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Who delivers your bits and bytes? As you read this article, what's the access technology delivering these words? Is it a telco? A cable provider? We've spilled a good deal of ink on this topic over the years, but there's still more to say. We thought we’d revisit the battle between these worthy foes a few years later to see what has changed and what has stayed the same. The race continues.

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“Wi-” is the word (or half of a word, anyway) this month with news of Sprint’s renewed WiMAX venture alongside news of Philadelphia’s failing WiFi contract with EarthLink. And then there’s Carl Icahn’s methods of trying to force Yahoo into a Microsoft takeover, which leaves some asking “Why?” In addition to those pieces of information, you’ll find the usual golden eggs that keep you coming to Pipeline month after month.

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So when you think about the big events in the early summer season in the South of France, what do you think of? An event in which all the beautiful people of a particular industry jet in from all over the world to present their craft, rub elbows with others in the biz, and hope against hope that their appearance at the event will lead to a big sale of the project that is the product of years of effort and sacrifice?

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Following an okay 2005 and a stellar 2006, the cable sector was beaten up by industry-watchers in 2007. Implementation of VoIP service went better than expected overall, creating high expectations mid-decade; when AT&T and Verizon went into high-gear with their fiber rollouts last year, with promising early success, they took the spotlight away from cable once again.

But cable is poised for another renaissance. VoIP services continue to grow; new services, such as interactive ...

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Communications service providers – telcos – are making major investments to move into the TV business. They decided, essentially, to invent IPTV along the way because, they’ve argued, it ultimately will deliver more personalization; integrated and interactive content; and advanced advertising options. Contemporaneously, cable operators, or MSOs, are pursuing technologies like OpenCable and Tru2Way aggressively over parallel digital cable and IP networks to deliver similar capabilities and benefits ...

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The harsh reality of today’s communication services market is forcing service providers to re-evaluate the way new services are provisioned across their networks.

The potent combination of converging networks and technologies, a more competitive landscape, and a steep rise in the number and variety of services in demand has made conventional approaches to provisioning unsustainable. Notoriously inefficient from the outset, the high cost and slow deployment speeds ...

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As industry analysts, we look for signs regarding an industry’s health and vitality anywhere and everywhere possible. We’ve always found trade shows to be excellent opportunities to uncover key indicators and gauge a given sector’s vitality. Sifting through the mounds of information presented at these shows to get to the real heart of the matter takes some sweat and an objective eye, astute observers can usually find the industry’s pulse by the end of any trade show. In the case of the National Cable and ...

With NXTComm 2008 on the horizon, we took a moment to speak with Wayne Crawford, Executive Director for NXTComm. He filled us in on the show's relocation from Chicago to Las Vegas, as well as other changes that the show promises for this year.

Pipeline: This is the first year that NXTComm is going to happen in Las Vegas. Do you think location makes a significant difference on the outcome of the event? For instance, will it affect the type of attendees you attract?

In a show dedicated to software applications, it was music to a die hard business analyst’s ears to hear pretty much every panelist and every speaker talk about the importance of getting the business strategies straight first and then building systems to support that vision.

From the opening plenary session of the new Billing & OSS World (the first under the banner of Virgo Publishing) getting the business drivers straight was the tone for the conference.

“Competition is the whetstone of talent”

Whoever said competition was a bad thing? It separates the weak from the strong, and gives competitors a unity of focus and strength of conviction.

Within the telecommunications space, the big competitors have been the telcos and cablecos.