Cable Still Has the Edge

In today's television environment, the pendulum is swinging toward the consumer. The notion of “couch potato” has become an anachronism. It is no longer just about expanded choice. It is all about more control and convenience.

There are hundreds of TV channels currently available to consumers from a variety of providers, including cable and satellite. Local telephone companies promise to become providers as well. This list does not include video-on-demand, the Internet or your mobile phone—other potential vehicles for transmitting video. We're moving toward a world of entertainment-on-demand, complete with the ability to watch what you want, whenever you want and wherever you want. Fortunately, the cable industry is well- positioned to thrive in this new world, as The National Show in San Francisco will demonstrate.

Enhancements to cable's video and broadband services were made possible by the industry's substantial investment in the upgrade of its network. It has been a long road, but nine years and $95 billion later, cable's infrastructure has been turned into a powerful broadband engine, capable of delivering VOD, digital cable, phone service, high-speed Internet access and more.

At the end of last year, the cable industry counted more than 24 million digital subscribers, and I'm proud to note that my own company, Time Warner Cable, enjoys one of the highest penetrations of digital customers, at 44%. Cable had more than 20 million high-speed Internet service customers at the end of 2004. Cable is serving 3 million phone customers, with VoIP deployment gaining speed. At Time Warner Cable, we have successfully rolled out digital phone service across all of our divisions.

Whatever product or service we offer—video, data or voice—our customers have a significant number of choices available. Intense competition has made our industry stronger, because it drives innovation. And it has substantially improved the quality and range of choices available to television viewers.

We've taken one of cable's great features—the ability to deliver hundreds of programming choices–and made it even more useful by offering some of that content on-demand. We're offering convenience with “triple play” packages, enabling people to order a variety of telecommunications services from one provider on one bill.

Where do we go next? Cable's interactive broadband platform is built and ready to deploy cutting-edge services that will marry many different broadband applications to create unique user experiences. Not only can we provide video, high-speed data and phone over our plant, but, because all of these services travel over the same integrated network, cable will be able to reap the full benefits of convergence. New services will leverage the two-way, robust nature of the broadband infrastructure to make available new forms of information, communications and entertainment. We have partnerships developed with programmers, and those relationships go back many years. We're bringing more choice, more convenience and more control to our customers. We think that gives us a winning hand to gain the consumer's business and longtime loyalty.