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A recent article chronicles the telcos' slow start in cable TV. I don't think the telcos stand a chance of succeeding in cable TV. Instead, if they're to succeed at all, they'll probably buy or form alliances with existing cablecos. (Dale Hatfield put it most memorably when he said, "Duopoly is an optimistic assumption.") But they'd better start swimming, because the times are a changing; I think four things will make the video entertainment space different in the near future: new devices, RSS, faster than real-time downloads and the end of the Kontent Kartel. Here's an article I wrote last year for VON Magazine (November 2006, Page 64) about that:

"If telco and cableco executives don't pay attention to blogs, they risk being slide-ruled out of the next generation of TV. At one cableco I know, the senior managers are all, "Blogs, shmogs, what's that Internet hippie stuff got to do with us?" They don't keep a blog, they don't read blogs and they don't listen to podcasts. They don't understand how podcasts evolved from blogs, or how this could have anything to do with them."

By David Isenberg, Principal Prosultant(sm), isen.com, LLC. Visit the blog maintained by David Isenberg here.

Related topics: Broadband, IPTV, Telecom