European Cable research

Eurocable: a new research on the European cable industry, made by Yankee Group and Cisco, has been presented. In input, the study highlights that networks will converge onto an IP network, that the European consumer broadband subscription growth will slow down from 32% to 16% in 2008, and cable ARPU will decline to €23/mo by 2008. Beyond the current speed-price battle, mainly with DSL offerings, to gain broadband market share, and the introduction of innovative services such as video IP telephony, advanced video services and home networking, the cable industry has to enter the “service battle”. "The key challenge for European cable operators is in identifying and prioritizing the business and technology issues that need to be addressed to realize this future," said Boyd Peterson, Yankee Group. "For cable operators, the service differentiation they need to stay ahead of the competition is going to require greater intelligence in the network.”

In addition, the report discusses key technologies such as the PacketCable Multimedia framework and the Wideband protocol for DOCSIS, a new technology pioneered by Cisco.