What You Need To Know Now…
Is The Bloom Off The Global MSO Video Rose?
The European cable industry, like its U.S. counterpart, faces the challenge of striking the right strategic balance between its highly profitable broadband services and its more marginal video activities, warned David Mercer, vice president/Digital Consumer Practice at Strategy Analytics at this week’s Cable Congress in London. Pointing to a recent study in which cable subs gave their European providers a 66-percent satisfaction rating for broadband but only 37 percent for video, he noted operators face pressure to compete more effectively to win and retain multiplay customers. On this side of the pond, the 2012 American Consumer Satisfaction Index showed Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, CenturyLink and Charter rated pretty low when it came to customer satisfaction, some of it due to price hikes. ACSI founder Claes Fornell suggests MSOs need to improve reliability without upping prices – a tough balancing act in an economy in which monthly cable bills can rival those of energy utilities.
