Atlanta -- New products and cooperation between cable operators, networks and equipment providers will be the main weapons in beating back impending competition from telephone companies, a panel of top industry executives told a packed audience at the National Show general session here Monday.
“If we didn’t have a new product to sell right now, you could sit here being doom and gloom,” Comcast Corp. chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said. “We’re about selling telephone [service] and lots of it. High-speed data and broadband is just scratching the surface -- every day, people want more and more features, and more people are buying than at any other time.”
He continued, “And then we have all sorts of digital products, whether it’s DVRs [digital-video recorders] or high-definition [television], that are going gangbusters. Many companies are in the commercial phone business and get great success there. There have never been more new products to sell.”
Time Warner Inc. chairman and CEO Richard Parsons said he also liked cable’s position in the battle with the phone companies.
“I like our hand,” he said. “The cable platform seems to be the only one that can deliver all of the goods now. I think you’re going to see, across the board on the cable landscape, a real uptick in subscriber acquisition.”
Cisco Systems Inc. chairman John Chambers said cable operators should be looking three to five years down the road, and they are making inroads into allowing consumers to access data anytime, anywhere and on any device.
“I think we’ll look back five or 10 years from now, and it won’t be about who won or who lost -- it will be about how rapidly this market has the potential to grow and who executed best in this market,” Chambers said.
Motorola Inc. chairman Ed Zander said the growth so far is both wireless and in the home.
“What’s happening also in the wireless industry is now for mixed technology, to the point where we can start thinking about the seamless mobility between the home and the wireless capability,” Zander said, pointing to a demonstration Motorola is conducting on the show floor that allows cellular-phone users to program their DVRs.
But despite the confluence of new technologies, Zander said Motorola is still committed to making cable set-top boxes. “We’re booming in that space,” he added. “If you look at the growth in the past year in HD capability and digital capability, it’s a natural extension. Five years ago, you could look at these markets. Now, it’s so important to have a wireless capability, a home capability, an enterprise capability and an auto capability, and we have all four. To be able to look at and move your content between these environments seamlessly is critical.”
For The Walt Disney Co. -- which announced Monday that it is testing a service that will allow for the free download of ABC broadcast-network programs Lost, Alias, Desperate Housewives and Commander in Chief free-of-charge over the Internet -- the company said that service is not intended to cannibalize its video-on-demand and other deals with cable operators.
“This is an opportunity for us to learn a little more about a different [business] model, to see how consumers are going to use it,” said Anne Sweeney, co-chairman of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney-ABC Television. “It also enables us to take our broadcast advertisers into the space and allows them to experiment with different ways of conveying their message.”
At Sprint Nextel Corp. -- which is currently part of a joint venture with four cable operators to provide wireless service to cable customers -- chairman Gary Forsee said that the with the proliferation of high-speed data and the increased bandwidth associated with those networks, the industry can take advantage of content, applications and services that were never available before.
“I think what we’re going to be able to do for the customers is represented by over 70 million homes passed, over 40 million customers in the joint venture already, is to create something unique, and wireless is going to be a very important part of the intersection of these services,” Forsee said.
Zander said operators need only to look outside of the United States to see how consumers are using new technologies and capabilities.
“In Korea, for $9.95 [per month], you can get all the TV you want,” he added. “Now there are a lot of business plans, a lot of development about connecting the home into this wireless world. So the idea of taking this content with you is actually happening a lot quicker in some areas around the world.”
