Cable Wants to Cut the Cord

skatephat420 writes "Wired News has featured an article on how "the cable industry wants you to chuck your cable -- at least when you're outside the house. The addition of a fourth wireless component to the cable package is now affectionately known as the 'quadruple play.'" With this addition to the standard package of voice, video and data, how long is it going to take DSL to compete?"

Comments

Battle of the Elephants: Wireless vs. Telcos.

[Ohmster]

The "quadruple play" is already a well understood investment play on Wall Street over the last few months. The big battle ahead is cable and what used to be the regional telcos. They're both arming themselves with everything they can think of, including faster and faster, two-way broadband, internet telephony, cellular and broadband wireless services, along with hundreds of content channels...and each side is committing to spend billions to do it. What investors are trying to understand is who remains standing with a semblance of a profitable business at the end of it. Each side is desperately trying not to end up being a "dumb pipe", but have a valuable "walled garden" of services to keep customers paying $50, 100 or more per month per household. Someone is going to end up losing these multi-billion dollar bets. More here: http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/07/on_wilting_wire.htm l

Verizon has come out of nowhere

[tkrotchko]

A few years ago, I thought Verizon was cooked. Long distance was dead, and they were not one of the leaders in wireless, and DSL has always been a bit of a joke outside of heavily populated areas.

But in the Washington DC area, we've seen in the past few years:

1) Verizon Wireless has become one of the leaders for voice.
2) Verizon Wireless offers their 1X service which gives 90-110K web service in most areas of the country
3) in metro areas their EVDO service is now offering mid-speed internet access
4) They still offer DSL
5) In the Washington DC area, they're rolling FIOS out to everybody, far beyond their DSL offering, and they're spending money faster than I've seen anybody short of the military spend money on this rollout. Its amazing.
6) In the process of this rollout, they're getting rid of 40 year old copper infrastructure.
7) Using this fiber they'll be offering increasing video services that strike right at the heart of the cable companies.

Seriously, Comcast should be scared. They looked to be in the driver's seat 3 years ago, but Verizon has come on strong and now Comcast has to come up with an answer. Maybe they'll even start offering decent help desk and helpful employees.

Nah. I think they'd rather go out of businss.