Cable industry needs smarter pipes, not just faster ones

The cable industry has “grown like hell” because it has the fastest broadband pipes but speed is not enough and cable operators need to have the most intelligent pipes, too. That is according to Dr Manuel Cubero, the CEO at

Kabel Deutschland and CCO for Vodafone Germany. His company is already working on some smart home applications with housing associations in Germany and wants to become ever-more useful to consumers, like telling us where to find goods that we need.

The immediate priority, when it comes to delivering intelligence rather than just speed, is fixed/mobile convergence, Cubero told the gathered cable industry at Cable Congress last week. Having added cable assets like Kabel Deutschland to its business, Vodafone is now trying to sell mobile to its fixed broadband customers and broadband to mobile customers, and the company is confident the combination of DOCSIS 3.1 and 4G is winner, with 5G still to come.

Eric Tveter, the CEO for Central Europe Group at Liberty Global, also highlighted the importance of fixed/mobile convergence to the future of cable. And, referring to calls from the media agency Omnicom Media Group for cable operators to invest seriously in harnessing rich data that will originate from their homes, Tveter pointed to the advanced advertising group that will roll-out addressable and interactive advertising across the Liberty Global territories. This will make use of customer data in a privacy complaint manner.