How Smartphones are Improving the Cable Customer Service Experience
In his recent LinkedIn column, “State of the Cable Industry: How We’re Changing the Stereotype of the Cable Guy,” NCTA President & CEO Michael Powell said that turning around the industry’s customer service reputation is a huge priority and one that companies are committed to, and investing in. We’ve all seen the stories and surveys which underline the challenges – certainly not something we enjoy reading – but it’s also important to highlight the improvements that are being made and the new techniques are being implemented. After all, the number of hours that American consumers watch TV and
Behind the Numbers: Where American Broadband Stands
This week Akamai released their latest State of the Internet report with updated broadband speeds from across the world. The report revealed that three of the top five fastest regions worldwide are US states. Peak broadband speeds in the US increased 31 percent year-over-year to 53.3 Mbps. We highlight average peak connection speeds because Akamai contends it’s a better, more accurate measure of the Internet’s capacity than average connection speed. The map below shows where to find the country’s top Internet speeds: And the chart below proves just how competitive American broadband is on a
New Energy Conservation Agreement Reached for Broadband Equipment
Today, NCTA and CEA announced a new voluntary agreement among major equipment manufacturers and companies representing 90 percent of the residential broadband market to improve the energy efficiency of routers, modems, and certain other devices (collectively known as small network equipment, or SNE) that consumers use to access the Internet. You can get the details here, including the full list of signatories, but the good news for consumers is that this new agreement is expected to help reduce energy consumed in SNE devices by about 10 to 20 percent compared to current models. Broadband
Today's Specials Include Incredible Television
Today, you can watch premium TV with a cable package, through OTT services like Netflix and Hulu, or by buying single episodes and full season passes of your favorite shows on iTunes or Amazon. No matter how you watch it, it’s going to be great content. But if you’re looking for value, the way to go is the cable package. It’s simply more content for less money.
What is 802.11ac and Why Do We Need to Protect Wi-Fi for It?
It’s expected that by 2020, the world will have 50 billion Wi-Fi enabled devices. Everything from baby monitors and tablets to things we can’t even imagine today will be voraciously feeding off of the wireless broadband in our homes, cafes, and even in our public parks. It’s practically ubiquitous now, but the seemingly magical technology that enables Wi-Fi is barely fifteen years old. When it was first deployed, wireless Local Area Network (LAN) systems were designed to serve a limited number of business applications under controlled environments. Picture a storage facility floor where
Fierce Competition in the Video Marketplace
Over the last two decades, we’ve gone from relatively few ways to get video at home to literally dozens of choices. See how much the marketplace has changed:
Unless the FCC Acts, A New Technology Could Disrupt Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi is popular. Really popular. 4 billion devices popular. So popular that more broadband data is carried over Wi-Fi than all other platforms combined. But is the miracle of Wi-Fi in jeopardy? It may be because the lifeblood of Wi-Fi – unlicensed spectrum – is potentially at risk by the deployment of a new technology called LTE-U that may not play well with others in the unlicensed sand box. It could cause massive interference problems to Wi-Fi. Although some wireless carriers developing these LTE-based technologies have acknowledged the need to share spectrum fairly with unlicensed
How We're Changing the Stereotype of the Cable Guy
Originally posted on LinkedIn Pulse on June 8th, 2015 The cable industry faces many challenges, but most of them provide exciting opportunities to remake the industry for the Digital Age and better serve the changing desires of consumers. That transformation is now underway. We continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible over our networks, providing the fastest broadband speeds available, delivering consumers an “anytime, anywhere” entertainment experience and introducing new services that make our lives better. Some of the best visual stories ever produced are emerging from cable
You Really Like Watching TV, Don't You?
People like streaming movies, listening to music, and playing video games online. Groundbreaking, we know. Take a look at the illustration below for a quantifiable look at just how all-consuming our passion for entertainment has become. It is, by a wide margin, our favorite thing to do with a broadband connection. So keep watching, listening, and playing. That’s what broadband is for!
Anatomy of a Botnet
The Washington Post’s recent series “Net of Insecurity” brings up the apparent, almost unavoidable reality of security risks on the Internet. While hackers, viruses, and scams are a near-inevitable byproduct of an open Internet, there are things your ISP is doing to prevent some of the most dangerous cyber attacks. Take a botnet for example. A botnet is a collection of Internet connected devices communicating with each other in order to perform tasks in concert. As a group, these devices are capable of causing serious havoc if they’re all simultaneously instructed to attack a single target