During The Cable Show last week, one of my favorite panels was a discussion that industry analyst Leslie Ellis had with Chief Technology Officers from cable companies. These are, after all, the folks who actually have to implement technology over cable plant.

This year’s panel was called “Road Trip: Mapping Cable’s New-Tech Progression,” and it provided a useful view of forthcoming technology initiatives. One of the themes was about managing the bandwidth of the cable plant.

Hearing this discussion reminded me of a common complaint about cable’s broadband service: the asymmetric nature of the connection, with a higher downstream than upstream. Some ask why broadband is typically structured in such fashion. Some suggest that other countries’ broadband is better because it’s symmetric.

I recall a notorious (to me) 2007 post from David Weinberger:

I pointed out that the “10 megs down, one meg up” mentioned by one of the panelists assumes that we’re “consumers” rather than creators; we should have symmetric up and down.

So, I asked the panelists what they thought about this notion that symmetric bandwidth is the Holy Grail of connectivity.

Tony Werner, EVP & CTO of Comcast, said, “We’ve seen a lot more growth in our downstream than in our upstream in our last 12 to 24 months. But there is continual growth, both up and down and I think you’ll continue to see us increase both of them.” He noted that cable has a “tremendous capability to blast the upstream more [than DSL], as well as the downstream, if there’s a market for it.”

Mike LaJoie, Executive Vice President & CTO of Time Warner Cable, agreed about market demand: “The ways that we build networks and provision services are responsive to how customers use it. I have some customers that do need symmetric bandwidth. I have customers on the business side who need more downstream than upstream, more upstream than down. I have products available for any of those things.” But, he said, “Most residential customers are skewed about 3 to 1, down to up. It came a little closer to symmetrical a couple of years back, but now it’s scaling back the other way. Whatever customers want, we build.”

Dermot O’Carroll, Senior Vice President of Access Networks for Canada’s Rogers Cable, pointed out that forecasts of Internet traffic say that in the next year or two, 90% of that traffic will be video. With video, the vast majority of that traffic is downstream. O’Carroll also said that this is the trend of their customers’ usage: “We’ve looked at the asymmetry of our traffic and, over the last number of years, it’s become more asymmetric, not less.”

All of this goes to show that one of cable’s strengths is that we have very flexible resources that can be reconfigured to meet our customers’ needs. Our broadband offerings will continue to change over time, in response to the desires of the marketplace.

Yesterday, former FCC Chairman Michael Powell led Marc Andreessen, Time Warner’s Jeffrey Bewkes, CBS’ Leslie Moonves, Comcast’s Brian Roberts, and Fox Filmed Entertainment’s Tom Rothman through a wide ranging, free flowing, and spirited discussion of the future of content at The Cable Show’s second general session.

To start the conversation, Powell asked Brian Roberts if cable should be worried about online video.  Roberts responded that every new medium presents a new opportunity, but said they all present avenues to deliver lawful content; the more opportunities for that, the better.

Andreessen (who shared details of his 36 port HDMI switch with 36 different inputs and a $4,000 per month commercial Internet connection) said that was the right way to look at the future – since every device is now expected to be Internet-enabled, and to allow content consumption.

Rothman chimed in to agree, but said that creates a requirement that content be compelling.  Without compelling content, you just have a bunch of devices to check baseball scores.  Rothman says the key to content online is two-fold.  First, the most important piece of content is good storytelling.  Second, that storytelling must be accompanied by a way to protect and monetize content.

The various models of monetization became a hot topic and Powell noted that customers may have different thoughts about the monetization process – so cable operators may end up fighting with consumers.

Moonves answered by noting that, for his company, there used to be one source of revenue – advertising – but now there are many more, such as syndication, retransmission fees, DVDs,  iTunes, Hulu, etc.  That presents more options to address the monetization question.

The introduction of the topic of advertising led Powell to ask what impact services like Facebook will have, since they present a new, and possibly competing, set of audience segmentation data.  Powell noted the industry no longer has the exclusive on audience data.

Bewkes suggested all the different entities must become partners in the sharing of audience data, and Moonves said one of the essentials is accurate eyeball measurement – and we don’t have that yet.

Andreessen suggest Facebook can be an enabler of content by providing data, and also by sharing content with friends.

Roberts said people may go to other providers  – not because the content is different, but because the experience is different or cooler.  As a result, it is incumbent upon cable to stay fresh and cool, and spend more time on the interface.

Asked what makes them nervous, the panelists suggested that the uncertainty of regulatory change was a great challenge.

