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 .)
Jerome Tollet, CTO at Qosmos, explains how network equipment vendors and operators deploying SDN and NFV can take advantage of network intelligence delivered by DPI to strengthen products and services.
Wind River VP of Product Management, Glenn Seiler, takes a look the industry's first and only complete NFV software platform designed specifically for the unique carrier-grade and high-performance needs of telecom networks.
Steven Shalita, VP of Marketing, NetScout Systems, Inc., discusses the challenges cable/MSO operators face in assuring the delivery of new IP-based services. Key points include the value of proactively managing performance, and using rich analytics and operational intelligence to better understand service and usage trends, make smarter business decisions and ...
At Mobile World Congress, Gigamon's Director of Service Provider Solutions, Andy Huckridge, and Heavy Reading Analyst Sarah Wallace discuss the 'big data' issues facing carriers and operators today.
Gottfried Winter is the Sales Director at Funkwerk, a German specialist in GSM-r terminals and a long-time partner of Huawei. At CeBIT 2014, Winter talks to Light Reading about this partnership and the integration of enhanced voice trunking, video and data functions.
Shamim Akhtar, Comcast's architect and senior director of network strategy, explains why the cable company is moving to a more distributed network architecture.
Jerome Tollet, CTO at Qosmos, explains how network equipment vendors and operators deploying SDN and NFV can take advantage of network intelligence delivered by DPI to strengthen products and services.
Wind River VP of Product Management, Glenn Seiler, takes a look the industry's first and only complete NFV software platform designed specifically for the unique carrier-grade and high-performance needs of telecom networks.
Steven Shalita, VP of Marketing, NetScout Systems, Inc., discusses the challenges cable/MSO operators face in assuring the delivery of new IP-based services. Key points include the value of proactively managing performance, and using rich analytics and operational intelligence to better understand service and usage trends, make smarter business decisions and ...
At Mobile World Congress, Gigamon's Director of Service Provider Solutions, Andy Huckridge, and Heavy Reading Analyst Sarah Wallace discuss the 'big data' issues facing carriers and operators today.
Gottfried Winter is the Sales Director at Funkwerk, a German specialist in GSM-r terminals and a long-time partner of Huawei. At CeBIT 2014, Winter talks to Light Reading about this partnership and the integration of enhanced voice trunking, video and data functions.
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger speaks to Heavy Reading about the value of virtualization spanning from the data center to service provider networks to mobile devices.
In early March, Huawei showcased key SDN solutions at ONS 2014. Huawei's presence included technical demos of SoftCOM infrastructure and Huawei experts shared their ideas with industry leaders in SDN and NFV, operators, and analysts.
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