I caught the first half of Time Warner Cable’s Bear Stearns presentation today and also skipped through the full PowerPoint deck. Not being a financial analyst, the pieces I found most interesting had to do with the technology.
First, not surprisingly, CFO John Martin emphasized TWC’s infrastructure as a competitive differentiator. On the one hand the MSO doesn’t have to invest in massive fiber outlays like Verizon is doing with FiOS. On the other, Time Warner doesn’t have to juggle some of the bandwidth challenges of DSL that AT&T is contending with in its Uverse rollout. Specifically, Mr. Martin mentioned bandwidth-extending technologies Switched Digital Video (SDV) for more HDTV and DOCSIS 3.0 for greater broadband data speeds.
Second, John Martin highlighted Time Warner’s record of technical innovation. I do give Time Warner credit for innovation, but I also think the cable company is going to have to stay on the ball to continue claiming leadership in this area as the telecoms add more and more innovative deployments to their portfolios.
Filed under: Bandwidth, Cable, DOCSIS 3.0, Switched Digital, Time Warner
