A survey of American viewers suggests that interactive television could be a driver for digital cable services. A third of basic cable subscribers reported an interest in switching to digital cable if one or more interactive features described to them were available. Local services were seen as most important, with 42 percent of those surveyed saying that they would be very or somewhat interested in such services, rising to 50 percent of those already have digital cable and 59 percent for those that had a cable modem, while 80 percent of those that expressed an interest in switching to digital. On-screen caller identification to display the name and number of the person calling was of interest to 38 percent of respondents. Playing games was of interest to 35 percent of those questioned, while 33 percent were interested in choosing camera angles, and just 29 percent expressed an interest in voting or getting background information on characters in a program. The telephone survey of 1,000 adults across the United States was commissioned by CTAM, the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.
The global cloud computing market is undergoing new significant growth, driven by the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and the demand for flexible, scalable infrastructure. The recent market study by International Data Corporation (IDC) provides compelling evidence of this transformation, highlighting the accelerating growth in cloud infrastructure spending and the pivotal role of AI in shaping the industry's future trajectory. Shared Infrastructure Market Development The study reveals a 36.9 percent year-over-year worldwide increase in spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments in the first quarter of 2024, reaching $33 billion. This growth substantially outpaced non-cloud infrastructure spending, which saw a modest 5.7 percent increase to $13.9 billion during the same period. The surge in cloud infrastructure spending was partially fueled by an 11.4 percent growth in unit demand, influenced by higher average selling prices, primari