I’m not alone in my concern about what a combination of the nation’s biggest wireless carrier and the biggest video provider will bring. The U.S. Senate and appointed federal agencies have stepped into the fray to make sure that Comcast-plus-Verizon doesn’t equal an overpriced line of combined offerings.

There are signs that it won’t happen—and not because the feds say it shouldn’t. Comcast has shown it’s not afraid to risk irking its new partner in releasing free wireless texting. While Verizon Wireless, in another part of the store, is still charging top dollar for texts; Comcast thinks it’s something that should be free and a part of its mostly wireline voice service. With a full line of services available elsewhere in the store, it just seems to make sense that something like texting would be a ‘come on’ giveaway for Comcast.

Comcast is merely acknowledging the reality that consumer expectations of text messaging are changing. In a corporate webcast, it talked about the spread of messaging to devices that don’t support SMS. And indeed, a wide range of apps for smartphones and tablets, including Apple’s iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and Kik, have already been creating workarounds for SMS fees. Of course, all is fair in collaboration and war. There have been rumblings that Verizon Wireless—not to be confused with Verizon FiOS—is considering offering video services.

In short, despite the regulatory eyebrows that the Comcast-Verizon Wireless joint venture would be expected to raise, the realities of competition and consumer expectations would provide at least some level of powerful checks. While there continues to be fundamental differences between the economics of wireline and wireless businesses, the multimedia capabilities of IP have forever bridged the safe distance companies such as Verizon and Comcast.

Today there’s a music video channel for any taste. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of local, regional and national sports nets have joined pioneer ESPN - presenting everything from college basketball to rodeo. And “Superstation” WTBS has been joined on the channel lineup by a seemingly unending bevy of other specialty channels all vying for the consumer eye and, importantly, the service provider dollar.

At this time of the year, perhaps more than any other, the cost of all this content bubbles to the surface. Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs) whine in their beer mugs about ever-spiraling content costs while announcing their latest rounds of “pass-through” rate increases to cover those costs so they won’t impact bottom line revenue figures that continue to climb.

One would think that push coming to shove — ever-increasing prices for Pay TV during a never-ending economic slump — would foment a video death spiral for an industry threatened by over-the-top “free TV.” However, looking at cable’s competitors paints a different picture. Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse, and old competitors like DirecTV keep adding subscribers and even the MSOs appear to be staunching the flow. From the look of 2011 subscriber numbers now being announced, no one’s leaving the pay TV universe; they’re just moving to a different neighborhood. In fact, the total number of video subscribers among the top level of MVPDs has actually increased over the last 24 months.

Still, when the biggest pay TV provider, Comcast, predicts that retransmission fees will be in high single digit percentages in 2012 and the second biggest provider, DirecTV, concurs, it looks like video cost is wounding, if not killing, the pay TV business.

It’s not as if this is something new. Every year someone suggests that pay TV is dead, that subscribers won’t open their checkbooks every month when the MVPDs come asking for more; and every year more subscribers sidle up to lay down their dollars and cents.

For their part, the MVPDs take any potential subscriber revolt seriously and have devised multiple ways to try to contain the costs. The latest trend is to try to lock in long-term retransmission deals with major programmers and stress the value of double and triple play bundles as subscriber bargains that, not coincidentally, mask ongoing video costs among charges for broadband data, voice and, not to be forgotten, taxes and transmission fees. Only an accountant can truly love a cable bill. Of course, the best way to sugarcoat a rate increase is to deliver a package of video content that people want to watch.

So far, at least, while they might be fingers in a dam about to burst, it looks as if the MVPDs are staunching the subscriber floodgates. Comcast still lost 18,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter but that was only a sliver of the 125,000 subs that fled in the third and execs are confident things will be even better in 2012. AT&T U-verse pulled in 208,000 new video subs while Verizon gained 200,000 and even satellite provider DirecTV tacked on 125,000. A good package of programming and, importantly for cable, good customer service keeps subscribers queuing up to the pay window.

