Goodbye Phone and Cable TV Companies: Here Come the 'Digital Service Providers'

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- There will no longer be separate telephone, cable TV and mobile phone companies, according to a new report from Rider Research called "The Stone Report: Communications Countdown."

Phone and cable TV companies have taken to selling bundles that combine multiple services -- pay TV, telephone and Internet access, for example.

Bundling multiple servies into a package deal, known as triple- or quadruple-play, is rapidly becoming a necessity for companies in the phone and pay-TV arena. "It seems obvious where this bundling business is going," says Charles Hall, president of Rider Research, "and every phone, cable TV, broadband and mobile phone company had better participate in all four services -- phone, pay-TV, broadband and mobile phones -- if they want to survive in the emerging competitive landscape."

The battle being fought is a three-way one involving the phone, satellite and cable TV companies. A key weapon will be who can offer the best bundle of quadruple-play services.

Four major US cable TV companies will soon launch a "quad play" service, using Sprint Nextel as the mobile phone piece. Verizon and AT&T, already in the phone and broadband business, are trying to get their pay-TV services deployed.

The whole lot will be called something like "digital service providers."

The industry's future goes beyond bundling three or four services, however.

What will separate the winners and losers is their ability to integrate the separate services, creating a synergistic product that consumers value. Examples are functions such as using the mobile phone to watch content stored on the home's DVR or seeing the caller ID on the TV set. The Online Reporter, Rider Research's weekly newsletter, uses the term "single play" for such integrated services.

To track the growth of the "single play" industry, Rider Research has issued the first report card for US companies. Called "The Stone Report: Communications Countdown," the free report tracks companies' quadruple-play numbers and their market share in each service.

The information has been distilled down to one page -- a single-page report for the single-play industry. It shows the grand totals and net second quarter adds for broadband, residential phones, pay-TV and mobile phones of the major US phone, satellite and cable TV companies.

A free copy is available by e-mailing paperboy@riderresearch.com