Cable operators are pushing ahead with their broadband and voice offerings, enabling them to offer customers the increasingly popular “triple-play” service that looks set to enjoy a surge in popularity over the coming years.
Despite figures suggesting that cable operators are losing subscribers to DSL line adoption, Doug Shapiro from the Banc of America Securities claims that, on a year on year basis, these losses should amount to less than 1%.
This estimate means that cable’s overall customer count should remain around 68 million currently, stabilising for the next four to five years.
Shapiro explained that cable subscriber counts should “remain roughly flat or down in aggregate, with small gains or flat growth at the higher-quality, better-capitalised and less-clustered, worse capitalised.”
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is proving a lucrative technology for cable providers, with Comcast saying it ended 2005 with more than 200,000 VoIP customers, while Cablevision has more than 600,000 digital voice subscribers.
According to Bernstein Research, VoIP net additions are expected to accelerate through to 2007, with a peak of 4.6 million additions over the next year. The International Data Corporation also forecasts strong growth for VoIP, projecting 27 million users to have subscribed by 2009 (see VoIP Gaining In Popularity).
Although cable’s share of the broadband market fell from 62% to 59% in 2004, the industry still remains the leading broadband platform. DSL and fibre offerings are increasing in penetration, with Strategy Analytics claiming that cable’s share slipped to 57% at the end of 2005, while the share for DSL and fibre offerings rose to 41%.
Cable is still expected to retain its dominance over DSL, however, with cable modem services projected to have 35 million customers in 2010, while DSL has a forecast 30 million, according to Strategy Analytics.
Turning to video, high definition (HD) TV sets look set to have a growing presence in the cable customer’s living rooms. According to estimates from Informa Telecoms & Media, HDTV is set for a massive uptake, with 106.2 million HDTV sets predicted to be in homes world-wide by 2010 (see HDTV To Reach 106.2 Million By 2010).
Video on demand (VoD) services are also expected to keep millions of cable customers happy, with cable firm Comcast claiming that through October 2005 more than one billion programmes had been viewed via its on-demand service.
Informa Telecoms & Media claims that VoD services will reach one third of homes world-wide by 2010, generating $10.7 billion in revenues (see VoD To Reach One Third Of Homes Worldwide By 2010).
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