Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast (press releases), the largest cable operator in the U.S., talked up his company’s investment in the WiMAX joint venture with Sprint and Google, at the industry’s trade show in New Orleans this week, reports C/Net.
Comcast is putting up $1.05 billion as part of the huge Mobile WiMAX deal with Sprint, Clearwire, Google and Intel, with Time Warner Cable fronting another $500 million. Meanwhile, Cablevision, the 5th largest cable provider in the USA, announced it will build its own municipal Wi-Fi network.
The Cable Show ’08 in New Orleans, featured Roberts’s keynote speech Sunday. He sees the network as a way to open up new applications and devices for the company, according to C/Net.
Roberts also said the cable industry is on the verge of naming a CEO for Project Canoe, an effort to standardize interactive advertising among cable operators. It would give networks and marketers a more detailed look at VOD viewing habits. For now, VOD advertisers use “lowest common denominator” metrics, such as unique views and total views, since they have to roll up data from across cable systems, some with detailed information, some without.
The annual gathering of the cable-TV trade returned to New Orleans for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.
C-SPAN’s first board meeting occurred exactly 30 years ago at the New Orleans Cable Show with cablecast coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives to just 3.5 million homes. Today, the C-SPAN networks reach 86 million TV households.
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