Smaller Cable Operators Could Greatly Benefit from CMC’s HITS

Implications: 1.      The whole Tru2Way/OCAP concept is getting some traction now. 2.      As voice and data growth begins to taper off, the hope for small-to-medium sized cable TV companies is to be able to generate some additional revenue from their customers. 3.      However, the usual suspects in both the government and anti-capitalism crowds will not make it easy.

Analysis:  Although Comcast Media Center (CMC) is just getting started with its platform, there is the promise of a lot of customer solutions that could enhance revenue for an operator.  Smaller providers are eager to find out how they can transition to the next generation of set tops in order to download new applications.  CMC’s approach is that it will manage the care and feeding of these services and push them out to customers – once there is an agreement in place between the cable company and the subscriber.  The operators in turn can push back on keeping all the servers, carousels and network support elements, and just lease them from CMC.  In essence, it is a great way for these CATV firms to get the emerging benefits of digital, while providing an additional way of monetizing support for those that may be unable to afford to put all of this in place.   

Those cable companies that are willing to trial these capabilities will benefit by getting an earlier start without having to go through the entire learning curve of bringing everything together.  And it will give them some initial visibility on just how manageable this OCAP/Tru2Way environment is going to be in the future.  

There will be all kinds of applications including voting, and most importantly being able to do target advertising.  However, for whatever reason, targeted ads have become controversial.  Charter had to pull the plug on it because it had generated so much negative publicity.