aka, Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your market share grow?

You've bought your big-screen television and want to find lots of content to see on it - all hopefully in high-definition with services like video-on-demand and digital-video-recorders.


Do you expand your cable service? Satellite? No, according to Kagan Research, the future is about IPTV technology.

By 2015, Kagan Research expects TV programming delivered by telcos to grow to a 9 percent market--from its 0.1 percent share today.

Cable networks will take the biggest hit if this happens--dropping to 61.1 percent from their current levels of 69.6 percent.

Satellite's share of the market will inch up to 29.7 percent, from its current base of 29.0 percent.

I know a number of people in the cable television business and just starting to know some at the telco's. One observation that lingers in the back of my brain is this: cable is at near capacity with added channels and services - especially because of the bandwidth hogging analog channels they must continue to support. The telephone companies, however, are structured to deliver a near infinite number of video channels - all digitally.

That by itself does not guarantee that telco's have a manifest destiny to future riches. But if they can offer an excess of interesting services that outstrips cable's capacity, then they just might succeed.