Welcome to the broadband and cable news roundup, Hump Day edition.
Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) has received "unsolicited interest" in the former Bresnan Communications cable systems in the Midwestern U.S. that the MSO bought in 2010 for US$1.36 billion, Cablevision President and CEO Jim Dolan said Wednesday on the company's third-quarter earnings call, an acknowledgement that comes about three weeks after The Wall Street Journal reported it. "While it has not been our intention to divest this valuable asset, based on the approaches that we have received, we've decided to explore a potential transaction," Dolan added. Those systems, now referred to as Optimum West, serve about 360,000 subs in pockets of Montana, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. Charter Communications Inc. , an MSO now led by former Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge, is among the parties rumored to be interested in buying those systems. (See Cablevision Might Sell Country, Stay Rock 'n' Roll and Cablevision Goes Country With Bresnan Buy.)
On the financial end, Cablevision posted a third-quarter loss of $3.8 million (1 cent per share) on revenues of $1.69 billion. Cablevision lost 9,600 video subs in the quarter, about half of what it lost in the year-ago period, but gained 28,000 high-speed Internet customers and 22,000 voice subs.
Dish Network LLC (Nasdaq: DISH) Chairman Charlie Ergen is speculating again … about his own company. On the company's third-quarter call Wednesday, Ergen said a merger between Dish and rival satellite TV company DirecTV Group Inc. (NYSE: DTV) would be a "doable deal under the current circumstances," but said no such discussions were underway, reports Multichannel News. Regulators denied an attempted DirecTV-Dish/EchoStar merger in 2002. Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. analyst Craig Moffett suggested in a research note that Dish's recent struggles would grease the skids. "Dish's weak results in the core business are in fact a selling point to regulators for a merger with a much stronger DirecTV," Moffett wrote.
Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) is pitching free Xbox gaming consoles to new triple-play subscribers in a Holiday subscriber acquisition campaign being run in tandem with Best Buy. TW Cable is also throwing in free DVR service for one year (minus the equipment fee) and five premium movie channels (HBO, Cinemax, Starz, Showtime and The Movie Channel). The MSO, which lost 140,000 residential video subs in the third quarter, is running the promo through Jan. 5, 2013. (See TW Cable Misses Q3 Targets .)
Paul Shaneck, Global Director Network Solutions for Symantec, discusses the evolving virtualized network, explaining how Symantec is leading the security discussion as it relates to SDN and NFV, and helping to ensure the network is protected and compliant.
Intel's Sandra Rivera discusses network transformation and how Intel technologies, programs, and standards body efforts have helped the industry migration to SDN and NFV.
With the ETSI-approved Distributed NFV PoC running in the background, RAD's CEO, Dror Bin, talks about why D-NFV makes compelling sense for service providers, and about the dollars and cents RAD is putting behind D-NFV.
Cyan's Planet Orchestrate allows service providers and their end-customers to activate software-based capabilities such as firewalls and encryption on top of existing Ethernet services in just minutes.
Kontron and ISV partner Vantrix demonstrate high-performance video transcoding and data analytic solutions on same 2U standard platform that is ready for SDN and NFV deployments made by mobile, cable and cloud operators.
At Huawei's Global Analysts Summit in Shenzhen, China, Steven C. Hawley from TV Strategies speaks to us about the evolving role of hybrid video for competitive success.
Justin van der Lande from Analysys Mason shares with us his views on how telecom operators can leverage customer asset monetization with big data. His discusses the current status of big data applications and the challenges and opportunities for telecom operators in the digital economy era.
Mobile and internet are becoming intertwined; IT and CT are integrating; and leading CSPs have begun to transform to information service and entertainment providers. How should the BSS system evolve to enable this transformation? Karl Whitelock, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, shares his views.
Paul Shaneck, Global Director Network Solutions for Symantec, discusses the evolving virtualized network, explaining how Symantec is leading the security discussion as it relates to SDN and NFV, and helping to ensure the network is protected and compliant.
Intel's Sandra Rivera discusses network transformation and how Intel technologies, programs, and standards body efforts have helped the industry migration to SDN and NFV.
With the ETSI-approved Distributed NFV PoC running in the background, RAD's CEO, Dror Bin, talks about why D-NFV makes compelling sense for service providers, and about the dollars and cents RAD is putting behind D-NFV.
Cyan's Planet Orchestrate allows service providers and their end-customers to activate software-based capabilities such as firewalls and encryption on top of existing Ethernet services in just minutes.
Kontron and ISV partner Vantrix demonstrate high-performance video transcoding and data analytic solutions on same 2U standard platform that is ready for SDN and NFV deployments made by mobile, cable and cloud operators.
At Huawei's Global Analysts Summit in Shenzhen, China, Steven C. Hawley from TV Strategies speaks to us about the evolving role of hybrid video for competitive success.
Justin van der Lande from Analysys Mason shares with us his views on how telecom operators can leverage customer asset monetization with big data. His discusses the current status of big data applications and the challenges and opportunities for telecom operators in the digital economy era.
Mobile and internet are becoming intertwined; IT and CT are integrating; and leading CSPs have begun to transform to information service and entertainment providers. How should the BSS system evolve to enable this transformation? Karl Whitelock, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, shares his views.
As new site acquisition becomes more difficult, Orange Tunisia has requested multi-band antenna to support UMTS and LTE innovation. Some things considered include reducing the cost of antenna maintenance and having high reliability antenna and EasyRET solution.
Tony Conlan, Global CTO of RAN, Telefonica, shares his opinion on antennas in LTE network deployment: Tower space is the premier requirement on antennas; reliability is important to reduce OPEX; and EasyRET solution will be helpful for antenna maintenance.
With the development of LTE, tower space and load are limited for new antenna, but users' capacity requirements are growing fast. To provide a better MBB experience, Panya Vechbanyongratana from dtac Thailand shared his experiences and antenna requirements.
To save this item to your list of favorite Light Reading content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
(0) | 
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Tweet This