The CableLabs Strategy team, collaborating with our Technology team counterparts, develops Key Business Questions (KBQs) specifically focused on strategy and impact on the bottom line. These strategy KBQs provide a solid strategic underpinning to the innovations in the Technology Vision, and they can distill our members’ opportunities and challenges as they make critical technology decisions and investments.
Considering the various technology options available for access network upgrades — combined with evolving consumer needs and exciting opportunities created by technology innovations — now is the right time for CableLabs’ member operators to leverage these KBQs to inform the analyses we produce for our members. By developing strategic questions that are tailored to their organizations’ unique goals, members can position themselves for long-term success.
Strategy KBQ Goals
Strategy KBQs align the Strategy team’s work with the needs of our individual members, ensuring maximum impact with focused CableLabs resources that can complement member companies’ existing strategy teams. In this way, CableLabs can help inform the critical strategic decisions that members make on innovations and technologies. The strategy KBQs enable our members’ boards, executives and execution-level leaders to make decisions and take actions for long-term success.
CableLabs offers our members optionality both in technologies and in strategies. The strategy KBQs don’t seek one-size-fits-all answers; rather, they lead to a flexible set of analyses that members can tailor with us according to the particulars of their businesses, markets, competition and goals.
Strategy KBQs in the Real World
The CableLabs Strategy team has been carefully distilling strategic issues for network evolution into strategy KBQs like these:
- How will peak bandwidth demand grow in the future and what are the implications for capacity planning and product development?
- What are the economic and performance comparisons of the access network technology options (HFC, FTTH, Wireless) for cable operators?
- How do low earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband economics scale with increased capacity, increased usage and increased subscribers?
- How do Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband economics scale when adding loaded spectrum to meet demand for increased usage and subscribers?
Each strategy KBQ comes with a cascade of relevant questions that addresses issues at different layers within a member’s organization, such as strategy, product and engineering. The operator can use the analyses driven by KBQs to inform critical decisions and operational actions.
How can members apply strategy KBQs and the analyses that answer them? Here are some examples:
- Knowing peak demand requirements for 2035, operators can design their broadband access networks and deploy technologies to meet the requirements specific to their markets, instead of investing purely in greater capacity for capacity’s sake.
- Knowing the options for product positioning, such as low-cost, no-frills provider or differentiated high-end provider, and how different network technologies satisfy those positions, operators can make decisions on how to position their offerings most successfully in their markets.
- Knowing revenue impacts together with total cost of ownership that results from positioning options, competition, and broadband access network technology choices, members can form a solid view of the economic returns specific to their markets for different technological investments.
No two broadband access networks are alike — we’ve searched for the “typical network” and found there is no such thing! The same is true for the answers to the strategy KBQs; while answers may be similar, there will be no one-size-fits-all strategy for cable operators. Members can utilize strategic insights from CableLabs, addressing a range of results from different choices, to develop the answers that are right for their markets.
Translating to Action
CableLabs has structured Winter Conference 2025 to focus on the six Technology Vectors. In each session, members can learn more about the Technology Vision and Technology Vectors, and they can obtain a preview of the strategy KBQs for each Technology Vector. Panelists will share their differing perspectives on technology choices, future use cases and key business questions.
Just as our members’ markets are always evolving, the strategy KBQs will also evolve. Members can contribute to refining the strategy KBQs going forward, just as with the Technology Vision and Technology Vectors.