Despite claims that broadband is not eroding Time Warner Cable’s cable television business, the nation’s second largest cable operator has begun a “TV Everywhere” trial to expand broadband viewing options for “authenticated cable subscribers” and plans IPTV tests by the end of this year.

A “small number” of subscribers are now participating in the TV Everywhere trial in the New York City area, accessing premium channel content online, if they also subscribe to the channel.

James Manchester, regional president of network operations and engineering in the company’s New York City system told Broadcasting & Cable that the tests will verify whether the authentication process functions properly.

Manchester expressed urgency that unless Time Warner Cable moves to manage video content online, the company will continue to lose subscribers.

He told B&C cable’s erosion of video subscribers, at a time when digital voice and broadband subscriptions continue to grow, makes it essential to move to more of an IPTV environment.

“It’s no secret that we’re losing video subscribers as an industry,” he said. “We can’t afford to wait.”

Time Warner Cable sees challenges from several potential competitive threats:

• Online video: Services like Hulu and Netflix, and time-shifting services that allow viewers access to on-demand programming online represent a real threat to the traditional cable-TV model.  Customers can cut the cable cord and watch everything online for free or for around $10 a month.
• IPTV: Niche and ethnic programming delivered over IPTV networks allows third parties to create mini broadband-based cable systems using hardware that mimics a cable box, delivering potentially dozens of channels to subscribers without giving a cut to the cable company.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Skyangel IPTV.flv[/flv]

SkyAngel used to deliver its lineup of Christian television channels over satellite, but switched to an IPTV platform in 2007.  This video explains how the service works.  (3 minutes)

TV Everywhere allows Time Warner Cable to control who has access to cable programming, restricting it only to those who haven’t cut cable’s cord.

Time Warner Cable’s solution for IPTV competition is to bring those services under TWC’s own menu of offerings.

One example in KyLin TV, a multi-channel Chinese language IPTV service.  Today, customers pay KyLin TV for service they watch over Road Runner’s network.  But Time Warner Cable could potentially get a piece of the action if it moved KyLin TV into its own IPTV package.

Manchester says TWC would like to be able to make such IPTV programming services an extension of the TWC offering.

Despite some earlier assertions made by company officials that DOCSIS 3 upgrades were designed to improve broadband service for Time Warner Cable customers, it turns out DOCSIS 3 is the foundation for the cable company’s future IPTV and “big pipe” platform.  Manchester says DOCSIS 3 will enable the company to service the wired home of the future.  It will deliver content to an edge device (such as an advanced router) with a hard drive and caching capacity that will link to home computers, MP3 players, or any other device on which consumers want to view content.

Time Warner Cable's DOCSIS 3 service is marketed as "wideband"

Time Warner Cable has made its DOCSIS 3 wideband broadband service its star at the 2010 Cable Show in Los Angeles.  Demonstrating up to 290Mbps service, company officials are suddenly excited about the prospect of delivering 21st century broadband speeds just one year after foot-dragging their way through upgrade plans for their cable systems nationwide.

Time Warner Cable has been among the slowest to deliver channel-bonded broadband service to its residential customers.  Currently marketed mostly in areas where Time Warner faces competition from Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-verse, DOCSIS 3 upgrades deliver faster speed tiers to its customers and reduce congestion.  At the top end, Time Warner residential customers can purchase 50/5Mbps service for just under $100 a month.  Because of its premium price tag, the company hasn’t had too many takers.  As of the fourth quarter of last year, just 2,000 customers signed up.  But the trends are clear — if the price comes down, adoption rates will increase.

For business customers, the price isn’t cheap either.  In Cincinnati, for example, Time Warner business customers face $350 a month for 50/5Mbps service.  Contrast that with Comcast in San Francisco, which charges businesses $189 a month for the same thing.

If Time Warner Cable is as enthusiastic about wideband as it suggested during this year’s Cable Show, it should be firing up its upgrade plans to deliver the service to all of its customers and attempt some new marketing that brings service at a more aggressive price.

In New York, Time Warner Cable’s DOCSIS 3 upgrades have so far skipped cities like Rochester, which faces only token competition from Frontier Communications’ DSL service.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TWC 2010 Cable Show – Chief Marketing Officer Sam Howe.flv[/flv]

Time Warner Cable employees and chief marketing officer Sam Howe fall all over themselves, ecstatic with Time Warner Cable’s wideband broadband service, in this company-produced video taken at the 2010 Cable Show in Los Angeles.  (4 minutes)

Arris WBM760 DOCSIS 3 Cable Modem

Time Warner Cable is demonstrating 290Mbps downstream coupled with 90Mbps upstream broadband in its booth at the 2010 Cable Show in Los Angeles.  A Time Warner Cable insider told CED magazine it was the first public showing of the company’s ability to provide faster service outside of a lab environment.

The new high speeds are achieved using DOCSIS 3 technology which can bond multiple “channels” on a cable system together to create additional bandwidth.

The demonstration relies on an Arris CMTS and cable modems manufactured by both Arris and Motorola, which are connected to Time Warner’s Los Angeles cable headend.

CED notes Time Warner Cable has plenty of room for broadband speed growth.

The company is achieving the speeds using 8 x 4 channel bonding. With TWC’s top tier rated at 50/5 Mbps, the demo shows speed increases of greater than fivefold on the downstream and 18-fold on the upstream.

The TWC engineer compared the MSO’s achievement with the 300 Mbps that Bell Labs demonstrated on DSL recently.

