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The percentage of U.S. households with a live pay-TV service continues to go in one direction: Down. The portion is now at 64%, according the Leichtman Research Group (LRG).

Pay-TV operators use cable, satellite or telco platforms or act as virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs). Eighty-seven percent of households used these platforms in 2008. The portion barely budged five years later (86% in 2013) but began trending down significantly in 2018 (78%) as streaming grew in popularity.

Households with Pay-TV

Sixty-six percent of households had a live TV service in 2021.

LRG’s “Pay-TV in the U.S. 2023” report found that 70% of adults above 45 years old and 56% of those 18 to 44 years-old have a pay-TV service.  In 2013, 88% of adults above 45 years-old and 83% of those 18 to 44 years old had a pay-TV service.

“The percent of U.S. TV households with a live pay-TV service waned over the past decade, with a more precipitous decline over the past five years,” Bruce Leichtman, LRG’s president and principal analyst, said in a press release. “The penetration of pay-TV remains lowest among younger adults and the categories that they tend to populate, including movers and renters.  Today, 56% of ages 18-44 have a pay-TV service, compared to 83% a decade ago.”

Other highlights from the twenty-first annual release of the report:

• 48% of those that moved in the past year do not currently have a pay-TV service. This is a higher level than in any previous year;
• 42% of renters and 33% of homeowners do not have a pay-TV service;
• 33% of non-subscribers last had a pay-TV service within the past three years, 37% last had a pay-TV service over three years ago, and 30% never had a pay-TV service; 
• Among those that never had a pay-TV service, 63% are ages 18-34, compared to 24% of former pay-TV subscribers;
• The mean age of traditional pay-TV subscribers is 49.3 – compared to 42.5 among non-subscribers, and 40.8 with vMVPD-only;
• Among all pay-TV subscribers, the mean reported spending per month is $112.70 – 5% higher than the mean monthly spending in 2018.

The assessment is based on a survey of 1,769 adults.

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Vertical Systems Group’s first Leaderboard assessing the suppliers used for U.S. carrier managed SD-WAN services consists of Cisco (featuring Meraki MX, SD-WAN), VMware (SD-WAN by Velocloud), Fortinet (FortiGate), Versa Networks (Secure SD-WAN) and HPE Aruba (EdgeConnect SD-WAN). The suppliers are listed in descending order by market share.

Each supplier has 5% or more of the total number of SD-WAN sites installed and billable as of June 30. A site is counted once per supplier regardless of the amount of equipment installed, according to VSG.

Carrier Managed SD-WAN

Below the Leaderboard category is a category that VSG calls the Market Player category.

Suppliers in this segment have less than 5% of the total U.S. carrier managed SD-WAN customer sites. For mid-2023, these companies include Adaptiv Networks, Arista, Barracuda, Cradlepoint, Ecessa, Extreme Networks, FatPipe, Forcepoint, GFI Software, Huawei, Juniper Networks, Lavelle Networks, Mushroom Networks, Netscaler, Nuage Networks from Nokia, Oracle, Palo Alto Networks, Riverbed, Teldat, WatchGuard and others.

The list – which does not include some Market Players – is in alphabetical order.

VSG offered highlights about the U.S. carrier managed SD-WAN sector:

• Carrier managed SD-WAN sites in the U.S. are projected to surpass one million by 2027. These sites are managed by a network operator, utilize an SDN architecture, enable dynamic optimization of site connectivity and provide centralized network control with visibility end-to-end.
• Technology suppliers providing SD-WAN equipment to service providers may also supply secure access service edge (SASE) and security service edge (SSE) technology. A SASE Service Framework (MEF 117) was finalized by MEF in October 2022. There is no industry standard for SSE.
• Some service providers, including Hughes and Aryaka, deploy SD-WAN with internally developed SD-WAN platforms.
• Security integration was cited as a top challenge in 2022 for managed SD-WAN service providers offering two or more different SD-WAN platforms. Some providers are integrating security across five or more SD-WAN solutions.
• Four LEADERBOARD companies — Cisco, VMware, Fortinet, and Versa – have attained MEF 3.0 SD-WAN technology certification.

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The global wearables market segment made a comeback in the second quarter of 2023 with shipments of 116.3 million devices and a year-over-year growth of 8.5% according to International Data Corp.’s (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Data Tracker.

It’s not all good news for vendors, however. The average selling price declined as competition increased and retailers sought to reduce excess inventory, IDC said. The category also had declined for the two previous quarters before this rebound.

Worldwide Wearable Shipments

Q2 was characterized by more competition from outside the top five companies, which created opportunities for smaller players like Withings and Whoop. Basic features, such as steps taken and distance run, helped the fitness category establish itself.

Consumers are now looking for more holistic features such as sleep monitoring, recovery metrics, readiness scores and stress level tracking, according to Jitesh Ubrani, IDC’s research manager for mobility and consumer device trackers. 

