Cable Operators See More Money in Business Services
TORONTO -- Major cable operators are stepping up efforts to capture sizable chunks of the commercial telecom services market and recruit more large companies as customers. Speaking at the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers Canadian conference last week, engineering executives from three major U.S. cable companies said they'll keep pouring more resources into business services initiatives in 2012, after strong growth over the past several years. They're investing more heavily in technologies, equipment, products, services and staffing for mid-sized and larger companies, following operators’ initial emphasis on small firms with 20 or fewer employees.
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For example, Comcast has just begun rolling out a hosted PBX service, known as Comcast Business Voice Edge, for firms with 50 to 250 employees in regions where the company has cable systems. Under this program, Comcast sells a wide variety of PBX functions in the cloud, served and backed up by its data centers in Los Angeles and Denver. The services and features include HD voice, unlimited nationwide calls and such unified communications features as one that lets employees mix and match phone calls and email messages at any location. Plans call for Comcast to roll out the program, now available in six markets in the Northeast and Chicago, throughout the rest of its U.S. footprint by the end of the year. The company began selling Metro Ethernet data service throughout its footprint less than a year ago, as part of a new pitch to mid-sized companies.
"Now we're really ramping [up] with Metro Ethernet,” said Raymond Celona, a senior vice president for Comcast’s national engineering and technical operations unit. “We really believe that it'll take us to the next level.” Comcast had $1.8 billion in 2011 commercial revenue, up more than 40 percent from 2010 and putting it in first place among U.S. cable operators. Seeking to boost its share of the elusive enterprise market, Comcast is looking at ways to team up with other cable operators to serve large firms that operate in markets beyond the reach of any one provider, Celona said. “We see opportunities across [multiple system operators] that we can collectively work on.” Comcast is seeking to develop more cloud-based services like its new hosted PBX service, Celona said.
Time Warner Cable is now reaping healthy dividends from its three-stage strategy of extending commercial services reach to new markets, said Executive Vice President Jim Ludington. Under this approach -- which he termed “more to same,” “same to more” and “more to more” -- Time Warner Cable has focused first on delivering additional services to its existing commercial customers, then extending those same services to a larger group of companies and now offering more services to an even bigger group of prospects. “It’s a major growth engine for us,” said Ludington, saying business services generated 40 percent of TWC’s Q4 growth.
Bright House Networks has prospered by expanding dedicated fiber lines and offering ethernet passive optical network (EPON) technology to firms, said Senior Vice President Jeff Chen. It’s now focusing on developing specialized video services for hotels in its prime Florida markets, just as Time Warner Cable is doing in some of its markets. “Business services are really transformational,” Chen said.
Two CableLabs officials spelled out the cable standards group’s efforts to craft new technical standards designed to aid the industry’s commercial services drive, speaking on another panel. The latest standard, known as DOCSIS Provisioning of EPON (or DPoE), calls for using DOCSIS network provisioning to deliver EPON technology over fiber lines. Curtis Knittle, director of digital video services for CableLabs, said 20 equipment and systems vendors have already participated in four rounds of preliminary interoperability testing. CableLabs aims to start reviewing DPoE equipment for cable use sometime this summer, he said.