CommScope's Jim Owens and Matt Milford sat down with StreamTV Studio to share how the company continues to support the evolution of video—from legacy QAM systems to cutting-edge IP delivery. Though well known in telecom and cable circles, CommScope is expanding its reach across streaming and digital media by helping providers large and small deliver more personalized, efficient video services. With deep roots from acquisitions like Arris and Motorola, the company now supports a global client base with a full suite of video, ad tech and infrastructure solutions.
Their current focus? Helping Tier 2 and Tier 3 cable operators—and even Tier 1s—navigate the complex transition to IP video. Owens and Milford explain how CommScope provides a single point of support, helping customers migrate with less disruption by blending legacy system expertise with modern OTT tech. From encoding and delivery to app integration and audience monetization, CommScope offers customizable services tailored to meet any provider’s needs. “It’s not just about tech,” Milford notes. “It’s about supporting a new way of doing business.”
Daniel Frankel:
Hello, I'm Daniel Frankel, founder and publisher of Next TMT, appearing on behalf of StreamTV Studio. I'm pleased to have with me today Jim Owens, Matt Milford. These guys are from CommScope, a name really familiar, if you like me, have worked in the cable industry or adjacent pay TV industries. But not maybe household names of some of the streaming contingencies here, which is strange because a lot of their competencies are directly applicable. Gentlemen, how are you today?
Jim Owens:
Good, thanks. How are you?
Matt Milford:
Doing well.
Daniel Frankel:
Yeah. Show good?
Matt Milford:
Been very good, yes.
Jim Owens:
Very busy. Yeah, a lot of good conversations.
Daniel Frankel:
You're presenting today, aren't you?
Jim Owens:
I am. I'm presenting at noon on video personalization.
Daniel Frankel:
Okay. So tell us a little bit about CommScope. I worked for Extreme TV Insiders, the magazine that led to that FierceCable a few years ago. Eris was such a big part of that. Back then it was know QAM set tops dominated the video business, we all had one, and a lot has changed since then and CommScope has changed a lot. You acquired Eris, you acquired a few other technology companies. Where are you now? What are you doing?
Jim Owens:
Yeah, it's a good question. CommScope is a very large company. We're a multi-billion dollar company. And as you mentioned, I think some of the folks here at StreamTV might not recognize the name, but we're very well known in the telecommunication space. CommScope makes a lot of wired and wireless network equipment, very large connectivity, business fiber and cable. And then we work in the video systems business, which as you mentioned has its roots in companies like Eris and Motorola. So we've been working with pay TV providers for decades, really helping them deliver pay TV solutions to millions of subscribers. So we have a tremendous amount of expertise, products, technology, IP in that space.
And so we're here talking to folks about how we can help them build really powerful, strong streaming services using some of the technology and the expertise that we have and areas such as advertising, where we have particular strength is getting good resonates well with this group.
Daniel Frankel:
A lot of the things that these guys are doing, you're doing the same things and doing them quite well. What are some of the areas you guys are involved in?
Matt Milford:
Yeah, so I mean as far as the technology goes, we have a full suite of our own products. We also partner with other leading vendors in the industry. Well, we have a good services team as well. So as far as implementations go, we can help customers solve a full end-to-end suite from contact providers to delivery to end customers with the full back office systems, all of the encoding, packaging, infrastructure and delivering. But we also have consult piece part issues, like if a customer wanted to better monetize their content or offer new innovative services like multi-[inaudible 00:03:09] or better discovery types of technologies, we can bring our solutions together with others and implement whatever they need.
Daniel Frankel:
So talking to you guys before sitting on these comfortable chairs, I got the sense that a big part of what you guys do is helping a constituency of Tier 2, Tier 3 smaller cable companies, not just in the US, but far from regions like Europe transition to IP video.
Matt Milford:
Yeah, we are a global company. We've been in the business for a long time, and I think there's a couple of different aspects for transitioning from QAM to IP. So one is the technology. The technology that's there today running QAM it's been there running, the operations teams know how to run it. There's a defined amount of support infrastructure that goes along with that. When you transition to IP, there's a lot of new technology to learn, a lot of new vendors to bring together. CommScope is big enough where we can bring all that pieces together, be a single point of support and work with the customers to transition from QAM to IP.
Some of the other aspects are like the cost and the ongoing support of that within the company. But there is a different cost model because you have, for example, the clients. The client with the set-top boxes that you mentioned, there was a very defined ecosystem of set-top boxes.
Daniel Frankel:
Right.
Matt Milford:
Now with IP, you have to deal with a lot of different devices and customer experiences, all the different app community and the versions ongoing. So there's a different structure that has to be applied to that, right? So business structure as well as all that support structure.
Jim Owens:
It's worth noting too, you're right. We do have a big emphasis on the Tier 2, three providers, but we also have a very large business dealing with the Tier 1, the very largest companies as well. We partner with them for not only migration to IP, but also supporting a lot of their legacy systems that still run today. So Tier 2, Tier 3 is a focus for us for right now, but we have a very strong business dealing with the largest of largest operators as well.
Daniel Frankel:
It seems like it's a challenging customer support proposition. A lot of these folks have been so rooted in what they've been doing for a long time, and you're trying to teach them a new way of technology life. Talk about that a little bit.
Jim Owens:
Yeah, no, our customers tend to have a lot of very, very smart people and they're very good at what they do. A lot of times we can bring experience that we have with other customers and things that we've learned along the way. In some of our products, we've been doing this, as we said decades, and some of the IP products, we even go back eight, 10 years and some of those products. So we do bring expertise to the table.
They have the challenge of managing both, right? They need to manage their legacy infrastructure as well as this new IP infrastructure if you're a paid TV provider, and we can help them there as well, sort of reduce that complexity. And we have products and we have solutions and professional services to help them migrate from that legacy world to the IP world using products that we built to make that transition easier, so it's not a complete stop and start again.
Daniel Frankel:
Well, great. It's a lot to get into in six minutes, so I look forward to sitting in on your presentation learning a little more. That's all for now. I'm Daniel Frankel, on behalf of CommScope and StreamTV Studio, see you soon.
Matt Milford:
Thanks.