It seems like everyone makes very ambitious resolutions at the beginning of a new year. Most people resolve to lose weight and work out more. Other people decide to quit smoking. However, people are not the only ones who make resolutions to change for the New Year. Companies and industries also make resolutions. The cable companies have made some very ambitious resolutions for 2014.
Cable companies have made a major resolution to enter the high speed internet space in a big way in 2014. This will allow these companies to widen their broadband footprints and increase the value they can offer customers in their cable packages.
Heavy Reading recently released a report that said that cable firms throughout the US plan to deploy over 250,000 hotspots for wireless Internet service. Their goal is to have all of these new hotspots deployed and operational by the middle of 2014. This would constitute a 60% increase over the current base of installed Wi-Fi hotspots.
The Heavy Reading report says that the cable companies have already shelled out over $175 million to deploy these Wi-Fi hotspots. However, many industry experts expect that this amount is likely to be doubled by the time the mid-2014 deadline is met. This means that the entire undertaking will cost around $350 million.
The cable companies have already done quite a bit of work to get themselves closer to being successful at keeping their ambitious 2014 resolution. In fact, they have already been able to deploy more than 174,000 of these Wi-Fi hotspots at various locations throughout the country. This is a large improvement over what was accomplished by the CableWiFi roaming alliance.
This important alliance includes many powerful members, such as Cablevision, Bright House Networks, Time Warner Cable, and others. This alliance was able to deploy more than 150,000 Wi-Fi hotspots on its own. It is not totally surprising to see the cable industry making this forceful move into the WiFi space. The major US cable companies have all come out with separate Wi-Fi announcements for their service areas over the course of the last few months.
Consumers are the big winners when it comes to this resolution. Wi-Fi seems to be the preferred method of Internet connection for many web surfers. However, not everyone is happy about the effort.
Many of the larger players in the Wi-Fi space see the move by the cable companies as the entrance of major new competition into their marketplace. Experts believe that the cable companies could very easily use these new hotspots and the new Passpoint Hotspot 2.0 technology, which is used to support roaming by cellular Wi-Fi, to cut into market share held by AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and others. The wireless space is sure to be very interesting to watch during 2014.
When it comes to making resolutions for the New Year, the cable companies have done something very intelligent. They have resolved to do something that will benefit themselves as well as their loyal customers.