[opendtv] Re: News: The death of Cable TV

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 16:15:20 -0500

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

>> But ultimately, who cares what the new investment has to be? The
>> fact remains, the ISPs become the umbillical just as much as the
>> MVPDs have been.
>
> Perhaps. Much will depend on whether we see new competitors emerge
> in the broadband arena - otherwise, we will be at the mercy of a
> duopoly of cable and telcos.

I think there's a limit to how much competition will emerge that can lay down a 
cabled infrastructure, like cablecos and telcos have done. So the competition 
will come from wireless broadband, terrestrial or satellite.

Even assuming these wireless options can offer as much as the cabled systems, 
they are all, so far, set up as umbillicals. Meaning, they are organized and 
priced with the idea that people will subscribe to one or two at most (e.g. one 
cabled and one wireless), not many simultaneously (as one does with the OTA TV 
model).

So yes, if you expect TV to be provided via the Internet in the future, I don't 
see how that changes anything significantly, other than most likely providing 
even more choice than what MVPDs offer now.

> You are assuming that the MVPDs are going to build the server
> infrastructure; to a limited extent they may if it simplifies
> their network infrastructure, but it is more likely that they will
> simply move to a switched digital infrastructure and pull streams
> from the WAN

Anything becomes easy to explain when one ignores the scaling issues.

Bert
 
 
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