Moonves joked, “Whenever they say it’s not about the money, it’s all about the money.”

Have you ever had trouble with a company and said to yourself, “Even I could run it better!”  Well if that company was your cable or telephone company, now is your chance to prove it.

The folks at Cisco (an NCTA member) have put together a fun little game that lets you build your own ISP.  Starting in 1990, your dial-up internet company has to attract customers, make money, invest in new technologies, and remain profitable.  If you do it well, you’ll progress through the years and become a broadband innovator.

If you’re a tech/telecom junkie like me, you’ll find this very addictive.  If you can make it through the 1990s, please drop us a note in the comments and let us know.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has overturned an FCC decision to impose a cap on cable companies – barring them from serving more than 30% of cable customers nationwide. The ruling reaffirms a 2001 court decision that rejected the same cap.

In vacating the FCC decision, the court found:

• The Commission had failed to demonstrate that allowing a cable operator to serve more than 30% of all cable subscribers would threaten to reduce either competition or diversity in programming
• The record is replete with evidence of ever increasing competition among video providers
• Satellite and fiber optic video providers have entered the market and grown in market share since the Congress passed the 1992 Act
• Cable operators no longer have the bottleneck power over programming that concerned the Congress in 1992
• Over the same period there has been a dramatic increase both in the number of cable networks and in the programming available to subscribers.

Citing, “overwhelming evidence concerning ‘the dynamic nature of the communications marketplace,’ and the entry of new competitors at both the programming and the distribution levels”, the court found the FCC’s decision to be arbitrary and capricious.

In response, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell issued the following statement:

It was clear in December 2007, when I dissented from the FCC decision to once again impose a 30 percent national cap on cable system ownership, that the effort to re-justify the very same cap that the D.C. Circuit first struck down in 2001 was even more vulnerable to court challenge the second time around.  Despite the Commission staff’s best efforts to provide post hoc empirical support for the chosen outcome, the court recognized that the 2007 analysis’ aging data and questionable assumptions sat oddly against the facts about new – and successful – competitors to cable systems in the multichannel video marketplace.  It should go without saying that, in the future, outcomes in our proceedings should be driven by the facts and law, rather than the other way around.

Time Warner and Comcast held a press briefing this morning to provide some details about the much anticipated “TV Everywhere” project that Time Warner Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes has been discussing for a few months including during a panel at The Cable Show back in early April.  Joining Bewkes for today’s briefing was Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts.

The main takeaway from today’s briefing is that Comcast and Time Warner will begin a trial to provide 5,000 Comcast customers access to cable programming (TBS and TNT for now) on a platform (the computer screen) where it wasn’t previously available, for no additional charge.  It is no more complicated than that.

The primary details released today include a set of principles that the companies agreed to:

• Bring more TV content, more easily to more people across platforms.
• Video subscribers can watch programming from their favorite TV networks online for no additional charge.
• Video subscribers can access this content using any broadband connection.
• Programmers should make their best and highest-rated programming available online.
• Both networks and video distributors should provide high-quality, consumer-friendly sites for viewing broadband content with easy authentication.
• A new process should be created to measure ratings for online viewing. The goal should be to extend the current viewer measurement system to include advertiser ratings for TV content viewed on all platforms.
• TV Everywhere is open and non-exclusive; cable, satellite or telco video distributors can enter into similar agreements with other programmers.

You can check out this story from CNET’s Marguerite Reardon – Comcast and Time Warner team up to deliver TV online – for a complete recap.

More details about the trial will undoubtedly be forthcoming, but the immediate knee-jerk negativity by some in the blogosphere was not only predictable, but uninformed.

But thankfully, there are also some more reasoned voices weighing in that recognize the potential of this announcement to bring real benefits to consumers by offering them access to more content in more places.  Will Richmond from VideoNuze boldly declares:

Despite what some skeptics say, consumers also stand to gain.  All that great cable programming that’s been locked to the set-top box in the home would now be available online. It sort of like cable’s version of on demand Sling, but without any upfront or monthly charge (at least that’s what we’re hearing for now).

Richmond takes a more rational view that this model is one that benefits both programmers and consumers, but they still need to work out some of the technical issues:

Comcast and Time Warner are taking a solid step forward in delivering more value to their subscribers who increasingly live their lives online. Now they need to tamp down the hype and just focus on executing in a logical, user-friendly way.

The rest of Richmond’s post is available here and he also aptly highlights some of the challenges that this trial will face including the necessary business model issues that the free lunch crowd tend to ignore.