Sixty members of the National Content & Technology Cooperative (NCTC) are in the process of being onboarded to offer mobile service via the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) offering that NCTC announced several weeks ago. NCTC President and CEO Lou Borrelli told Telecompetitor the news about the 60 members in a recent interview.
“We expect to have the first wave of members offering service this summer or early in the fall,” said Borrelli.
AT&T is the exclusive mobile operator supporting the MVNO agreement. That means that NCTC members participating in the MVNO program will be competing against AT&T, as well as other mobile providers.
But that prospect isn’t a big concern for Borrelli.
“I think we’ll surprise some people,” he said.
People in the largely rural areas that NCTC members serve are “very loyal to local companies,” Borrelli noted.
NCTC did pre-launch research on the offering and will do post-launch research and tracking, he added.
The NCTC MVNO offering is also supported by software from Reach that providers can use for billing, service provisioning, customer self-service and agent interfaces.
NCTC members provide service to over 40 million broadband customers in all 50 states, Borrelli noted. Some members have customer bases that run into the millions, while others may have only a few hundred customers.
Beyond the NCTC MVNO
NCTC may be best known as the company that negotiates retransmission agreements with broadcasters on behalf of its rural broadband and video provider members. But that role has been changing as some providers forego traditional linear video for streaming video on demand options.
“Up until recently, video was the product, now it’s a product,” said Borrelli.
He added, though, that “linear video is still a significant part of our members’ business.”
This year will be a big one for retransmission consent, said Grant Spellmeyer, president and CEO of ACA Connects, who joined Borrelli in the interview with Telecompetitor.
ACA Connects represents smaller video providers on policy issues. Its membership overlaps to a large extent with NCTC’s membership.
The two organizations are partnering to put on the upcoming Independent Show in Minneapolis July 30 to August 2.
This year the organizers added the option of one-day passes, as well as passes for the entire event.
Updated to correct spelling on Lou Borrelli’s name
