The Telecommunications Act of 1996 directs the cable operators in U.S. to open up their specifications to create a more competitive market in the United States. The result was a system named Open Cable Applications Platform (OCAP), which was later renamed as “Tru2way”. Now, users with an appropriate cable card and a tru2way compliant receiver can receive premium cable TV programming on any operator’s network.

 

But all is not rosy with Tru2way for the operators; there are some unwanted thorns in the Tru2way saga. While the cable operators put their mind and soul into ‘owning’ the entire user experience of their subscribers, they will definitely not be amused as with Tru2way, any third party can start loading applications into the STB. But it’s a catch-22 situation for the operators as they have some advantages with the Tru2way also. To start with, the introduction of Tru2way will ease out some costs incurred on the custom systems and STBs.

 

It seems the operators are willing to give up their sovereignty on the user experience front for the immediate benefits of cost reduction. They have already started deploying Tru2way and ABI predicts that by 2013, about half of all U.S. cable subscribers will have a tru2way STB. But, the company also warns that many industry-political obstacles and interoperability challenges must be overcome along the way.

 

A new ABI Research (News - Alert) Brief, “The Outlook for tru2way” examines the motivation behind tru2way and discusses the basic hardware and software requirements as well as potential issues and pitfalls. Apart from offering a forecast for the growth of Tru2way clients in the industry, the report also looks at the actions of industry leaders.

 

“Consumer electronics manufacturers have been at odds with the cable industry over tru2way for a long time,” says Wilson. “It’s been a pretty contentious era. Vendors say the implementation is too expensive and that it’s overkill for basic services. They point out that many cable operators aren’t even deploying these systems. The cable operators themselves won’t provide forecasts for tru2way STB deployments. They’re not willing to tell the market (or developers) how many boxes they expect to ship over time.”