Comcast May Offer Online Video Separately from Broadband

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Comcast May Offer Online Video Separately from Broadband

7:30 am on June 7, 2006 | Category: Business, Telecom Services, Internet, Television

Cable giant, Comcast Corp., is hoping to start delivering video programming over the internet to customers throughout the U.S., said the company’s Chief Operating Officer last week.

The nation’s leading cable company currently offers online programming to existing cable internet subscribers, over the Comcast.net internet portal. This limits the service to Comcast’s 35-state operating region, but there is nothing stopping the company from offering premium web-based programming, as well as other services like streaming radio and video mail, throughout the entire country.

“We would like to be the Amazon of video on the Internet. We have some assets other companies don’t have,” said Comcast COO, Steve Burke, at the “D: All Things Digital” conference in Carlsbad, California.

Comcast.net is already available in a limited capacity to web surfers around the globe, but its huge library of premium content has always served as an inventive for customers to use the cable giant’s high-speed internet offering. Making it available independently from the broadband service would eliminate this advantage, but could present a number of other interesting possibilities.

The company could try and form partnerships with other cable operators, such as Time Warner, Cox, and Charter Communications, allowing them to bundle internet video with their broadband offerings, and gain an industry-wide advantage over the broadband services of telephone carriers.

Another option would be to offer the premium content portal as a totally independent service to customers of any ISP, allowing it to drive huge amounts of traffic and ad revenue. This would introduce more competition into the market, and potentially threaten cable and FiOS television providers operating in the 15 states that Comcast doesn’t already service. It would also pose a significant competitive threat to other online VOD services such as Google, Yahoo, and YouTube.

Although there is still no timeline, or even a definitive plan, to open Comcast.net as an independent subscription or ad-supported service, Mr. Burke has planted a seed that could change the landscape of the cable and online video market.