Its not a thing of the past but soon could be. With the increase of fiber to the home and increased bandwidth for internet services that availability is there for video on demand over the internet. Products are being developed to provide ip based TV (cable Boxes that work over the internet) so in the future anyone with a high speed internet connection should be able to go to wall mart and buy there cable box and programming from wall mart or any other vender for that matter who negotiates a deal to resell ip based video programming.In other words the cable companies, phone companies and others wont make a quick buck off of programming content and wont be able to force you to buy blocks of programming like basic, basic plus, extended and movie packages. This is why we see major mso's buying movie companies and TV stations now, so they will have exclusive content in the future to sell to a global ip based market and still make money off of the programming. In the future cable and phone companies will be a thing of the past and they will all be internet service providers and equipment rental services. Some may have there own exclusive content but most will utilize there content and programming on a global scale. The companies who will secede will be those who do two things. The first is to upgrade to fiber to the home and offer blazing fast bandwidth capabilities with competitive pricing this will drive out the competition. The second will be to buy, leverage and create programming with the ability to offer over ip based cable boxes to a global market. By this time video on demand and payper viewing will be huge but with the right programming combination larger package based services could still be a thing of the future. Take Ted Turner and Time Warner for example with the network and cable stations along with movies already owned you may be able to go in to any retail store around the world and buy a time Warner cable box for Time Warner programming and it will all be provided over the internet and they wont need to have a cable system all you need is internet and there box.So in the future we will all be internet techs managing bandwidth much over fiber and some may remain over coax for a while. I would expect this will be a big portion of our industry in the next 10 years.Also there is currently a big move on by many mso's away form the privet customer based service to business service. The main focus of several mso's now is fiber back haul for cellular service, business service and security. This will offer them large volume customers that don't rely on video programming.I predicted back in the early 90's at an SCTE conference that in the future we would go with all fiber and ftth networks. I was told then that we would never have a need for more than 330mhz what the heck would we do with all that bandwidth? It is now coming to pass and some still say why? We could upgrade our amp technology and utilize the coax better. Well this is true but with fiber construction cost is about the same, there are less electronics, there is less maintenance, there is less ability for system failure and you have virtually unlimited potential. Test see Less over all cost and maximum flexibility... I say why not. I also say had you listened to me 20 years ago you would be ahead of the game now.
This is CABL.com posting #330039. Tiny Link: cabl.co/mbx1n