“What they’ve got is something in the lab that goes 10 feet, and what we’re showing is live from our headend 22 miles away. We can compete (using) DOCSIS,” he observed.

Such developments are all part of a larger company plan to develop and market additional services the nation’s second largest cable operator can upsell to its customers.  For now, 290Mbps service is more theoretical than practical at Time Warner Cable’s likely pricing.  But it illustrates cable remains technologically ahead of what most phone companies can deliver over non-fiber-to-the-home networks.

MediaPost’s MediaDailyNews reports Time Warner Cable is about to begin market testing a new super-deluxe package that moves beyond the “Triple Play” packages common in the cable industry today.  Targeting wealthy, premium cable customers, Time Warner’s new “Homesuite” service would include all the bells and whistles:

• Multiple DVRs for several rooms in the house, with can eventually be connected together to let you start a recorded show in one room and finish it in another;
• A full range of premium channels at a bundled discount price;
• Faster DOCSIS-3 broadband with free Wi-Fi in and outside the home;
• Enhanced digital phone service, perhaps with more calling features;
• Concierge-like customer service, which could allow Homesuite customers to jump to the front of the queue for everything from service installation, repair and customer service.

Other options might include access to Time Warner’s wireless mobile broadband (rebranded Clearwire service), extended hours for service calls, discounts on pay per view, more deluxe set top boxes, and in some areas, even home security systems.

For Chief Operating Officer Landel Hobbs, the idea of selling $100 a month Triple Play package promotions just isn’t good enough anymore.  Time Warner Cable, MediaPost speculates, is now looking at $250 a month as a potential target price for Homesuite clients.

Time Warner Cable customers in Charlotte, North Carolina will be the first guinea pigs for super premium cable.  Are there enough customers around in Charlotte to pony up $250 a month for service?

TWC has conducted a customer “segmentation” study allowing it to identify opportunities for up-selling. “Our analysis indicates that certain of our large and profitable customer segments continue to hold substantial untapped opportunity,” Hobbs said earlier this year.

TWC says in a recent government filing that it’s likely to continue to lose video subscribers, but is expecting to make up for it by persuading customers to take DVR service, premium channels and other add-ons.

Charlotte is a key market for TWC — a Time Warner Cable Arena is located in the city center. After launching there, “Homesuite” would presumably then roll out in other TWC principal areas, which include Ohio, New York, Southern California and Texas. The working “Homesuite” moniker could be altered.

Verizon FiOS has upped the ad war against Comcast, one of its competitors in several northeastern cities.  In a new series of ads, Verizon is taking on Comcast’s “name change” to Xfinity, implying it’s the same old Comcast just using a new name.

Comcast may be fighting back, but not with a response ad.  Today, Broadband Reports hears word from a Comcast insider the company is planning on boosting broadband speeds later this year.

According to the source, the new Comcast tiers will be 12/2 Mbps, 20/4 Mbps, 50/10 Mbps, and 100/25 Mbps. Current 22/5 customers will be grandfathered, according to the source, and Comcast apparently hopes to get that 100 Mbps tier into about 20% of their footprint this year.

Comcast’s current speeds differ depending on whether you’re in a DOCSIS 3.0 upgraded market or not. Non DOCSIS 3.0 market customers currently have the choice of three tiers: 6/1 Mbps, 8/2 Mbps, and 16/2 Mbps. DOCSIS 3.0 upgraded markets have their choice of 12/2 Mbps, 16/2 Mbps, 22/5 Mbps, or 50/10 Mbps.  Much later this year it looks like Comcast users will also start seeing some faster upstream speeds.

Verizon FiOS has the capability to beat Comcast’s broadband speeds over its entirely-fiber-based network, but not everyone can sign up for FiOS.  Comcast may not want to give away the broadband speed store in areas where the now indefinitely-grounded FiOS service will never go.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/FiOS Takes On Xfinitiy.flv[/flv]

Comcast’s new Xfinity brand is the target of a new round of advertising from Verizon FiOS.  (2 minutes)

AT&T has announced it is bringing its U-verse broadband, telephone, and television system to Springfield, Missouri providing residents an alternative to cable service from Mediacom.

“We’re very excited to offer a competitive choice to Springfield consumers,” said Kris Ryan, general manager of AT&T Home Solutions for the greater Missouri region.

Unfortunately, most Springfield residents will have to wait before the service becomes available in their neighborhood.  AT&T has only limited service available in Springfield, Battlefield, Nixa, Republic and parts of Fremont Hills.  The company has a tradition of announcing U-verse, and then slowly deploying service on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis over the next several years.

Potential customers noticed, complaining that entire zip codes in and around the Springfield area currently do not have U-verse available.

When the service does arrive, residents can expect pricing ranging from $19 – $167 a month, depending on how many channels and what type of broadband speed is desired.

Mediacom can beat AT&T’s broadband speeds in Springfield, as it upgraded to DOCSIS 3 service, permitting customers to get up to 50Mbps service from the cable company. AT&T’s U-verse tops out at 18Mbps in the Springfield area.

Residents can check to see if U-verse is available at their address by visiting the AT&T U-verse qualification website.

[flv width=”360″ height=”260″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KSFX Springfield ATT Launches U-verse in the Ozarks 3-22-10.flv[/flv]

KSFX-TV in Springfield reports on the unveiling of U-verse in the greater Springfield area.  (1 minute)