Comcast announced lastweek that it is going offer shows from the Prime time line ups of the Fox, ABC, and CBS the day after they air through its ON-Demand Service. Click here for the story. Whats interesting about this story is the continuing evolving nature on a almost weekly basis of the cable industry. Comcast is the 500 lb gorilla in the room. It has the tech back bone to all those wonderful paying customers homes. It also now has content after it just closed the deal on NBC, and as we see in the article it has cut a deal with the other networks that Netflix would love to have. Which has me wondering about the future of the Cable giant. With its pipeline I see it as giant with muscles able to push the competition around. But is it an aging giant who is slow to meet the needs of its customers and abreast of the latest tech developments? Is it so big now that any technological improvement to it physical back bone, the cable its self would be so costly, and cost prohibitive as to make its return on invest a negative. But such a negative would be unfair to its customers who would be deprived of the latest improvement in service that the latest in technology has to offer. The problem with Comcast is that its looking to maintain its revenue streams while not giving up market share to competitors like Netflix. Another thing against Comcast that favors its competitors is its reputation. Its not that great among its customers. But if customers are leaving Comcast the largest cable provider in the country aren't they asking why? The reason is simple. Cost. And with recent advances in tech there are now more than at any other time options other than what the cable company has to offer. Personally my wife and I have the Comcast basic, basic cable package. The bare bones package where you get the local channels. Then we have Netflix that we use to watch programs and movies when we want at a great price. Not to mention the connivance of watching something when we want. Another worry we don’t have is do we have to worry if a movie or show is going to disappear from the ON-Demand library like we did with Comcast’s service. If Comcast truly wants to compete with Netflix then it should as Netflix does and offer subscriptions services packaged to the individual needs of the the consumer. Comcast could offer better subscription packages better than anything that Netflix could. Another thing that Comcast has but Netflix does not are the sports channels. They could charge I’d say 2 or three dollars more a month to stream live sporting events with out having the need for the sports channels. Kind of like sports On-demand. Watch what sporting events when I want where I want.
The major draw back to traditional cable carriers like Comcast and AT&T is of coarse the technology. If the pipeline can only carry so much data, because of the limitation of the copper, then the cable companies need to come up with solutions that allow for greater data downloads rather than try and cap the data. Which is a solution at trying to price the limits of the capacity. One possible solutions is data greater data compression. There have to be ways out there that could compress data to allow a greater amounts of data to travel the pipeline. The traditional cable companies are tech companies and they need to be innovators of tech. If they don’t they will loose customers fast to other companies that offer customers what they want. Entertainment options at a good price. One last tech development that could threaten the traditional cable company model is that of WiFi. Cable companies could offer WiFi or cellular services that take advantage of the network strengths, rather than try tie customers up by acting like a utility company. Cable companies are both in the tech and service industries as such they need to converge those two industries into their business, if they want their stock prices to soar in comparison to a company like Netflix.
That’s my two bits.........take it for whats it worth..............Eric
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