According to a recent analysis from the In-Stat market research company the worldwide cable TV industry is presently in a race to provision what In-Stat terms a ‘three-screen’ service as a counterpunch to telco IPTV offerings. If successful, argues the company in its ‘Cable TV Head-Ends: Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) Powers Cable TV Counterpunch to IPTV’ report, collateral damage may also be done to cell phone-only service providers.

The three-pronged cable strategy apparently involves offering high definition TV (HDTV), broadband Internet access and fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) services and, as a consequence, calculates In-Stat, there should continued strong growth in cable TV infrastructure equipment, with sales rising from about US$925.4mn during 2006 to more than US$2.1bn in 2010.

“The cable TV industry is working diligently to connect all the infrastructure dots in the race to provision a three-screen telecommunications service,” says Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat analyst. “System operators are building out super head-ends and upgrading local head-ends to provide the economies of scale needed to provide the greatest number of services, over the greatest geographical reach, at the lowest possible cost. Fixed Mobile Convergence, or FMC, will become a fast-growing market for cable operators, and they will disrupt the cell phone industry.”

Other takeaways from the In-Stat research:

·         HDTV services and video on demand (VoD) are expanding, driving plant upgrades for improved Gigabit Ethernet video switches, Switched Digital Video (SDV), more quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) channels, and widening deployments of 1 GHz final mile equipment;

·         Modular Cable Modem Termination Systems (Modular CMTS) and wide band cable modems are being brought into play to upgrade high speed data services to compete against telephone companies’ asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), very high rate or speed DSL (VDSL), and fibre-to-the-home (FTTH);

·         Comcast, Cox, Time-Warner and Advance/Newhouse have a joint venture with Sprint Nextel that will begin offering cable-branded cellular phone services later this year in the USA. Later on, FMC will add innovative video services and wireless extensions to the cable TV infrastructure, and disrupt the cell phone market;

·         and the cable TV industry is rapidly deploying voice over IP (VoIP) services.

As will be evident from the foregoing, the three-screen cable approach to life also promotes the heavy use of abbreviations, acronyms and parenthesis.
John Williamson