With Freely due to launch soon as a new free television service from Everyone TV in the United Kingdom, we take a closer look at the service and its prospects. At first sight it looks like a laudable initiative, but market success is far from certain.

Several reporters were invited to see the soon to be launched service, including journalists from popular newspapers and technology magazines.

The Sun newspaper reported that there is a major limitation that Freely will need to fix fast. The only online channels currently available on Freely are from its joint shareholders, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5. Any other channels are still delivered over the air, which rather undermines the proposition of Freely as an online television platform that does not need a traditional antenna connection.

Another issue is that although presented as an integrated platform, it will still require users to log in separately to each of the online services from its shareholder broadcasters to view programmes on demand. Given that they jointly own the platform, it seems that this is a fundamental issue that they have so far failed to fix.

The third challenge that Freely faces is that only two television manufacturers have announced support so far. They are Hisense and Vestel. Hisense is a Chinese manufacturer known for producing televisions at low price points. Vestel, based in Turkey, provides televisions under various brands like Bush, Toshiba, and JVC.

Major market leaders like Samsung and LG have yet to reveal any support for the venture. Without them, Freely could end up being seen as the budget option.

The first televisions on the market to support Freely will be Hisense 4K televisions from the 2024 range. Hisense has signed a five-year deal to support Freely. Its sets offer unbelievable value, with large screens on sale for a couple of hundred pounds.

The Freely interface is available on the Hisense television through a dedicated button on the remote control, alongside others that could include YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+, NOW, Apple TV+, and the VIDAA channels from the manufacturer.

Reporters praised the user interface for being simple and straightforward. TechRadar described it as “a very streamlined version of a streaming platform”.

There are just three main views: the home screen, a traditional programme grid guide, and a browse view, with rows of editorially curated recommendations.

Unlike Freeview and Freesat, there is no ‘backwards’ programme guide, with links to programmes broadcast in the previous week. There is no search capability either, although both of these features are promised in the future.

There is an option to freeze a channel for up to fifteen minutes, but there is no ability to rewind or fast forward, or to record programmes. There is a programme restart feature. The idea is that users will need to rely on the individual apps of the different broadcasters for this.

It seems that Freely will launch as a minimum viable proposition, although whether it will provide a viable viewing experience remains to be seen.

Essentially, Freely is an app, so it could be made available on other brands of television, but no plans have been announced for this. There is currently little prospect of it being available on any of the millions of televisions that have so far been sold in the United Kingom.

As it stands, the Freely app takes over responsibility for the presentation of television channels. There is no native channel selection interface available through the television and the only channels available on Freely will be those approved by Everyone TV, which is owned by the public service broadcasters.

Freely is presented as the natural successor to the Freeview terrestrial and Freesat satellite platforms. YouView was a previous attempt at this, launched in conjunction with BT and TalkTalk, but it failed to make its expected impact on the market.

Freely faces intense competition from established online television services from Sky, Virgin Media O2, and EE. They already offer a complete range of channels delivered online, albeit as part of a paid service.

Yet Freely is not really free, because users will still need to have a broadband subscription to use it. Without that, it will operate like a traditional television.

The question for Freely is whether being backed by British broadcasters it is too big to fail, or too small to succeed.

www.freely.co.uk
www.everyonetv.co.uk

Comcast lost 487,000 video customers in the United States in the first quarter of 2024. That follows net losses of over two million in the previous year. Charter Communications lost 405,000 in the quarter and over a million in the previous year. Between them they still have 26.73 million video customers in the United States, but that is 6.87 million fewer than they had just two years previously.

Comcast ended the first quarter of 2024 with 13.62 million video customers in the United States. Just over three years ago it had over 20 million.

Comcast also dropped 65,000 internet subscribers over the quarter, having lost 66,000 the previous year. However, wireless lines rose by 289,000 to 6.88 million.

The number of paid Peacock subscribers increased by 55% over the year to 34 million, with net additions of 3 million in the first quarter. Peacock revenue rose correspondingly by 54% to $1.1 billion for the quarter. That needs to be seen in the context of $6.88 billion in revenue from the traditional video platform and total connectivity and platform revenue of $20.28 billion for the quarter.

The Sky operation in the United Kingdom is included in that figure as footnote. It is no longer possible to determine from reported results how many customers Sky has in the United Kingdom or Europe. There was virtually no mention of Sky when speaking with analysts, other than to say that was where the name NOW had come from for its new pre-paid offer in the United States.

Charter Communications, the number two cable company in the United States, ended the quarter with 13.11 million residential video customers. That was a quarterly loss of 393,000 customers in a quarter, following a loss of just under a million in the previous year.

Operating under the Spectrum brand, Charter now has only marginally fewer video customers than Comcast.

It is now a question of which of the companies is losing more video customers that will determine the one that ends up with the most out of the two of them. Comcast is losing customers at a faster rate, so Charter could end up being the leading video service provider in the United States.

www.comcast.com
corporate.charter.com

The Federal Communications Commission has voted to restore net neutrality in the United States. It has reclassified broadband internet as a Title II telecommunications service, meaning that it is treated as an essential service, enabling the Commission to regulate it more effectively. The long-standing debate over network neutrality is unlikely to end there.

The decision restores the authority of the Commission to provide effective oversight over internet service providers, reasserting its jurisdiction and re-establishing what it calls a national open internet standard.

Internet service providers will again be prohibited from blocking, throttling, or engaging in paid prioritization of lawful content.

The Commission will also be able to revoke the authorisations of foreign-owned entities to operate broadband networks in the United States if they pose a threat to national security. It has previously used this to stop four Chinese state-owned carriers providing voice services in the United States.

The debate over net neutrality in the United States goes back over twenty years. In 2004 the chair of the FCC first challenged the broadband network industry to preserve internet freedoms. The telecommunications industry successfully challenged the jurisdiction of the FCC on the matter in the courts.

In 2015, under the Obama administration, the FCC adopted rules enshrining open internet principles under Title II. This was effectively overturned under the administration of President Trump. The state of California introduced its own net neutrality law in 2020. Then in 2023, FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel proposed to reclassify broadband under Title II and reintroduce uniform, nationwide open internet rules.

In a 3-to-2 vote along party lines, the Commission has restored the rules that effectively class the internet as a regulated utility.

It seems unlikely to end there, with the prospect of further challenge in the courts and the possibility of another change of government administration.

www.fcc.gov