The post-cable era is upon us. At INTX this week, key industry players discussed the trends that have ushered in this new age. Consumers are no longer tethered to living room TVs and set-top boxes. Technology that was once proprietary and took years to deploy is now virtualized, able to scale quickly, anywhere. Traditional video delivery is under pressure from over-the-top (OTT). 
 
Also consider the now global nature of competition and sizable price tags accompanying the biggest content deals. Netflix says it will expand into 200 countries within two years as it spends more than $3B per year on content. ESPN is shoring up rights to popular worldwide content like the Cricket World Cup and the Indian Premier League games via the Web, without requiring a cable package. Liberty Global is spending $2.5B per year on content as it continues to eye expansion in worldwide markets.

For cable operators, the implications of these developments are inevitable as competitors use scale to amortize tech and content investment. Now, they must rethink their strategies. While there are several paths forward, the market has changed too much to fall back on old approaches.
 
To make a long-term play in the post-cable era, operators can either partner or purchase to scale and compete on a global level, build virtual scale by choosing a partner with global ambitions to stay competitive regionally, or outsource or leave the video business. Operators that decide instead to stay the course could eventually become marginalized in the video delivery market.
 
Becoming a global player
 
Operators that want to compete on a global level will need the right mix of tech, content, capital and international assets.
 
Operators that find the right acquisition target can purchase this scale to catapult into the global market. However, they'll need to shop wisely. When the FCC and DOJ signaled intent to block Comcast's planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable, they sent a clear message: operators will only be able to grow so much in the U.S. It would appear that if operators want to scale beyond a certain size, they'll need to look internationally.
 
Building a globally-competitive offering will impose both technical and operational demands. Doing the necessary tech development in-house will only be achievable for a few operators worldwide. However, this is a long and arduous road, requiring engineering efforts the likes of which cable has never seen before. Some operators will attempt to meet demands by partnering with a key infrastructure vendor with similar global ambitions. Of course, even if the technology and platform are in place, there’s still the matter of the capital required to buy global rights to content.
 
Right now, there isn't a single operator that has every ingredient needed to achieve true global scale, but we expect this to change as more opportunities emerge. The rewards are as big as the risks for operators that make a global play. Especially as billions of consumers around the world clamor for a great content experience and many markets remain up for grabs.
 
Staying strong regionally
 
There will be cable operators that don't have global ambitions, but do want to remain competitive in the markets they serve. These operators will still need to build virtual scale by attaching themselves to another company's global strategy. In other words, this time around, they will not be able to R&D themselves out of this scenario. There was a time when this may have been possible, but services are now so complex and competition is moving so fast, that most operators simply won't be able to keep up with the necessary development cycles.
 
We'll start to see more situations where operators that can't build the necessary infrastructure themselves turn to partners that can for help. But in this race, betting on the right horse is crucial. The best partner could potentially be one of the larger cable operators or infrastructure vendors with global ambitions. Or it could be one of the non-traditional vendors that already have a strong international presence, content relationships and great user interface. It might also be a consumer streaming service that already has scale. Operators will need to determine who they can trust and think can win. For now, the answer remains murky. The harsh reality of this new world is that most stakeholders are minor players competing against global behemoths.
 
Survival
 
The relatively smaller cable operators, such as those that comprise the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) banded together to negotiate more favorable content deals that keep them in the video delivery game. Recently, they've explored the same strategy of pooling resources to explore tech that can be deployed in an attempt to remain competitive.
 
But it remains to be seen if this will be enough to compete in the long-term. Already, some smaller operators are waving the white flag, choosing to outsource video delivery at reduced revenues instead of gearing up for what will be a long and uncertain fight.
 
Everyone else
 
The operators that don't fall into any of these camps will need to turn to business model innovation to remain competitive. For some, this will mean a long journey where new ideas and service offerings are tested in an attempt to retain subscribers. Some of these journeys will see operators go from being strong regionally to survival to maybe simply a high-speed Internet-only play. This is partly what makes new revenue opportunities via initiatives like ever-faster broadband and commercial services more important than ever.
 
The post-cable era does not mean the end of cable operators. In fact, we expect just the opposite as many pursue new growth and innovation opportunities. But there is now a wave of urgency not before seen in this industry. In the end, consumers win as they reap the benefits of unprecedented media innovation and access. Cable operators are well-positioned to be the provider of choice, but during this moment of reckoning, they cannot stand still. The real action has just begun.
 
Dr. Imran Shah is managing partner at IBB Consulting, which guides business, product and technical strategies for cable operators, content providers, wireless and media companies globally.