TelcoTV: Cox exec enters lions’ den

Cox Communications’ Steve Necessary ventured into the lion’s den Tuesday afternoon, as a cable executive at an IPTV conference. But he didn’t in any way tailor his message to the audience. Instead, Cox’s vice president of video product development and support told the crowd that cable companies have the technology in hand, or on the horizon, to do anything that IPTV can do.

“We are not smug and blind,” about the threat of IPTV, he said, “but we are confident and paranoid. We are monitoring what is going on. But I work on the fifth floor, and no one is jumping out the window just yet.”

And since customers care about applications and services, not technologies, there is no reason for cable to fear the telco’s entry into the video market, according to Necessary. Cable is capable of delivering what consumers want – which is more of everything, he said.

“We can give them more content, including more HD content, as well as greater speeds, and blended service applications,” Necessary said. He then recited chapter and verse of the Cable Labs handbook:

• Docsis 3.0 will enable cable companies to deliver 100 Mb/s into the home
• Node splits – pushing fiber closer to customers via smaller nodes on a hybrid fiber coax network – will drive up bandwidth per customer on a shared network
• Using 256 QAM or quadrature amplitude modulation, versus 128 QAM, and 870 MegaHertz forward path capacity versus 750 MHz, also boosts network capacity
• Switched digital video, which telcos use to send only video on-demand, is now being tested in Cox’s network, and MPEG-4, which telcos tout in IPTV, is also on cable’s horizon

“On speed and bandwidth, cable does just fine versus IPTV,” Necessary said. Cable Labs’ Open Cable Platform is creating an open and ubiquitous middleware layer above the proprietary hardware cable has deployed to enable blended apps, including point-and-click e-commerce and information services, voting and polling, caller ID on the TV and more, he said.

And, as the final blow, Necessary touted cable’s interest in IP through an IP Services Gateway that uses Multi-media over Coax Access (MoCA) to create a connected home environment.

One interesting area of departure was the Cox executive’s admission that cable also plans to deliver more commercials to consumers, whether they want them or not, because advertising remains “critical to the video value chain; that’s how we pay for content to be developed,” he said. The key is going to be targeting the ads.

Cable Labs, through its Canoe project, is developing an interactive advertising platform to better enable targeting of advertising, Necessary said, and to give viewers a chance to respond, though a consolidated infrastructure. “We are in a unique position to add value to all parties,” he said.