Is there a future for cable TV?

The term “Cut the cord” originated with telephony, but has found application in the cable industry as well. It seems that people don’t like being wired to things. I suspect that when technology evolves to the point where homes can be “off-grid” that will be the last cable cut. That said, I think that people will stay connected if there is an advantage. A faster Internet link for example, is a reason to stay connected.

The Gillette’s have not had a traditional home phone line for over 8 years and we don’t miss it. When we moved into our current house, the local phone company was on strike and they told us that it would be six months before they could hook us up. The cable company had our Internet connection in place the day we moved in so….. I was working on VoIP at the time a had a local number and a working phone line in 20 minutes from a company in NYC. The cost of long distance has dropped through the floor and new features like low cost numbers in remote cities, have made VoIP even more attractive.

We still have cable TV and a PVR, but if I were to do a cost / benefit analysis, I’m sure it is not used enough to be worth what we pay. The local cable provider has started making episodes of shows available on-line and between that and other Internet sources, we rarely watch live TV.

I would pay for a service like that provided by EZTV, but the cable operators don’t seem to be able to pull that together. So is there a future for cable TV? probably not. Most cable companies have branched into offering commercial and residential Ethernet services and that seems to be where the growth is.

There will still be some type of NFV centric customer premise gear, but services will migrate to the cloud. What does that mean? It means that NAT, Firewalls, Routers, PVR’s and many services that were previously not available, will be software options on your new generic Intel set top box.

Legacy cable TV is in it’s final act.