Still, maybe it’s just the time of the year, but it seems like the Buggles might want to start tuning up for a new take on an old tune: “Video Killed the Pay TV model” … because every year costs get a little higher, subscribers get a little angrier and other, outside-the-box options for getting content get a little better.

The application itself shakes but won’t stir the staid multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) space which continues to cling to RF video while adding piecemeal IP applications. For those who can get it, though, U-verse for iPad (UviP) represents a quick way to use tablets—and I personally would love to see it include Android—as second screen television viewing devices.

The new app joins the wireless set-top box AT&T introduced late last year as examples of how U-verse uses managed IP to deliver a more full-featured Internet-based experience.

UviP concedes an important point: tablets, while sometimes used as primary viewing devices, are better suited as complementary second screens. U-verse for iPad lets viewers use tablets to pull up, display, and interact with TV-related content and get programming recommendations. AT&T says the app will also make an iPad an advanced full-featured remote control that’s big enough so it won’t fall into the sofa cushions. Importantly, in this era of social media, the iPad will be a conduit between remotely situated viewers to share with friends and family—without interfering with the primary viewing experience.

Of course the iPad also expands into a pseudo-TV first screen that can display content from approved programmers for approved viewers through a Wi-Fi connection.

Best of all, for those lacking technological proficiency, the service provider promises that the app is easy to set up through a series of “intuitive steps.” It’s likely a fair promise because AT&T, if nothing else, is committed to IP as a way to cut back tech visits to the residence.

AT&T is the only major MVPD using a managed IP stream for all its services. Others, including the top MSOs and Verizon, use IP for voice and data connections and some interactivity but fall back on RF for video. This follows a time-honored, albeit 20th Century method, that likely will live long beyond its usefulness just because an installed base of equipment makes it so.

Without competition from anyone other than AT&T—which has sadly capped its U-verse buildout to areas where work has already begun—MVPDs will not rush to IP, as I pointed out in our NPD Connected Intelligence impact report, “The Benefits of Managed IP Video Delivery.”

If consumers don’t have a broadband connection (and really they only would if they had cable or a telco service) Dish will feed down tons of programming from satellite to that deep dish hard drive so there is the semblance of a rich programming trough. But if Dish customers want a broadband connection as well, the satellite provider would deliver it through a cooperative agreement with ViaSat. The two would provide 12 Mbps of data throughput via satellite for under $80 a month, about $60 of which would be for the broadband and the rest for a tier of Dish video.

Dish is confident that 8 million to 10 million heartland households will buy in because broadband access is worth it. It is again an indication that IP is the pipe of the future and that every service provider–wireline, satellite, and even wireless–has to climb aboard the IP bandwagon.

Taken on face value, the Xbox announcement shows Verizon’s willingness to play nice with consumer devices tied to its broadband network. Verizon has nothing to lose, incidentally, since the Xbox users must also be FiOS TV subscribers. Microsoft gains a little, since those users also must subscribe to Xbox Live. And, of course, it’s only 26 channels, not anywhere near the entire FiOS lineup.

More importantly, the deal shows that Verizon wants to study managed IP video delivery—sometimes known as IPTV—without tearing apart its infrastructure. Unlike AT&T, Verizon launched its cable-competing FiOS service as a cable clone, using the same conventional QAM/MPEG networks as cable for TV channels. Like cable—but perhaps more so—Verizon also embedded some IP content into its streams and used hybrid boxes to deliver both.

But at no time did Verizon—again, unlike AT&T—ever commit to managed IP video delivery for its full TV channel package. Now, with Xbox, it’s at least giving the idea a try—without disrupting its existing video delivery/reception infrastructure. By using only 26 video channels, Verizon can control the quality of the content while determining how to best deliver quality IP video for the rest of its channels when the time is right.

The qualifier in all of this is managed IP video delivery. Anyone can—and many do—deliver a plethora of IP video content over any imaginable broadband stream. The quality of the video is generally questionable and the best-effort transport stream is always a risk. Still, it’s content that consumers want to watch and, in some cases, pay to see.

