Cable is everything but boring. While Web2.0 and Telco2.0 gets all the attention right now, a quiet revolution is taking place in the cable industry. And I’m talking big bucks product, service, and technology innovations.
I was sick over the weekend and well into Monday. Bound to the bed and resting from my day job, I finally have time to review a couple of conferences I went to. Like the National Cable Show in Washington, D.C. beginning of this month. “Now why would a telecom guy go to a cable show?” people tweeted back to me. “Are you helping to dust-off cable networks with a bunch of old crumpled Murdochs of this world?”
I guess these comments came from people emerged in the IT and Internet or telecom world. The Cable Show was actually a hit (In think) in terms of attendance, at least compared to the CTIA. While they expected about 10,000, the Washington D.C. location drew more than 12,000. I guess the Cable Show was buzzing and the CTIA with albeit great access to senior executives at their stands was kind of slow just because of the general amount of innovation and growth that takes place in the cable industry right now – despite all economic downturn (maybe all the people who got fired now have a lot of time to watch TV…).
Well, here a few other obvious things about the cable industry in the US in general, and at the bottom a few not-so obvious things why I think that the Cable industry is interesting.

Broadband Market Share USA 2008 (Source: Parks Associate Research)

Broadband access technologies in the US, 2008 (Source: Estimated by Screen Digest)

Cable video and high-speed Internet homes passed (Source: SNL Kagan/NCTA)
Cable industry invested 16.9% ($14.6 Bn) of their revenues in CAPEX for infrastructure development, second highest in history HS Cable. Internet homes passed increased by 32.2% from 2003 to 2008. The number of homes passed by high speed Internet services is approximately the same as the number of homes passed for video. The potential of pushing voice or digital video subscribers is largely untapped. Furthermore, the number of digital video subscribers are approximately the same as the number of high-speed Internet subscribers. Which of course is the ideal breeding ground for the so called “entitlement-authentication” discussion.
The idea is that cable video subscribers (the “entitled”) can get automatically access (= are “authenticated”) to the same content over other devices or channels, like on a PC or on a mobile / nomadic device. Obviously programmers are very interested in a secure access of their content which enables them the get a more coherent user experience for both subscriptions and Internet advertisement, versus Internet advertisement alone.
I think that the match between high-speed Internet subscribers and digital video subscribers as well as their similar growth rates are ideal targets for such an approach. I also think that none of the cable companies wants to pass the opportunity to be present on mainly IP-connected devices in the home and living room. I guess no one wants to become the next newspaper industry in this game, especially not with a rocketing 12.5% market share of Internet advertisement in 2008 (up from 10.9% in 2007) and a slightly declining television market share of 36.5% (down from 36.9% in 2007). I am sure that CableLabs will take a swing at that in the very near future.
Beyond the rather obvious stated above, there are lots of technology innovations as well as new products and services coming up. Here is a loose list of things that I learned about at The Cable Show, and that I might be compelled to blog about in the future (ping me!):
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