Time Warner Cable Looks to Close an Era

Time Warner Cable apparently is looking at converting all its programing to IP, a move that would allow it to serve up video to all sorts of digital devices, eliminating the need for a set-top decoder and opening the door to either over-the-top or captive video on the existing model, but with one infrastructure supporting all forms of access.

There are all sorts of immediate, and some potential, implications. Decoders represent a huge amount of capital investment for a video provider using decoders. Eliminating the decoders would vastly reduce Time Warner Cable capex. That's the immediate benefit from an operations perspective.

From a strategic perspective, the shift to all-IP would open the possibility of over-the-top service, which in an early scenario might allow Time Warner Cable to serve up its video to current customers who also use tablets, PCs and smart phones to watch video.

In a more-disruptive scenario, Time Warner Cable could envision selling video to anybody in the United States, over the top, providing content contracts and municipal regulators allow it.

That could create quite a change in the famously collegial U.S. cable industry, where cable operators simply do not compete with each other.

Light Reading Cable - Video - TW Cable Flirts With Full IP Video Simulcast