Despite an army of hand-wringers it’s unlikely that this content actually encourages consumers to cut the cord and it’s hardly a threat to Verizon or cable operators. Take away the price advantage—and it’s pretty certain that content owners will do that in the near future—and over-the-top IP video is all about the stuff that doesn’t fit on a multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) channel lineup.

It’s unlikely that Verizon or any of its cable counterparts will go out of the way to recapture these wandering eyes. More likely, delivering a package of channels using managed IP video delivery gives Verizon the opportunity to tweak the technology, determine the cost savings of a more simplified IP video network delivery system and, most importantly, show consumers that it’s not hiding behind any video walled garden.

Like its cable counterparts, Dish has looked into the maw of continuing video subscriber defections and realized that something needs to be done. Unlike cable service providers, Dish is willing to use acquired assets to construct a mobile broadband wireless business that follows the same general satellite-cellular technology curve as LightSquared — without LightSquared’s ongoing battles with the GPS industry and the FCC over interference issues. Dish chairman Charlie Ergen says his spectrum is clean and interference isn’t an issue.

If that’s the case, GPS interference is the only thing that won’t be an issue because the rest of the idea — launching a new wireless offering in a cutthroat market dominated by Verizon Wireless and AT&T — has caused even the most bloodthirsty cable service providers to quake like the Cowardly Lion facing Toto. As shown by Cox’s retreat from the market this week, it’s not just a tough business to enter; it’s a forbidden place surrounded by yellow tape.

And yet, for Dish, launching a wireless network is a reasonable avenue to take to preserve a longstanding satellite video business. “Strategically,” Ergen says, “we have to be in something other than a standalone video business as a company.”

Strategically, that’s right. Dish hasn’t been shy about expanding its horizons beyond standalone video delivery already. The satellite provider has cozied up to cable operator Charter Communications on a broadband data trial that has also benefited Charter’s broadband-first profile. Dish has also acquired Blockbuster Video to combat cable behemoths like Comcast and Time Warner and their ties to expansive programming libraries.

Strategically, going into wireless is smart because it adds a service that, right now, only the telcos can offer. If the spectrum is clean, technologically it’s feasible. On any scale, the suggestion deserves applause just for chutzpah and for admitting that video is no longer enough to drive a service provider’s business.

More likely, it’s the opening salvo of what will become a partnership for Dish with a mobile provider or even a cable operator like Charter. Strategically, that would make even more sense because, when it comes to wireless, cable operators are in the same situation as satellite providers: providing standalone video service isn’t enough anymore.

Cast aside the elephant in the room–of course Cisco is pushing a service provider IP set-top, that’s where the money is–and the idea of a made-for-cable/telco set-top box makes a lot of sense. While all manner of connected devices, from cell phones to tablets, from PCs to gaming devices, are lining retail shelves looking to be bought and installed into home entertainment centers, that’s a space best reserved for a device that has been specifically built and honed to deliver IPTV to a subscriber television set.

The problem is that the set-top box is so 20th Century; a visceral reminder of the days when consumers were forced to use whatever their service providers gave them, no matter how bad or limited. The set-top recalls the bad old days before there were DVRs and streaming videos and broadband data and high-speed wireless . For many, set-top boxes are profanities.

That’s an image that’s tough to overcome and, at least publicly, some MSOs and telcos are conceding the set-top space to Xboxes and iPhones and Androids and PCs, none of which, it should be noted, were built to serve as gateways for services specifically developed and delivered by service providers over service provider networks. These new retail-friendly devices are fun and do a lot of neat things but they’re not set-top boxes because, in the end, they’re just not utilitarian enough to be set-top boxes.

Utilitarian is what set-tops are all about. They’ve been honed for generations to deliver what service providers have found their subscribers want. Things as simple as front panel controls are there because subscribers lose their remotes and need a way to drive the boxes. Multiple inputs and outputs cover the backs of set-tops because service providers know that not every subscriber has the latest electronic equipment to attach to the box.

