The Converging Worlds of Cable, Telco and Web

I attended a conference in Denver this week where the discussions, sessions, and underlying themes comprised converged services, mantras such as "any content, any where, any device, any time," IPv to IPv6 migration, IP-based networks, delivering rich media-rich interactive applications, leveraging SOA architectures, using Flash technologies for delivering applications, and using common standards to enable advertising. Some of you might be surprised to hear that this was not a conference directed at mobile operators or a web conference but the annual Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) Cable-Tec Expo conference. 

Advertising was a topic of significant interest. For advertising to be effective, it needs to be relevant, targeted and account for a user's multiple touch points (mobile phone, TV, web, etc.). I should note that presenting targeted ads is inherently more challenging for MSO's since their customers are typically households rather than individuals. Nevertheless, MSO's are embracing standards and frameworks for delivering advertisements that leverage household demographic data along with components such as campaign planning, asset management, service measurement, subscriber data, and decision engines. In fact, SCTE 130 defines an advertising framework specification for MSO's and the framework's components certainly are applicable in other domains such as in the mobile sector. But efforts to collaborate and integrate and leverage work on advertising frameworks from other standards bodies are still very nascent. A consistent and unified advertising platform will be important as we strive to deliver targeted and relevant ads that encompass the many user touch points of today's users.

As application developers, it behooves us to consider the multiple touch points of an application. For example, a user who purchases premium content via the TV should be able to continue to watch that content on his or her mobile as they travel to work on the train. Or, messaging applications developed for the mobile phone should allow the user the option of also accessing their messages while sitting in front of their TV. 

This year, SCTE was celebrating its 40th anniversary and someone asked if we would still have such a cable-centric organization in 40 years in an increasingly converging IP-based world that is driving to deliver any content, any where, any device, any time...  What do you think?