Sling: We Help Cable's Revenue

VP for Europe Collingwood Claims Subscribers Upgrade Broadband to Accommodate Slingbox

By Tom Steinert-Threlkeld -- Multichannel News, 6/28/2007 12:48:00 PM

Cannes, France -- Dispatching content from a home television to hotels and other far-flung locations where a subscriber chooses to send them is good for the "average revenue per unit" of a cable-system operator, the vice president for Europe of Sling Media said Thursday.

"People upgrade their broadband when they have Sling,'' Stuart Collingwood said at the C-COR Global IP Summit here. “So it helps ARPU."

That's the acronym for the average payment made for a particular type of revenue unit at a cable system. Revenue units include TV, phone and Internet access, for instance.

With Sling, the desire for sending baseball games and other content that a viewer is accustomed to getting at home with a cable subscription would motivate the upgrade. The faster the broadband speed, the better the picture received -- and the more a cable operator can charge for Internet access.

Collingwood did not address whether the other revenue unit -- television -- would suffer. But a user would have to subscribe to both television service and Internet access to make Sling's Slingbox work.

The box hooks between a TV set and an Internet modem. The viewer pulls up content from a home TV -- as long as it is on -- using a PC connected to the Internet wherever he or she may be.