Service providers must recognize that the set-top boxes they give their consumers are not, to borrow another 20th Century phrase, their father’s Oldsmobiles. While set-tops don’t necessarily need to be glamorous, they must be functional and reliable and easy to use to access all the fun things coming across the service provider pipe. If they do that, they’ll be grudgingly welcomed into the home entertainment center. If not, they’ll surely follow the ultimate path of the Oldsmobile, a discontinued line of cars with an image problem too difficult to overcome.

That’s a job for Wi-Fi, an electronic ingredient that’s like the soy supplement to a smoothie. 3G—or 4G if you get it— is the fruit-and-nutrition smoothie foundation; soy bulks it up.

The cable industry may better understand this recipe than many, including myself, originally believed. For the most part cable operators have eschewed the notion of building their own 3G networks in favor of MVNO relationships, or more likely no relationships at all. Some operators have toyed with the idea of Clearwire as a WiMAX/4G broadband pipe, but that relationship is fragile to the point of breaking.

But cable loves Wi-Fi. Every operator has embraced the ubiquity of a system that’s installed in smartphones and tablets and gaming consoles and modems and cars . . . and anything else a consumer can consider. Now the trick is to roll it out wherever consumers would like it to be –or in the case of those pesky applications that demand it–to use Wi-Fi instead of GSM or CDMA or even WiMAX.

It’s happening. Cable operators have more secrets than the former Soviet Union and are less willing to discuss their business than a losing NFL coach, thus, I was surprised—and I shouldn’t have been—recently when my bored fingers did some walking and I was told by my smartphone that I had access to the Comcast Xfinity network in a place that literally sat on the fringes of the middle of nowhere.

It was perhaps a bellwether that the convergence of cable Wi-Fi and mobile are closer than anyone has been led to believe. No longer did I need to find a Starbucks or a Barnes & Noble for a Wi-Fi connection—good thing, there wasn’t one of those within 50 miles; it was there in the air along the Delaware Bay in Town Bank, N.J.

Perhaps this was a freak of nature—or a top-secret cable experiment onto which I’d tripped. Certainly I can’t walk out my front door and get Wi-Fi (unless it’s leaking from an unsecured neighbor’s connection). And for the most part I wouldn’t want to depend on a Wi-Fi connection like that for voice service. But it was there and available and I could finally download an application that I later uninstalled.

Without a doubt it’s still better to be a mobile service provider with Wi-Fi, than it is to be a cable provider with Wi-Fi and no mobile. Still, for an industry that collectively cringes and stutters at the mention of wireless, cable may have stumbled onto something here.

Indeed: why not Wi-Fi for mobile phones?

Right now there are three pieces up in the air that, if they align correctly, could form cable’s wireless future. For the purposes of this conjecture it’s important to first remove any doubts that cable needs mobile wireless or that Clearwire provides any clear-cut answers; it does and it doesn’t. Once that’s accepted, look at the pieces that are floating in the air just waiting to be joined.

Google acquired Motorola. For sure, Google wanted Moto’s wireless patents and will primarily pursue its mobile wireless business plan. Unless things have changed, however, it’s unlikely the acquisition bid could have been made without at least the tacit blessing of a cable industry that counts Motorola as a primary equipment supplier.

If Google becomes a primary cable vendor, it seems reasonable that the search engine giant will abandon its head-against-the-wall effort to crack cable’s walled garden. Instead it will likely pursue a partnership route using Motorola’s equipment and Google’s Android OS. One must assume that cable wants to get into the wireless business as more than just a content provider for Apple devices. That’s where Motoroogle comes in as an existing vendor with the ability to deliver the same, if not better, Android-fueled wireless devices without competing with cable operators — which at least leads to a supplement of Android tablets for iPads in cable consumer homes.

