Brown and senior executives have given us a preview of the company’s upcoming announcement of new, innovative 5G standards-based technology to help the cable TV industry. The company is blending DOCSIS and 5G wireless, which they say will result in more efficient and better performing wireless broadband services.
The new technology is designed to help cable companies harmonize their older DOCSIS broadband ecosystem with the new 5G wireless.
This appears to be an attempt to drag the older DOCSIS technology into the future by blending it with 5G wireless broadband technology.
Who is Air5?
Air5 was founded earlier this year in Palo Alto, California. The company’s 5G standards-based technology harmonizes the diverse broadband ecosystem of wireless and wired cable broadband, providing a more vibrant environment for the development of mobile solutions and strategies to improve both customer retention and growth.
Brown said this new concept will allow 5G-based networks to seamlessly share the industry’s current DOCSIS standard and hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) cabling, and will unlock a new wave of growth and innovation for cable and wireless operators.
The company said that by merging wireless and wireline broadband networks into a single, unified 5G infrastructure, the architecture will result in more innovative, interconnected mobile solutions with improved capabilities.
Air5 co-founders Dr. Jan Uddenfeldt and Lorenz Glatz have helped design today’s leading technology standards used throughout the wireless and cable industries. Sudhir Ispahani is Chairman of the Board of Air5.
Air5’s advisory board includes Glenn Lurie of AT&T and Synchronoss (now a venture partner at Stormbreaker Ventures), Kip Compton of Cisco and Comcast, Marwan Fawaz, a cable TV executive who has worked at Motorola, Google and Charter, and Vish Mishra, managing director at BlueVine and general partner at Clearstone Venture Partners.
This leadership team will drive the big idea of taking wired broadband away from cable and helping the cable TV industry start to grow again.
Traditional cable TV is at an inflection point in its growth wave
As you know, FWA and 5G wireless broadband provided by wireless networks such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are new threats to the cable TV industry.
In fact, this new Air5 technology helping the cable industry seems to be the opposite of how FWA helps wireless carriers deliver mobile broadband.
Today, traditional cable television networks face serious and significant challenges.
Today, many customers and investors are surprised to hear that the cable television industry’s primary service is no longer cable television.
Traditional cable TV’s market share is declining as it faces competition from new technologies such as streaming.
Currently, the main service is broadband. The traditional cable TV market has been shrinking for the past 10 to 20 years.
As market share declines, smaller cable TV operators are being forced to exit the market altogether.
Cable TV broadband is being overtaken by FWA and 5G wireless
In addition to wired broadband, cable TV providers also offer wireless phone service, wireless data, streaming, and more.
Today, the cable TV industry also faces a new threat: FWA (Fixed Wireless Access), the technology that wireless carriers are using to deliver 5G wireless broadband services.
This competes with traditional wired broadband offered by cable TV providers, putting the cable TV industry under increasing pressure.
This is a real, urgent and growing problem that needs to be solved today.
However, we have not heard or seen much on this front from the cable TV industry.
Air5 strikes while the iron is hot with wireless broadband for cable TV
From today’s perspective, this Air5 technology could be a real solution.
The timing is right. I believe Air5’s technology is striking while the iron is hot. Their customer, the cable TV industry, needs new ideas and new thinking to drive growth again.
I still don’t fully understand how the Air5 technology works, but I do know that timing is key, and today is the perfect time to find a solution.
Brown said the plan for the Air5 is to begin lab testing in the second half of 2024, followed by field testing and eventual initial deployment next year.
How quickly Air5’s technology develops will depend on the cable TV industry.
The pace of Air5’s growth will depend on cable TV operators and how quickly they want to move.
So far they’ve made tremendous progress, and perhaps as the wireless industry faces growing problems losing broadband customers this will become a top priority for the solution.
And if a cable TV provider gets in and it works as advertised, it could set off a chain reaction with other companies quickly joining in.
Comcast Xfinity, Charter Spectrum, Altice, Optimum, Cox, etc.
In today’s world of wireless, cable television, telecommunications, internet, broadband, etc., growth seems to be undermined by chaos.
If they’re successful, that will create a large market for companies that can leverage their new approaches and ideas: companies like Comcast Xfinity, Charter Spectrum, Altice, Optimum and Cox, who are increasingly competing with and collaborating with wireless carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T.
Plus, network builders are bound to be interested – there are the likes of Qualcomm, Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and countless other smaller competitors in wireless, telecommunications, broadband and cable TV.
Air5 is a new company with new ideas to solve cable TV’s growing problems, and I’ll be following them and sharing what I learn.
