Dear Friend of Servato,

ISE EXPO in Denver proved to be another great show this year for the Servato team. The weather was kind to us, and all of our partners were present to support our team. The highly anticipated SPS-R™ was officially announced, Servato CEO Chris Mangum spoke about data utilization for technicians, and there were several great Tech Talks that punctuated our time spent. In this edition we'll cover August highlights as well as the latest news happening in our industries right here from HQ in New Orleans. You can also read more about what others have said about us recently here, here, and here.

CAF-II Highlights

We mentioned in our June newsletter that landline carriers providing FTTH were well-positioned to score well in the FCC's bidding process. Of the 220 providers that were eligible to counter-bid for rural areas,103 will have the option to receive $1.48 billion over the next 10 years. This interactive map shows how the lower latency, gigabit tiers that we described in that June newsletter were particularly successful around Virginia, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. The spread of these winners covers 45states, 713,176 locations, and 99.7% of said locations will have at least 25 Mbps down. Congratulations to all of these winners that are making rural broadband a possibility for their communities! The full list can be found here, and the full filing can be found here.

SPS-R Attracts Attention

Two weeks ago the Servato team announced the first ever rectifier with battery management built into it. Low-power GE rectifier modules create a tested and true power supply system that is now the most intelligent in the market. Light Reading is saying the SPS-R, "is the most economical way for fixed and wireless carriers to buy the rectifier they need with remote battery management as added value". The synchronization of Servato's ActiView® big data platform will prove to be another powerful tool that allows customers already outfitted with Smart Power Systems to easily visualize all of this detailed rectifier and battery backup data in one place.

What's Streaming? 

Netflix continues to dominate headlines in the streaming space after dropping almost 7% on news that they were advertising their own content to subscribers. They were reeling afterwards claiming they were testing for consumer preferences and how to best recommend new content. It's all a part of a bigger picture. They are on pace to expense close to $10 billion this year which largely comes from their original content strategy. Disney recently announced their own streaming service to complement their 21st Century Fox acquisition for $71 billion. This grants them access to Hulu, and a variety of other streaming assets, to build the infrastructure to support "Disney Play". I put this in quotation marks because rumor has it that is going to be the name of the service to be able to binge Star Wars, Marvel Universe, and every animated classic that came out of the 90s. It sounds plain, but it also has a little more meaning than the Walmart streaming platform, Vudu Movies On Us, that flopped two years ago. Wally World is back again this year, and it seems that for them to be successful they need to do two things. A.) Become a niche content provider that serves the same customers that brave the crowds on Saturdays. I suspect more shows like Friday Night Lights, Andy Griffith Show, Nashville, or The Walking Dead or maybe that's what I am hoping for... B.) Don't name it Vudu again.

ISE EXPO 2018 Recap

At ISE EXPO in Denver two weeks ago, Servato's very own Chris Mangum spoke with a room of people on how data empowers carriers to become more actionable, particularly technicians. Later that day Tech Talk panelist, Ken Paker of TDS, spoke about a similar topic that highlighted how internal processes and teams can be made more efficient. More intelligent decisions for network reliability are becoming ubiquitous as data accumulation has made the most niche problems now more efficient. Inefficiencies mention by Mangum in the backup space included:

• Testing batteries has become cost prohibitive
• Power-related problems often drive wasted site visits
• Batteries fail prematurely in the field
• Battery problems may not really be battery problems
• Triage of sites during an outage

And the solutions he talked about thereafter can be found on our blog.

Sincerely,

--

Brandon Davenport

Business Development Manager

Servato