Altice's throttling back of upload speeds on its hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network puts it in line with other ISPs and the industry, a spokesperson emailed us on Monday. Altice said new customers and customers who change, upgrade or downgrade their service, effective July 12, will get upload speeds 15 to 30 Mbps slower than existing customers. For example, incumbent subscribers to the Optimum Online service have upload speeds of 35 Mbps, while new subscribers will have 5 Mbps. Upload speeds for its 1 Gig service will be 50 Mbps and remain unchanged for incumbent customers but drop to 35 Mbps for new customers. Download speeds will be unchanged. Altice said it offers symmetrical speeds on its fiber network. It said its network "continues to perform very well despite the significant data usage increases during the pandemic, and the speed tiers we offer, ranging from 100Mbps to 1 Gig on HFC and fiber, provide customers with flexibility to choose the best package for their needs." It said it's "hyper focused" on fiber expansion.

NBCUniversal’s Peacock over-the-top streaming service will launch a Tokyo Olympics destination July 15, said the company Wednesday. Olympic events will be available to stream free on the advertising-supported Peacock tier. USA men’s basketball coverage will be exclusive to Peacock Premium subscribers, it said. We learned that 4K HDR, though on Peacock's road map, won't be part of its Tokyo Olympics coverage. Peacock didn't comment. NBCUniversal will beam the Tokyo Olympics in 4K HDR to its U.S. “distribution partners,” which will “individually choose how to make the content available to their customers,” said the network this month (see 2106110043). Peacock will be available to more viewers when it launches Thursday on Amazon Fire TV and Fire tablets, said NBCUniversal and Amazon Wednesday.

U.S. video distributors and Vizio announced the Go Addressable initiative Tuesday to promote integration of addressable TV functionality into advertising and marketing. Participants plan industry education and recommendations, while “remaining committed to protecting personal information,” said the group, whose members are Altice USA, Charter, Comcast, Cox Media, AT&T's DirecTV, Dish Media and Frontier. Its goal is to increase access to addressable inventory and reduce fragmentation in addressable TV ads by identifying best practices. “Addressable capabilities open up tremendous new opportunities for advertisers by marrying the reach of TV with the precision of audience targeting,” said Mike Dean, senior vice president-advanced advertising, ViacomCBS, which is delivering national addressable campaigns with distribution partners, “but the growth of addressable requires standards, scale and industry participation.” Interest in addressable TV ads “is strong” and Go Addressable can help resolve existing challenges and “pave the way forward for the industry, which is currently at an inflection point,” said Video Advertising Bureau CEO Sean Cunningham.

Advertising-supported VOD growth could stall due to content fragmentation, and the move toward original programming will worsen this, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon blogged Sunday. A chief problem is that not all services are available on all devices, the analyst said, citing NBCUniversal's Peacock not being available to Amazon Fire TV users.

“The jury’s still out” on whether streaming is a good business model compared with linear TV, MoffettNathanson's Michael Nathanson told the virtual StreamTV Show. The analyst cited steep investments that streaming market leader Netflix has had to make in content to maintain its subscriber base, and now competing media companies going direct to consumer “have to spend to catch up.” The “negative cycle” in content spending depresses return on invested capital, he said (see here for the 1 p.m. panel Tuesday). Streaming is a good business model “if you can scale it,” but “that requires a ton of spending in advance and the hope that you’re not too late to the game,” he said, and “the hope that you can raise pricing” and learn to “live with churn.” Netflix didn't comment Wednesday. It’s hard to raise pricing in the streaming market, said Nathanson, noting Netflix has implemented price increases over time. “Price increases are a real challenge.”

Charter Communications should end or modify some comparative speed claims for its Spectrum internet service in its "Welcome Back Party" and "Great Offers" TV ads, BBB 's National Advertising Division said Tuesday. AT&T challenged the ads, it said. NAD said Charter indicated it will comply with the decision and clarify the basis for its "fastest download speeds" claim in any future advertising. NAD said that alternatively, Spectrum, as Charter's brand is called, can modify the claim to clarify that it's based on having the fastest download speeds at the introductory and intermediate levels and the equivalent download speed at the top tier. Charter didn't comment.

AMC Network channels including AMC, BBC America and Sundance went dark on TDS Telecom's lineup Friday as the two were unable to reach carriage renewal terms, TDS emailed. AMC didn't comment.

A Maine video franchise bill hit a roadblock Thursday due to gubernatorial intervention, sponsor Rep. Chris Kessler (D) told us. Industry opposes LD-920, which would call IPTV operators utilities and raise minimum franchise fees, but the attorney general office says it’s defensible (see 2105130022). “The bill was supposed to hit the floor” Thursday, “but has been tabled while the Governor's administration finds a ‘compromise,’” Kessler emailed. It will likely be brought back to the floor this week, he said. Gov. Janet Mills (D) didn’t comment Friday. One bill opponent said it’s not involved in any negotiations. “We have lots of concerns with regard to LD 920 but frankly once it came out of committee as an Ought To Pass we became less interested because our only realistic option ... is just to not offer IPTV in Maine,” emailed Telecommunications Association of Maine Executive Director Ben Sanborn.

ACA Connects said it would cost the federal government $106 billion-$179 billion to fully fund buildout of “future-proof” broadband networks in all unserved areas lacking 100 Mbps symmetrical. That’s above President Joe Biden’s $100 billion request in his initial infrastructure spending proposal (see 2103310064), a pair of Democratic broadband funding bills and a scuttled $65 billion proposal from Senate Republicans. ACA said $61 billion-$118 billion would allow full buildouts in areas lacking 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload. Also Thursday, AT&T CEO John Stankey told the Economic Club of Washington (see 2106100046) he doesn’t “think it’s optimally the best thing for the American taxpayer to think about putting fiber to every farmhouse in the United States when in fact, we can do it a variety of different ways with a variety of different technologies.”

WarnerMedia is the first national programmer to pilot Comscore’s TV program that measures linear advertising inventory across MVPDs and connected TVs, said Comscore Wednesday. AT&T's WarnerMedia is combining with Discovery.