The cable/data/voice guy

Perhaps it was ironic timing or just dumb luck that AT&T's announcement last week - that it would be willing to possibly, maybe in principle, open up its cable network to competitive ISPs - came just 10 days before the opening of the Western Cable Show.

The annual confab in southern California is among the highlights of the year for the cable industry, despite a recent consolidation that makes it increasingly difficult for vendors to find real decision-makers roaming the floor. This week's show, as suggested by early leaks from vendors, marks a resurgence of sorts for the technology that will reshape the face of cable during the next several years.

No longer able to hide behind the good-old-boy mentality that seemed to shelter it from outside economic forces while simultaneously retarding potential technical growth, cable is being forced to face some harsh realities and move into the greater communications market. The recently signed law that lets satellite providers carry local broadcast signals takes away cable's video trump card. And the development of voice over DSL has the potential to challenge the cable data/voice strategy with small business and residential users.

The new face of cable is not fully visible yet, but last week's small strategic shift on the part of AT&T shed a small ray of light. Cable operators have little choice but to open up to the greater communications environment and offer a combination of video, data and voice services. Not surprisingly in this year of lightning-quick development, one of the technologies with the most promise - on display this week at the Los Angeles Convention Center - is IP voice. True, the technology still is some time away from being a threat to incumbents, but the mere fact that a competitor can enter with a technology that is not only cheaper but also can morph into enhanced services quickly makes it worth watching. CableLabs also deserves a good deal of credit for its recent release of key PacketCable specifications that will drive vendors to create a mass market product.

On the data side, political gamesmanship certainly played at least a small role in AT&T's decision to sign what is an essentially unenforceable agreement with MindSpring that allows users to choose among broadband content providers. In fact, some of AT&T's harshest critics - current cable modem users - spent the better part of the day in @Home's private news groups alternately hailing the move as a chance to escape the clutches of @Home and bemoaning the fact that the deal won't take effect until at least 2002. But at the very least, it suggests that an industry bellwether is beginning to move toward a new model.