Telecompetitor: DirecTV Proves Triple Play is NOT King!

This is a fairly old post by Telecompetitor but I was prompted to go back to it upon reading this in the WSJ – DirecTV bucks recession. The WSJ post by Roger Cheng says:

There are longer-term fears that DirecTV’s lack of a physical line into homes will ultimately prove a hindrance as more people watch TV on the Web, a claim the company dismisses. For now, not having a physical infrastructure is considered an advantage.

The cable providers have to deal with losing market share in TV customers, while the telecom companies are losing traditional landline customers. DirecTV doesn’t have a legacy business, and only has to worry about TV, which is benefiting from more consumers staying home.

The cable providers and telcos offering video are threatened to some degree by online video. NetFlix has also reported increased subscriptions because of their streaming service. The MSOs are deploying metered broadband t counter the threat.

DirecTV and Dish Network may be a in a position to distinguish themselves by combining their DBS service with Video On Demand & Online Video over Broadband connections.  The bandwidth challenges being faced today are two-fold:

1. Cable Providers have a challenge with the amount of bandwidth available to them on their cable plants.

2. Metering on the DOCSIS (which uses a different frequency range compared to Broadcast in cable plants) by the MSOs or just plain lack of decent bandwidth

With a hybrid service offering described above DirecTV may be poised to be a bigger threat to the cable providers (and also to Telcos with Wired Video solutions)  and a great consumer platform!

Disclaimer: I do not have DirecTV or Dish service at my home, neither do I own stock as of this posting and I am not working on any project related to DirecTV and Dish Networks.

Advertisement