FiOS vs. Time Warner Cable SignatureHome: A Fair Fight, Long Overdue - Shelly Palmer - MediaBizBloggers

During his State of the Union address in 1930 President Herbert Hoover said quotCompetition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer but is the incentive to progressquot He was talking about railroads but he might as well have been talking about the cable television businessMy cable bill has been a grudge payment for my entire adult life The bill keeps going up the product stays marginal and the term quotcustomer servicequot is an oxymoron It is fair to say I hate my cable television provider with a passion I just hate them less than I hate the other quotcompetitivequot options available to meWhat are my competitive options Well another cable provider that offers fewer services at a lower price which is not realistic Or a rooftop antenna for free overtheair TV or satellite television Neither are actual options because I live in an apartment building and do not have access to the roof So in practice there is one cable television option My cable provider enjoys a de facto monopoly and I hate themWith no competition in the marketplace my cable television provider was able to sit back relax and take my money Until 2005 there was absolutely no reason to think about improving anything No pressure to evolve Sure they had to come up with the triple play video voice and data to keep satellite television from taking too many subs but they didn39t improve the video product or the data product In fact the success of the triple play had the opposite effect The service actually degraded because of the number of consumers contending for the limited amount of available bandwidth2005 was an interesting year That39s the year that Verizon launched FiOS in Keller Texas It changed everything FiOS is real competition for the cable industry Pundits and subject matter experts questioned whether Verizon39s leadership was of sound mind and body when they announced what they were going to spend to create a quotnetwork for the next centuryquot But build it they did FiOS is a stunning technical achievement and it is way way better than anything the cable television industry has ever offered until nowUnless you live under a pile of old hard drives you have probably seen thousands of commercials for FiOS The network passes over 12 million homes and they have signed up over 3 million customers It39s big it39s real and most importantly it is quotrealquot competition for the cable industryHas cable noticed You bet they have FiOS is growing fast What will cable do Can it possibly compete with a fiberoptic network built for the 21st centuryDOCSIS is an abbreviation for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification and if you have a cable modem in your home it is almost certainly a DOCSIS 2 modem They are cheap and more than good enough for captive ignorant consumers who don39t know any better DOCSIS 2 is nowhere near as fast or flexible as FiOS It wasn39t designed to be So with very little marketing effort FiOS could tell a speed and power story that decimated the cable competitionHowever the cable industry has had a notsosecret weapon ready since before FiOS was announced DOCSIS 3While everyone likes to talk about the speed of fiberoptic networks like FiOS the practical matter is that a DOCSIS 3 modem can deliver comparable speeds over the existing cable infrastructure The cable guys could have installed this system in your home before FiOS even got to your neighborhood But they didn39t have to You didn39t know you needed it and they were under no evolutionary pressure to provide better serviceThis is all changedRemember December 8 2010 It39s the day that Time Warner Cable publicly admitted that it was no longer a de facto monopoly and launched SignatureHome a connected living experience that rivals FiOS featureforfeature and benefitforbenefit I am happy to report that New York City now has two real competitive connected living experiences FiOS and SignatureHomeSignatureHome goes even farther than just a broadband speed and quality video story Time Warner Cable has acknowledged that there are a plurality of devices in your life that need to be connected and they want SignatureHome to be the center of your connected life So much so that customer service and custom installations are its central focus They are offering a premium product at a premium price It39s not a cable package it is a premium service that is designed get everything in your life connectedWhich begs for the question Is this the right competitive approach FiOS is great fast and less expensive Time Warner SignatureHome is already mostly installed and requires a simple phone call for the upgrade and up to three hours of Time Warner SignatureHome technicians hanging out in your house to hook you upOddly enough the answer doesn39t matter The important thing is that consumers in Time Warner CableFiOS markets now have a real choice of services that can be compared and considered Oh but wait what about people who can39t afford a premium connected living service and are stuck in Time Warner Cable budgetpriced hell My guess is that with two competitive infrastructures in the marketplace the story will actually have a happy endingWith all of the talk about oligopolies and monopolies national broadband plans and net neutrality there is one small beacon of hope quotCompetition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer but is the incentive to progressquot Thanks President HooverShelly Palmer is the host of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer a daily show featuring news you can use about technology media ampamp entertainment He is the author of Television Disrupted The Transition from Network to Networked TV 2008 New York House Press and the upcoming Get Digital Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy 2009 Lake House Press Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts ampamp Sciences NY the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards For information about Get Digital Classes visit httpwwwshellypalmercomseminars Watch Digital Life with Shelly Palmer Tuesdays at 10p ET on WNBC39s NY Nonstop httpwwwshellypalmercomdigitallifeRead all Shelly39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Shelly Palmer ReportCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBlogger

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FiOS vs. Time Warner Cable SignatureHome: A Fair Fight, Long Overdue - Shelly Palmer - MediaBizBloggers

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