Archive for March, 2010

Each year in the spring, NCTA hold its annual conference, The Cable Show. We attract about 12,000 attendees, drawn from various aspects of the cable industry and from related fields.

Each year in the spring, NCTA hold its annual conference, The Cable Show. We attract about 12,000 attendees, drawn from various aspects of the cable industry and from related fields.

I don’t like to single out people for criticism. But Techdirt’s Mike Masnick is a high-profile tech blogger, he attracts a lot of traffic and he’s written a lot over the years about how content should be distributed online (For example, see here).

At the 2004 National Show in New Orleans, NCTA staged a very successful exhibit called The Broadband Home.  The exhibit, which consisted of a full-scale mock home filled with broadband applications running over cable plant, provided a showcase for telephony, home networking, high-definition television, DVRs, and VOD.

The National Broadband Plan has put the spotlight squarely on getting broadband service to the roughly 35% of U.S. households that don’t subscribe.  I don’t think anyone can disagree with this overarching goal, and it’s clear that it will take a multi-pronged approach to bridge this gap.

Here at Cable Tech Talk, I generally try to keep it civil. I believe in a discourse based on facts, not emotion. I think that the best ideas win.

You might have read news coverage this week that the motion picture studios and cable companies are joining forces to “launch a $30 million marketing and promotion campaign touting the virtues of movies on demand” (See Multichannel News:” “Studios, Operators Team To Promote Movies On Demand”).

One of the biggest challenges facing the team drafting the National Broadband Plan was figuring out how to adapt existing regulatory models to the realities of today’s competitive broadband marketplace.  Two specific areas where the plan’s recommendations thread that needle are pole attachment rates and high-cost universal service reform; and it does so by recommending steps that begin to reduce artificial distortions produced by government subsidies and the cost of important inputs to deploying and operating expensive networks.

There is little doubt that all 356-pages of the National Broadband Plan will be analyzed thoroughly in the days and weeks ahead.  I’ll take this opportunity to offer some commentary on the “Broadband Competition and Innovation Policy” chapter which among other items addresses how the Commission can create a true retail video device marketplace that works for consumers that subscribe to any multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD).

One of the highlights of the SXSWi conference in Austin was the session “Pay TV vs. Internet – The Battle For Your TV,” featuring a no-holds-barred debate between Mark Cuban, Chairman and President of the programming service HDNet, and Avner Ronen, CEO & co-founder of Boxee.

With lots of activity happening in the media and entertainment sectors in 2010, we’ve recently seen several stories about the carriage of programming services by cable and other video providers.

[UPDATE: The Dexter Set Visit Sweepstakes is now closed. ] Make sure to register by March 19 and save $100 off your Cable Show Registration! And be entered to win a trip to the set of the hit Showtime Original series, Dexter.