April 10, 2013, 12:01 am
Arming Cable Against the Open Internet
By QUENTIN HARDY
NY Times
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/arming-cable-against-the-open-internet/
Cable television companies are distressed about how quickly Internet and
mobile viewing are stealing customers. Now, technology firms want to
sell them ways to offer the personal choice of mobile, while justifying
the goodies that come to someone who pays for a subscription.
Companies as diverse as Cisco Systems, known for enterprise networking
equipment, and Adobe, with its origins in graphics, are working closely
with cable companies and other broadcasters to deal with competition
from Internet broadcasting. They don’t want people to stop watching
video on their phones, or away from their living room boxes, but they do
want to control it.
“All the cable companies recognize that there is a fundamental shift in
video consumption, driven by device proliferation and broadband over the
air,” said Jeremy Helfand, vice president for video at Adobe. “They have
gone from a fear of cannibalizing their business to looking for
opportunities for revenue growth.”
What the cable providers do not have is a strong background in managing
people across many different devices, or creating an Internet experience
that is attractive for the extras it offers subscribers.
“Our customers are all contending with the cloud,” said Marthin de Beer,
the head of Cisco’s video and collaboration group. “Netflix, YouTube,
Hulu, Apple TV — all of these ‘over the top’ video companies don’t own a
network, they ride on top of other people’s networks.”
As a result, he said, the cable companies, which count on subscriber
income to sustain their networks, “are stepping up, delivering a lot of
new experiences to slow down the cord-cutting.”
Cisco offers connections into the network, through devices like mobile
phones or tablets, that enable cable customers to watch shows anywhere,
record programs to watch when they return home or get extras not
available with standard shows. People will still connect their mobile
devices over the Internet, but with a separate log-in that will have
access to the benefits.
Later this year Cox, the large cable provider, will offer its
subscribers a mobile app with access to 40,000 hours of content from the
Cox library. Subscribers to premium services like HBO will be able to
open the HBO app within the Cox app, where they can get extras like maps
of the lands in “Game of Thrones.” The idea is to keep viewers inside
the Cox environment as much as possible. Cisco has to manage all the
rights and security through its network.
“We’re interested in what customers are telling us is important,” said
Len Barlik, Cox’s chief product officer. “It boils down to making the
experience more personal, at home or outside. They view it as their
content.”
Cox is also testing a high-speed wireless service over metropolitan
areas, available to its Internet subscribers. Cisco hopes eventually to
offer premium subscribers faster wireless speeds and better video
quality, depending on what they pay.
Much of this is possible now for a number of reasons. Last year Cisco
paid $5 billion for NDS, a maker of software for cable systems, which it
has incorporated with its network security and authorization products.
Perhaps more important, cable companies are feeling the heat like never
before; Mr. de Beer said 10 million people watched the most recent Super
Bowl on devices like personal computers, phones and tablets.
On Wednesday at the National Association of Broadcasters’ video trade
show in Las Vegas, Adobe is introducing Adobe Primetime, a TV platform
for programmers and cable companies. Comcast and NBC Sports have been
working with Adobe on it.
Adobe entered the online marketing and Web analytics business with its
acquisition of Omniture in 2009, and also provides the plumbing for lots
of over-the-top video through its flash technology. Primetime is an
effort to track online video viewing the way Web surfing is watched, and
includes personalized ads.
“Cable proved that people will pay for video and tolerate ads,” Mr.
Helfand said. On Internet videos, he said, “the ad experience of
prerolls interferes with the experience.”
As with Cisco, Adobe’s most valuable offering to cable providers is
management of all the different traffic, since different device
configurations and operating systems, like Google’s Android and Apple’s
iOS, have different requirements. Like Cisco, Adobe offers a subscriber
authentication system, as well as ways to segment audiences, and serve
different ads in live, on-demand and streaming shows over mobile devices.
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