The final piece of this perfect storm is still forming in the clouds. Cable is unlikely to develop its own wireless offering in time to remain competitive with both wireline telcos and whatever Dish Network is hiding up its sleeve. Cable has been steaming ahead with broadband but has stopped pretty much short at Wi-Fi when it comes to wireless. Major MSOs own AWS spectrum but they don’t have the infrastructure to deploy their own mobile wireless service and certainly, while still printing money, don’t have enough bread to build that infrastructure in depressing economic times.

The most logical way for cable to move quickly into mobile wireless would be via a deal with Clearwire and Sprint. Here, though, is where you need historical perspective. Cable has never played well with others. Just ask those wide-eyed optimists who believed the industry’s Pivot joint venture with Sprint was the industry’s wireless play. Note also that while Sprint is rumored to be eyeing a Clearwire buyout, its cable partners have been relatively quiet on the matter.

Which brings forth the piece still forming high in the stratosphere: LightSquared. The venture has what cable needs: available spectrum on which to offer services. It also has pledged itself to a wholesale model so unlike Clearwire and Sprint, it would not compete with its cable customers; in fact, cable’s success would be LightSquared’s success.

LightSquared has been in discussions with device makers … like Motorola. Google, with an Android operating system, would be a logical bridge between cable and LightSquared and, importantly for Google, a way to drive a wedge between cable and Apple.

Of course this is all conjecture … like watching a hurricane form in the Atlantic basin and trying to determine whether it will level New York City or fizzle in the middle of the ocean. The elements are all in place to at least start tracking this storm of service providers with a need for infrastructure, an infrastructure provider with a need for a service provider customer and a new age company with an old age need to conquer.

If nothing else, it should be on the radar.

The deal also has massive long-term implications for how the cable industry does business. Moto Mobility and Cisco (Scientific-Atlanta) are founding members of the oft-vilified cable set-top duopoly and both as vendors and members of the cable community each company has been nudging the entire industry into the IP Age. When Google bought Motorola, it bought what used to be General Instrument (and before that Jerrold Electronics), a company and a management team (Dan Moloney, John Burke, Rob McLaughlin and Geoff Roman, among them) that cut their teeth on cable.

Motorola Mobility, despite the misleading name, is not only a leading provider of set-top boxes and cable modems, but also delivery infrastructure (sometimes forgotten even at the company itself), which is the dull stuff attached to the wires (although not the wires themselves) that transport all that content to the “connected home.”

With one acquisition Google has purchased not only entry into the home via the set-top or cable modem, but also the equipment to get there. With one acquisition Google has acquired customers like Comcast and Time Warner Cable (which itself made news by acquiring Insight Communications) that use Motorola equipment to send their voice, video, and data offerings to millions of consumers. With the cooperation of these customers—and knowing cable’s nearly incestuous relationships between vendors and service providers, it is impossible to believe that there will not be cooperation or the deal would have never happened—Google moves into the home with a vengeance that should make Apple tremble.

Of course the transition will be slow. Cable has a ton of existing equipment in consumer homes—some of it upgradable via software, others not so easily changed. And Google and/or Android are each unlikely to stomp into cable living rooms the way they have rushed into mobile devices. On the other hand, cable has shown through any number of initiatives, including cable-connected tablets (including Android devices), TV Everywhere, cloud-based storage and broadband-centric marketing plays that it is amenable to the idea of the Internet cloud as a content source as long as that source is as secure as today’s typical cable system.

A Google conference call explaining the basics of the deal made the cable element seem almost peripheral, briefly citing a “secular transition” that’s going on as telecommunications providers move to broadband IP and touching on the “great convergence happening between the mobile world and the content that enters the home by the set-top box.”

By acquiring Motorola Mobility Google has done more than purchase a major mobile phone maker to cement Android’s position as the primary open source smartphone platform, it’s purchased all the pieces it needs to deliver voice, video and data—and, dare it be said, mobile wireless—into the cable home. Not immediately, of course, but certainly in a future that may be closer than the participants have so far let on.