INNOBLOG

There was a classic article in the WSJ on Thursday. As you may know, the local telephone companies (Verizon, et al) have announced plans to get into the cable television market. Part of this is of course the perpetual quest for new growth. Part of this is to have a weapon to use to beat back the cable companies who are using VoIP to come after the telephone companies.

In Seeing What's Next (shameless plug alert), we talk a lot about how the best way to go into these battles is to try to take some kind of asymmetric approach that your opponent doesn't want to respond to. The cable companies seem to be largely moving in this direction with their low-cost, good enough VoIP solution (just a matter of time before one of them buys Vonage ...). The phone companies seem to have missed this chapter. Everything I've seen suggests an all-out approach going right after the core of the market with a largely me-too product. The hope has been to have everything the cable companies have and layer on top some additional services that take advantage of the telephone network's flexible architecture.

Well, surprise, surprise. Sensing a potential threat to their core business, the cable companies are trying to figure out how to do switched services that allow them to match some of the new benefits the telephone companies hope to provide.

Confused yet? Read Thursday's WSJ article ("Cable Operators Rush Services To Keep Edge", registration required). It's clear a battle is a-brewin'. Hard to bet against the cable operators here unless the telephone folks can figure out a disruptive path.