Also: Brightcove goes for an IPO, TiVo sheds subs but makes MSO progress, Comcast amps up MetroE sales strategy

Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor

August 25, 2011

2 Min Read
WOW & Wave Broadband Divvy Up Broadstripe

Consolidation is on the menu for cable this Thursday morning.

  • The consolidation of Tier 2 MSOs continued Wednesday with WideOpenWest Holdings LLC (WOW) and Wave Broadband teaming up to acquire most of Broadstripe , an MSO that filed for bankruptcy in January 2009. Wave's paying US$32 million for systems serving 103,000 homes passed in Washington and Oregon, and WOW is picking up 92,000 homes passed in Michigan for $55 million, reports Multichannel News. Broadstripe's Anne Arundel County, Md., system is set to be acquired for $8 million by a new company called Anne Arundel Broadband to be helmed by Broadstripe EVP John Bjorn. (See Broadstripe Turns to Chapter 11 .)

  • Brightcove Inc. intends to raise $50 million in its initial public offering. The Internet video publisher, which doesn't expect to turn a profit until late 2012, claims to have 3,300 customers and is delivering an average of 700 million video streams per month, making it second to YouTube Inc. 's 3 billion, NewTeeVee says, citing comScore Inc. data.

  • TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO) lost 43,000 subscribers in the second quarter, giving it a total of 1.17 million, but its work with service providers is making progress: Virgin Media Inc. (Nasdaq: VMED), for example, added more than 50,000 TiVo subs during the quarter, Bloomberg said.

  • Speaking of the DVR pioneer, its new DirecTV Group Inc. (NYSE: DTV) port could launch as early as next month, notes ZatzNotFunny while offering a glimpse of a new sales training video about the coming product.

  • Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) has hired nine partners -- including Crystal Technologies and Interactive Telecom Solutions -- to kickstart sales of a budding Metro Ethernet service that's targeting businesses with 20 to 250 employees, a group that the MSO views as a $15 billion market opportunity. (See Ciena, Cisco & Juniper Get Piece of Comcast's MetroE and When Will Comcast's Move Up-Market Pay Off?)

  • Comcast is highlighting the capabilities of PowerBoost, the MSO's patent-pending technology that temporarily ratchets up cable modem speeds when there is excess capacity in the Docsis network. SVP of Software and Applications and PowerBoost co-inventor Richard Woundy notes on the MSO's blog that studies show that Comcast customers are getting PowerBoost speeds in the downstream about 73.5 percent of the time, and 71.5 percent of the time in the upstream. Here's a snapshot of the results of the Georgia Tech study:



    — Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable



About the Author(s)

Jeff Baumgartner

Senior Editor, Light Reading

Jeff Baumgartner is a Senior Editor for Light Reading and is responsible for the day-to-day news coverage and analysis of the cable and video sectors. Follow him on X and LinkedIn.

Baumgartner also served as Site Editor for Light Reading Cable from 2007-2013. In between his two stints at Light Reading, he led tech coverage for Multichannel News and was a regular contributor to Broadcasting + Cable. Baumgartner was named to the 2018 class of the Cable TV Pioneers.

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