Netflix Streaming Dominates Pay-TV VoD

Word that Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) streaming is outpacing pay-TV video-on-demand (VoD) by a wide margin kicks off today's cable news roundup.

U.S. Netflix customers watched 80 percent more streaming video hours than pay-TV customers did via their service provider's VoD service during the fourth quarter of 2011, says The Diffusion Group (TDG) . TDG believes MSOs and other pay-TV operators should be making more money from ad-supported VoD, but notes that success has been hindered by poor support and "awkward program guides," resulting in just 1 percent of all U.S. TV viewing. But some hope appears to be on the way as MSOs begin to migrate to more intuitive cloud-based navigation systems and Canoe Ventures LLC , the cross-industry advanced advertising J.V., starts to focus solely on dynamic VoD ad insertion. (See Comcast Ready to Mine for VoD Gold and Cable's Canoe Sinks Interactive Ad Business .)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit has cleared the way for Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ)'s and MetroPCS Inc. (NYSE: PCS)'s challenge of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 's network neutrality rules to go to trial. (See Verizon Appeals Net Neutrality Rules (Again) .)

Roku Inc. CEO Anthony Wood tells VentureBeat that he expects all major cable networks and MSOs to have apps on his company's streaming platform over the next year (Roku has sold more than 2.5 million boxes so far). But he also believes that "all hell's gonna break loose" when a virtual MSO emerges with a competitive over-the-top pay-TV package. (See A Virtual MSO Shall Rise, Boxee CEO Says and Signs of the Video Armageddon .)

A slow deal-making process and advertising hang-ups have kept lots of programming off cable's TV Everywhere platforms, a situation that gives emerging over-the-top competitors a dangerous opportunity to build services that live and thrive outside of cable's walled gardens, notes The Wall Street Journal.

iBahn says it's helping hotel owners keep Wi-Fi bandwidth demand in check with a new Freemium model that it is offering initially to the company's EMEA customers, where the average per-room consumption was 280MB per day. Rather than an all-you-can-eat approach for all users, iBahn's new dynamic bandwidth plan applies low bandwidth connections for free and faster speeds for customers who are willing to pay a premium so they can stream video or download large files.

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable