Los Angeles — Cox Communications president Patrick Esser argued on Thursday for the standardization of industry platforms and the need for players to work together.
“I’m a believer that the more the industry works in a cooperative fashion; the more we work on creating standardized platforms; the more we look for universal solutions, all votes rise and we’re in a better place,” said Esser during a general session conversation on the “Influencers and Innovators on the Future of Media” at The Cable Show 2014 in Los Angeles.
Esser was joined on stage by Rob Lloyd, president of development and sales of Cisco Systems and moderator Jon Fortt, on-air editor at CNBC.
“We are all going to have to move to a new model,” said Lloyd. “A new kind of thinking. That movement is underway right now. I can tell you it is underway right now amongst the people here.”
The model Lloyd referred to is the cloud, which is the applications that are used to connect various technologies.
One way the cloud will likely come into play is through our televisions. Consumers are already seeing this to a degree with Smart TVs, where the set is able to communicate with other devices in the home, such as computers, phones, stereos, etc.
But the industry still has work to do.
“We just all need to focus on innovation,” said Lloyd. “Consumers just want to see service innovation. They want to see things that are solving their problems. They want new experiences. And I would leave it alone and say let’s just focus on those that own the network actually have the chance right now as these trends emerge to actually make the network matter and deliver more services.”
Esser echoed Lloyd’s sentiments and took them a step further by talking about Cox’s pledge to its customers.
“Our customers will have access to all of the product that’s out there on the Internet,” said Esser. “That is our promise. That is what we’re doing. We are not blocking anything. It’s the worst thing I possibly could ever do.”
