by Richard Doherty and Sabrina Doherty

The Society for Cable & Telecommunications Engineers opened their Denver conference with Mark Tubinis, CTO of Cedar Point Communications.

Tubinis’ message: cable operators can both create and improve digital lifestyles by deploying what he calls “Fused Services” to subscribers.

“The reality is consumers have three screens today,” said Tubinis, “and 57% of internet users enjoy TV and web at the same time.”

Tubinis expects social platforms to focus around existing photo sharing, blogging, RSS feeds, widgets, podcasts and video sharing to exploit synergies of sharing. These will evolve to content browsing, concierge services, bill paying home telepresence and telemedicine and Whiteboarding. Others will be managed home networking, visual voice mail and a “presence enabled address book,” whose contents are tailored of reach family member alone.

New services will attract new consumer usage. For example, higher than p[hone call quality voice communications. This HD Voice is made possible by PacketCable 2.0’s robustness and quality, women tend to immediately appreciate the quality improvement; men a little longer. 77% of consumer’s noted the improved quality after trials earlier this year.

At the core of the architecture for fused social services: PacketCable 2.0. 2.0 will accelerate fused services with high Quality of Service, delivering personalization and fixed/mobile home integration. With the TV as the user interface screen of choice, mobile, home network and TV services will all be a remote control click away.

“Indeed, home networking is the final challenge for our industry,” concluded Tubinis.

The full presentation and conference papers are available from www.scte.org.