U.S. Cable: New Strategies for a Competitive World

The U.S. cable companies have been facing strong competition from two satellite TV companies. This competition has held the number of cable TV subscribers flat at around 65 million for the last several years.

In spite of this, the cable companies have continued to grow largely by increasing customer spending with new services such as digital TV, video on demand, cable broadband data, and cable telephony.

Now the cable companies are facing a powerful new set of competitors. The major U.S. Telcos such as AT&T and Verizon introduced IPTV services that are bringing new technologies and services to the market.

The cable competition has significant technical advantages. The satellite TV companies provide more broadcast channels than the IPTV services can provide an unlimited number of broadcast channels and their IP architectures provide them with superior capabilities for two-way interactive services.

The report identifies strategies that the U.S. cable companies can use to address this strong new competition. It discusses strategies that improve the technical performance of the cable networks and give cable companies the additional capacity that they will need to offer new services and to expand and enhance existing services.

• Analog reclamation, which converts the analog customers to digital.
• Increasing spectrum, which increases the capacity of the networks.
• Switched digital video, which provides for capacity sharing.
• Node splitting, which improves the performance of cable broadband data and video on demand services.
• MPEG4, which also increases the capacity of the network.

Deploying these technologies will provide additional capacity that can be used to expand and extend H D and video on demand, as well as to significantly increase the speed of cable broadband data services.

The report discusses strategies for improving cable broadband data services and cable telephony service. It exposes the opportunities created by the improved performance that DOCSIS 3.0 brings.

The report examines how cable companies can focus their efforts to provide business services. It identifies the kinds of business that are prime candidates for business services and how to approach them.

The report details the options that the cable companies have for entering the wireless telephony business. It describes how the Telcos are likely to leverage their wireless business to put the cable companies at a disadvantage.

• Reselling mobile services by becoming a Mobile Virtual Network.
• Operator (MVNO ) that rents capacity from an existing wireless carrier.
• Acquiring an existing network operator in order to jump start a wireless business line.
• Building out a wireless network from scratch.

The report identifies different ways to approach each of these strategies and looks at how to combine them in order to meet both short term and long term objectives.

In addition of core strategic activities, the report explains that cable companies have to conduct specific initiatives to improve their back office systems, to prepare for IPv6 and to retool their approach to wireless backhaul.

This report will provide a guide for strategic planners in the cable companies in developing their strategies. It will also be a guide for the Telcos to understand how the cable companies are likely to respond to their new Telco IPTV services. It will also provide system vendors and investors with critical information to help them succeed in this market.