CES 2008

Comcast CEO Opens Up about Bold New Strategies to Improve Its Triple Play Services

| Jan 9, 2008 | Digital Home - U.S. | Show Update

| Analyst: Bruce McGregor

Current Perspective: Positive Vendor Importance: Very High Market Impact: High

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Event Summary

January 8, 2008 -- Comcast CEO Brian Roberts announced his company’s host of new initiatives, with a focus on its push for more video content through Project Infinity, at his keynote address to thousands of CES attendees. Project Infinity is Comcast’s commitment to engage its growing pay TV competition head on, with its subscribers given wider access to more premium video programming through both the TV and the PC. Other highlighted projects in development for the cable provider were the Tru2way open video architecture, a first look at the AnyPlay portable DVR through its new electronics partner Panasonic, the SmartZone unified messaging platform, and an upgrade to Fancast.com’s interactive capabilities.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on Comcast’s bold new initiatives, because they are pushing the leading U.S. cable provider to the next level with more competitive features in its triple play of services, with special attention paid to its video offering. At CES, the cable company announced numerous planned improvements for its residential offerings, including faster broadband speeds, a great abundance of high-definition programming, and better integration of its VoIP offering with unified online messaging.

• Vendor Importance: Very high to Comcast, specifically for accomplishing its long list of new services, because the marketplace is exploding with greater competition from the telcos, satellite TV providers, and online providers such as Amazon.com, Netflix, and Apple: companies that are all after the consumers’ home entertainment dollars. Comcast’s just-announced Project Infinity is a tremendous undertaking, with the cable company promising to offer its subscribers access to more than 1,000 HD choices in 2008 and ultimately making a pledge of all the video content the consumer desires, including movies, TV shows, and user-generated content.

• Market Impact: High on the digital home services market, because Comcast’s competition must be aware of its announced moves with the Comcast 3.0 next-generation services. The company is making a commitment to meeting the growing expectations of consumers’ to have a more integrated and robust digital home solution of entertainment and communications. Comcast is making the necessary countermoves to take on satellite TV’s claim of a higher selection of linear HD channels, with upgrades to its video-on-demand (VoD) platform, and it will soon make HD movies available for online download via its “wideband” offering, supported by DOCSIS 3.0 network upgrades of up to 100 Mbps deployed over the next two years.

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Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

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