Worried About 2010? Get Mobile
By John Clark -- Multichannel News, 12/31/2005 7:00:00 PM
While the rest of the world was still just breaking in 2006, attendees at last week’s Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Conference on Emerging Technologies (ET) 2006 in Tampa, Fla., were stepping into 2010.
That’s the thing about cable telecommunications engineers: They are never ones to get too comfortable with the present. So they came, 1,000-plus strong, to a sold-out event for all those who are sold out to the future. ET’s annual focus is on three to five years out. What we heard from a fleet of astute presenters, moderators, organizers and keynote speakers was this: Be prepared.
The rapid change, propelled by relentless competition, that has characterized technology development in this industry is not about to slow down. In fact, international futurist Jim Carroll, in a Wednesday morning keynote, told us that the rate of change will go from fast to “furious.”
Consumers will demand a wider variety of mobile devices that work reliably with each other, he said. No single cable engineer or company can make this happen, said Carroll, so there will be a premium on developing “complexity partners.”
In a keynote on Thursday, Gary Traver of Comcast Media Center said, “HDTV is a game changer, and how well we execute on HDTV will emerge as a significant competitive factor.”
Historically, he noted, conversion from analog to digital cable has been largely under the operator’s control. By comparison, high-definition TV is a consumer-driven event, he said, precipitated by the purchase of a new set. And he said the number of HDTV households will increase over the next five years by more than 300%, to well over 50 million, according to several projections.
Technical sessions focused in on specific impending changes.
In five years, according to the “Cable Telecommunications 2010’’ session moderated by Liberty Global’s Tony Werner, cable’s product lineup will include, at minimum, seamless mobility across various devices like cell phones, interoperability with devices like the Xbox, nearly unlimited storage and wireless galore.
Geographic boundaries between cable providers will blur faster than two-way, digital cable-ready TVs are lining retail shelves. The tides are turning toward national services that work across disparate systems
Next up came “Cable Network and Software Architectures 2010,” moderated by Cox Communications Inc.’s Chris Bowick. The word: If the only constant is change, then technical architectures that can be flexible and adaptable to new needs will dominate the foreseeable future.
“Competitive Platforms,” moderated by Ken Wright of C-COR Inc., made it clear life won’t get any easier. In five years, video services that run on Internet protocols may well be a mainstream product, brought to the public by telcos. Wireless and wired broadband access will likely co-exist. And competing channels and on-demand video programming will come into the home “over the top” of cable providers, using Internet connections to parasitically eat up bandwidth supplied originally by cable systems. The session discussed how cable providers can harness some of the competition’s techniques for their own productive use.
Seamless mobility, harnessing new techniques to beat back competition and embracing wireless technologies — all will be part of the job for cable engineers with 2010 on their minds.
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