In Los Angeles, the venerable ET was entirely subsumed. The Cable Show, once upon a time devoted almost exclusively to programming concerns, is now equally about the technology, leading to the occasional grumble that the show has been overrun by vendors. Well, yes. In fact, The Cable Show would be a far-diminished spectacle without the […]
BACK OFFICE TRANSFORMATION – OSS/BSS: Building the Perfect Beast
Every communications service provider must consolidate operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) in order to start providing new services, plain and simple. The ideal would be to take the many separate systems most CSPs have and combine them into something that would far exceed the capabilities of the constituent elements. Sadly, OSS […]
IN PERSPECTIVE – Hedge Your Bets
3-D cannot make a sucky movie better (“Avatar” notwithstanding) The first movie I saw in 3-D was “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” I jumped when one of the actors fired a harpoon into the audience. It was the first interesting thing to happen in that film, and also the last. Another big wave of 3-D […]
CED Person of the Year – Tom Rutledge: Taking care of business
New York City is where all of the major broadcast networks are headquartered. It’s home to two of the country’s three biggest newspapers. Headline-sucking media titans such as Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone hold court there. All of which is why a low-key guy like Tom Rutledge, CED’s 2010 Person of the Year, can quietly […]
Remembrance of Things Future
Anybody can remember what happened last year. But remembering what’s going to happen next year? Even Google fails. But that’s never stopped us. This year we’ll see a lot of trial activity in on-demand advertising, perhaps even some limited commercial introductions. But targeted advertising can’t get really big in 2010, given the relatively low distribution […]
IN PERSPECTIVE – App Stores for Cable
I predicted an App Store champion would arise in the cable industry in 2010, but it looks like Patrick Knorr showed up early In the last 10 years, cable has rapidly and successfully expanded its scope into broadband and telephony. In response, the consumer electronics industry has been developing devices to take advantage of cable […]