My hypothesis is that the "digital broadcast" scramble to buy/merge everything is defensive move mostly by the traditional telcos & ISP's. They see the upcoming disruption from Wifi/mesh networks that will erode their primary source of revenue from cellular data.
Does the future need us? Last year 1/3 on new energy in the US was solar. The internet of things takes an extraordinary amount of power to run. Will energy producing machine merge with computing machines to a self sustaining system?