5 - 7 March 2013: The Lancaster Hotel, London

Cable can succeed in ‘unstoppable’ move to web-based TV

(Lucerne, 16 February) The cable industry is well-placed to succeed in the evolving market of on-demand viewing, in spite of the threat posed to the sector from ‘Over The Top’ content providers such as Google TV, a panel of industry experts told delegates at Cable Congress today.

During the session Donagh O’Malley, Head of Partnerships at YouTube, said he did not think that the launch of Google TV would not herald a wave of ‘cord-cutting’ among European cable consumers: “We haven’t done a great job of explaining the value proposition of Google TV. GoogleTV does not substitute cable and nor is it a content service. What we do is connect consumers to content and this is where we can collaborate.”

Asked whether OTT posed a threat to cable, Manuel Kohnstamm, President, Cable Europe, said that he was confident that the cable industry would benefit as consumers move towards more web-based viewing. “We’ve lived through decades of equilibrium between pay- and ad-driven TV models and we’ll find a new equilibrium again. When Telenet launched its Yelo streaming iPad service in December we got declarations of love from our customers. This is what we need to do: make our customers so happy that they prefer to keep our service.”

Rodrigo Costa, Chief Executive Officer, Zon added: “The move towards web-based television is unstoppable and we believe it’s important to give customers what they want, whether it’s YouTube, Flickr or anything else, otherwise they will just go elsewhere. Our first priority is to make sure we have our own fantastic interface with our customers and
continue playing the broker role as best we can.”

Giving the perspective from the content industry, Paul Robinson, Chief Executive Officer, KidsCo, played down the impact he thought OTT would have on the content industry in the short term. “Linear TV still represents 95% of our business: the important thing for us is that we also have non-linear rights, streamed rights and mobile rights: these won’t generate huge revenues from day one, but we have to do this to play in that space.”

Offering a technology vendor viewpoint, Bob Stanzione, Chief Executive Officer, Arris, said “I believe cable has the upper hand in delivering this cornucopia of services we know people will want in the future if they invest now and if they move quickly: I think they are doing that.”

For more information, please contact:
Gregg Svingen
Director of Communications
M: +32 476 490 603
E: [email protected]

About Cable Europe
Cable Europe is a trade association that groups all leading broadband cable TV operators and their
national associations throughout Europe. The aim of Cable Europe is to promote and defend the
industry’s policies and business interests at European and international levels, and to foster
cooperation among its members. The European cable TV industry services more than 94 million
broadband, TV and telephony subscriptions throughout the EU 27 (around 70 million households).
www.cable-europe.eu

Cable Europe Members
National Cable Associations of Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, The Netherlands,
Belgium, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and Czech Republic

Download the Press Release (PDF): Cable_can_succeed_in_unstoppable_move_to_web-based_TV