Skip to main content

The Real IPTV Threat to Cable

In a new report to investors on cable and broadband, Friedman Billings Ramsey media analysts Alan Bezoza and Brian Coynes say that cable's biggest competitive threat for video delivery is not the short-term competition from telcos but the long-term threat of internet-based content delivery.

Pointing to IP telephony, which cable has a piece of as well, and Apple's "revolutionizing" of music delivery via iPod/iTunes, the report says the Internet will become the primary deliverer of video content, with companies like Google, Yahoo and AOL becoming the next big aggregators and distributors of content.

The internet has made "on demand" content the baseline going forward, says FBR. The report predicts that unless cable, telco and satellite companies adopt Internet-based video delivery models, "their value in the new value chain will become limited to data transport services." But potentially very profitable data transport services.

It says cable is in a good position in the short term to compete on the IP video front. But it sees broadband access as the real future of cable in the long term. Looking 10 years from now, FBR sees cable becoming "utility companies providing bandwidth to consumers running different applications over their data access."

Back on the video side, with a lot of delivery systems competing for product, FBR sees the "pendulum of power" shifting to content providers, though they will first have to figure out how people are paying for that content (subscription or advertising). Not surprisingly, FBR also sees growth in the PC and home networking markets that, it believes, will become the TV sets of the future.

Popular posts from this blog

Soft POS Market to Reach $540B by 2030

The traditional point-of-sale (POS) terminal has traveled a remarkable journey since IBM's first mainframe-connected models emerged in the 1970s. What began as clunky screen interfaces tethered to distant computers has evolved into a diverse ecosystem of payment solutions. Today, we stand at the precipice of the most significant transformation yet: the rise of soft POS technology that promises to democratize digital payments for businesses of all sizes. At its core, this evolution reflects a broader shift from hardware dependency to software flexibility. Global POS Market Development With their dedicated terminals, fixed installations, and substantial upfront costs, traditional POS systems have long served as gatekeepers to in-store or mobile payment acceptance. Small businesses, micro-enterprises, and mobile retailers often found themselves locked out of the digital economy, forced to rely on cash transactions or make significant capital investments in POS hardware. Soft POS techn...