sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information The Cable Industry

I would like to hear some opinions on what your feelings are regarding the Cable TV Industry.

1. Do you feel that they have the financial background to stay self-supporting???

2. Do you see them in the near future merging with a telco or someone else???

3. Do you at all see in the future Cisco either partnering or merging with a Telco???

Your feedback would be interesting....

You pose a couple of interesting questions, Groundstart.

In the first place, yes, I think the CATV companies have the financial wherewithall to stay self-supporting. Consumer cable rates have risen over 40% in the last five years. Most cable operations with which I'm familiar are franchised by the local government, meaning no competition. Many new services have been introduced, such as internet, made possible, in part, by the tremendouse amount of fiber most of the cable operators have strung. This leads to your second question, regarding merger with telco or someone else. In at least one market near my home, ATT is already the cable company and a long distance carrier! I think we'd probably see governmental intervention if a major cable operator tried to merge with a a major ILEC (Charter and Verizon? Heaven help us!!). I suspect that we MAY see cable operators position as a CLEC at some near point in the future--with all of these cable modems, why not IP Telephony?

As far as Cisco is concerned, I don't see them partnering or merging. I suspect that they're well-positioned selling their product to everybody.

I'm interested in other viewpoints.

Well rover88, AT$T did buy out a lot of cable company's, well over market value, but they spun them off so now AT$T's long distance is stand-alone and the Cable market is Comcast, which AT$T's CEO Mike Armstrong made as a condition of the spin off, he would be chairman of. So what direction does that tell you the money is going. The LD market is losing money, that is why voice over IP is coming big time. LD carriers are already using it, just not being advertised, but it will be soon.
Bill X AT$T

Here in Salt Lake the federal gov. is building a internet provider called UTOPIA, it is all fiber and will be providing internet and voice over IP in the near future. Qwest, AT+T, ComCast are all in a uproar because it seems they are going to provide service for about half the cost at 10 times the speed.
Looks like the government wants a piece of the action. There is suppose to be the same thing being built in other test cities.

Considering that I do 90% of my work for Charter Communications, hey... I'll chip in:

A) Voice over IP -- already exists with CATV. That's the entire theory to broadband. Charter has it in some areas already, usually it's a 3 line device made by SciAt. Works pretty nicely, and they're simple to install.

B) Cable companies make plenty of cash off of what they charge, but you have to consider what they just went through. Most CATV companies have just finished their rebuild stage, which means they are LOW on funds. Fiber rebuilds and drop changeouts, as well as IW changeouts cost tons of cash. In the beginning of the rebuild stage, every drop was changed from rg-59 to rg-6 as possible, to maintain signal level for higher level frequencies. Also, most of the IW was changed out, at no cost to the customer. Lost a lot of funds there.

So... that's why rates are going up, to deal with that issue. They'll stabelize eventually.

As far as them joining up with major TelCo's... they already are, indirectly. As far as the competition is concerned, they offer internet services, some offer fiber services, and some offer telephony, so I think they already do. It'll be a while yet before they all offer those services, but it's on the way.

Rumor has it (1stQ2003) that Nortel & Cisco are talking merger - market will dictate.

Nortel/Cisco merger.....I find it hard to believe....to many similar competing products...

What I find interesting and something that might be sitting on the back burner is CISCO merging or buying a telco...

With their IP phone system as the best, what a clinch it would be to merge with a telco...