Cable VoIP will provide the facilities-based phone competition so...
Cable VoIP will provide the facilities-based phone competition sought for so long, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, suggesting regulators would get out of the way rather than burden the incipient business. Policy-makers should maximize competition…
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between converging industries, dismantle traditional regulation and handle unanticipated consequences as they occur, Roberts said in an appearance overshadowed by his industry’s recent Western Show. “It’s got to be challenging for regulators all over the country, and certainly at the Federal Communications Commission, to figure things out,” with industry boundaries breaking down fast, he said. Comcast will test VoIP in 3 markets in 2004, “to take it from pretty good to world class,” Roberts said: “We're not interested in businesses that are me-too. Our goal is to take it to a place it hasn’t been before. So, rather than be first, we'd rather be unique.” Comcast will differentiate itself from telcos with inexpensive deals on 4 lines, since they don’t cost the provider more than one, and video enhancement of service comparable with instant messaging, Internet chat or voice mail, he said. As for video-on-demand, Comcast is using the PVR’s rise and vulnerability to pirates to pry licensing deals out of programmers, he said. “If I were a big content company, I would be looking at the music experience and saying the customer wants what they want, when they want it… We've had resistance from the content companies licensing video-on-demand. [But cable is] totally secure, never been hacked… We've been using that to compel content owners to license video-on-demand, which is going to happen because it’s so much in their interests.” Uptake has “been fantastic” in Philadelphia testing, he said. With 800,000 set-top boxes enabled, the company received 1 million orders the week before Roberts spoke, and 50% of the customers had used the service the previous 30 days, he said. Some 200 pay-per-view movies are available, although “they may be 90 days after Blockbuster” has them. But Comcast wants to charge for as little on-demand programming as possible, to differentiate itself from satellite, and offers 1,000 hours of TV shows at no extra cost, Roberts said.