IDC predicts that 520 million wearables will be shipped this year, which is a 5.6% increase over 2022. The top three categories are earwear (320.7 million shipments in 2023 and 4.5% growth rate compared to 2022), smart watches (165.4 million; 11.3%) and wristbands (32.0 million, 8.8% decline). The “other” category is expected to have shipments of 1.8 million units this year and 6.8% growth.

IDC expects wearables to reach 625.4 million units shipped by the end of 2027, a compound annual growth rate of 4.7%.

In June, IDC had predicted a 2023 rebound to 504.1 million units, which was slightly lower than its current prediction of 520 million shipments.

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The United States dropped seven spots during the past year to finish nineteenth in global Digital Quality of Life rankings from Surfshark, a provider of cybsecurity technology. The drop in the U.S. rankings occurred, despite the country’s gains in broadband speeds and adoption.

Broadband speeds are one of five categories that Surfshark considered in making its rankings. The U.S. finished in the top six out of 121 counties studied in three out of the five categories.

The country finished second in e-government, fifth in e-infrastructure (which is the broadband adoption category) and sixth in Internet quality (which is the speed category). But it was forty-third in e-security and thirty-second in affordability.

The fifth annual ratings by Surfshark assessed 121 countries accounting for 92% of the global population.

Digital Quality of Life Rankings

Key results concerning the United States:

• The United States surpassed Canada (22nd) and Australia (30th) in digital quality of life.
• The United States’ internet quality is 50% higher than the global average and ranks sixth in the world.
• The United States’ fixed internet speed (247 Mbps) has improved by 19% compared to last year, while mobile speed (144 Mbps) has improved by 25%.
• Just like last year, the United States performed worst in the e-security pillar (43rd), which would need to improve by 46% to match the best-ranking country (Belgium).
• The United States took first place in North America.

The high point for the U.S., of course, was its second place finish in e-government. Even that has a negative element: The U.S was first last year but was passed by Singapore.

Surfshark says that Internet quality in the U.S. was 50% higher than the global average and that the fixed Internet average speed was 247 Mbps. That was not too far behind that of Singapore, which topped the category at 300 Mbps. The U.S. mobile Internet average was 144 Mbps, less than half of the UAE’s leading score of 310 Mbps.

“Compared to Canada, the United States’ mobile internet is 25% faster, while fixed broadband is 9% faster,” Surfshark said. “Since last year, mobile internet speed in the United States has improved by 25%, while fixed broadband speed has grown by 19%.”

Surfshark found that Americans have to work 51 minutes per month to afford fixed broadband and over an hour and a half to afford mobile Internet.

The top ten finishers overall were France, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Estonia, Austria, Switzerland and Singapore.

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AT&T has retained the top spot on Vertical Systems Group’s (VSG) mid-2023 U.S. Carrier Ethernet Leaderboard, which measures market leadership based on market share results. AT&T replaced Lumen in the top spot at the end of last year.

 Lumen, Spectrum Enterprise, Verizon, Comcast Business and Cox Business are the other providers at the top of the Leaderboard––in the same order since the year-end 2022 report. To be in this group, providers must have a 4% or more share of the U.S. retail Ethernet market.

The Leaderboard has two other tiers: Challenge and Market Player. Altice USA, Cogent (including Sprint assets), Frontier, GTT, Windstream and Zayo (in alphabetical order) are in the Challenge tier, which means they each have a market share between 1% to 4%.

Overall, according to VSG, Ethernet port growth was up, but could change in the near future.

“DIA connectivity for cloud computing and SD-WAN/SASE networks lifted U.S. Ethernet port growth in the first half of 2023,” VSG Principal and Co-founder Rick Malone, said. “However, despite the resiliency of the Ethernet market, several providers are preparing for port reductions in the future as customers opt for alternative service technologies.”

Here are other highlights from the report:

• Dedicated Internet/Cloud Access (DIA) accounted for the most new Ethernet service installations in the first half of the year. DIA was driven by ongoing enterprise migration to cloud services, managed SD-WAN, secure access service edge (SASE) and hybrid WANs.
• Ethernet access to VPN installations is declining as MPLS customers transition to SD-WANs.
• Demand for 100+ Gbps Ethernet connectivity is evolving as customers upgrade from lower-speed Ethernet services. Customers also are considering wavelength or dark fiber service alternatives.
• Ethernet service providers have seen supply chain challenges ease.
• AT&T, Lumen and Verizon have MEF 3.0 Carrier Ethernet (CE) certification. This certification means that a provider can support MEF 3.0 standard services, technologies and APIs.

The Market Player tier includes all providers in the sector that have port shares below 1%. Some of the companies in this sector include: ACD, Alaska Communications, Altafiber, BT Global Services, Centracom, Intelsat, Logix Fiber Networks, NTT, Silver Star Telecom, TDS Telecom, US Signal, WOW!Business and Ziply Fiber.