O’Neill: great time for cable

[khurramdar]

O’Neill: great time for cable

By Robert Briel
March 4, 2010

Cable Congress 2010 â€" Brussels. “It’s a great time to be in the cable industry, “ said Liberty Global’s Shane O’Neill, “We have the balance sheet under control and we have two key products that will prove to be very successful and our competitors can’t provide.“

They are Docsis 3.0 with speeds up to 100 Mbps and the on-demand services with content from the broadcasters.”These products are there to secure cable’s growth for the next five years.’

With regards to new over-the-top online video providers, O’Neill is not worried:” Look at the markets for ad supported video, whoich is worth 125 billion worldwide and pay TV 179 billion. Online video advertsing is 1 billion, just a tiny dot.”

“We are not ignoring it”, he added.”It’s impact is still greatly challenging. Facebook is phenomenal. But Youtube loses money and they still haven’t figured out how to make money. We still should be very respectful and take it seriously but we shouldn’t over-react.”