The cable industry’s commercial services
initiatives, which remain healthy revenue generators, are evolving
toward bigger — but not the biggest — customers.
Last week, Comcast announced that its Ethernet
services is targeting organizations with as many as 500 employees,
which is a shift upward from its previous sweet spot of 20 or fewer
employees. Kevin O’Toole, the senior vice president of product
management and strategy for Comcast Business Services, says the
announcement was intended to call attention to change that has been
in the field for some time.
The cable industry has long
been a significant player in the commercial services business, and
Ethernet-based services are an element of those initiatives.
According to Vertical Systems Group, last year Cox was the fourth
largest and Time Warner Cable the seventh largest domestic provider
of business Ethernet services.
However, the industry as a whole has tended to focus
on very small customers. The move suggested by the Comcast update
last week, and the significant and growing presences of carriers
such as Charter and Cablevision — through Optimum Lightpath —
suggest that the general trend is for operators to provide services
to somewhat larger organizations.
Within the big picture of
business services, there are a good number of subtleties between
service offerings and MSO strategies. Some operators, observes
Vertical Principal and Co-Founder Rosemary Cochran, are more engaged
than others. “There are some who have dabbled but not made a major
play, or are doing wholesale but not out knocking on doors and
competing,” she says. “If the operator has an enterprise group, it’s
an indication they are moving to make it work” at the retail level.
Complete story at
http://broadbandgear.net/2011/05/cable-business-services-are-moving-up-in-size/
