There are two reasons why the MSOs are so supportive of open standards: first, they are competing with telecommunications companies to offer high-speed access and IP telephony and the more a box can do, the more attractive the cable services will be: second, by moving modems into retail the MSOs get the capital investment off their balance sheets.
"They realize they need to do it now, and they need to do it quickly," he said, and to compete, major telecommunications competitors "are ultimately going to have to be in every business, everywhere -- including mobile".
Google is not looking to compete with telecommunications companies -- they are simply building a use case to prove that ultra-fast broadband networks and broadband applications are viable; at a lower cost.
Verizon executives had maintained that without the unions' allowing them more flexibility in relocating or laying off employees, the company could have trouble competing in the changing telecommunications industry, which is largely nonunionized.
The added complexity is the result of a number of forces -- government regulation of telecommunications, multiple layers of competing technologies, and an unruly crowd of major telecommunications carriers, computer companies, cellphone makers and upstarts in all these fields vying for a piece of the business.
This debate -- the latest front in a 20-year-old regulatory battle that started with the breakup of the Bell system -- will define the grounds on which various players in telecommunications compete.
The order tries to balance two competing goals of the 1996 telecommunications act: promoting competition by allowing the Baby Bells' rivals to gain access to local telephone companies' networks while creating incentives for the Bells to invest in new equipment that will encourage economic development.
Qualcomm is pretty much the only U.S. company with technology capable of competing in the race for 5G telecommunications standards, which the Trump administration has labeled a national security priority.
It is the latest company with links to the Chinese state to fall foul of concerns about its hardware following similar allegations against Huawei Technologies, the telecommunications producer earlier this year banned from competing for a £24 billion broadband contract in Australia.
