Best Buy and Cable Industry Team Up
to Make Digital Video Offers Through
Go2Broadband(SM)

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CableLabs® has added support of cable digital video service offerings, including high-definition television (HDTV), to its Go2BroadbandSM (G2B) service locator application, which is available through retail stores such as Best Buy.

Mark Coblitz, Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning at Comcast Corporation, said: “As an industry, we have worked diligently to coordinate the sale of video services with the latest products available from the consumer electronics industry. It only makes sense that we provide a convenient way for consumers to sign up for high-definition cable services at the same time they are purchasing their new 50-inch HDTV.”

Kevin Leddy, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Development, Time Warner Cable, noted, “The launch of the new version of Go2Broadband software represents a marvelous opportunity to promote video sales through the retail channel.” He added: “This will build on the tremendous success Go2Broadband has achieved in the sale of high-speed data service to hundreds of thousands of cable customers over the past three years.”

“With more than 20 million service requests coming through G2B each year, we are excited about the prospects of leveraging this great tool to support video sales,” said Dr. David Reed, CableLabs Chief Technical Officer and Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning.

“It’s great to see our partners working together to bring this to our customers,” said Dave Sprosty, Vice President of Subscription Services at Best Buy. “Our goal is to make it easy for our customers to sign up for the enhanced experience of digital cable and get access to the new high-definition content in value-added services.”

In addition to CableLabs, a wide variety of companies and organizations have participated in the development and deployment of this application, including the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) and several cable operators including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Insight, Cablevision Systems, Charter and Adelphia. Comcast was the first to launch the service with Best Buy in September of 2002.

“The CTAM Retail Committee was pleased to work with CableLabs to develop specifications for selling digital video products at retail,” said Andy Addis, Senior Vice President, Marketing and New Products at Comcast and Chairman of the CTAM Retail Committee. We received valuable input from Best Buy and other interested retailers which contributed to the success of the project,” Addis said.

G2B began as a high-speed data locator service more than three years ago and is being expanded to serve other cable operator offerings, including serving as a mechanism for allowing consumers who move households to connect with a new cable operator in their new community. It is a business-to-business e-commerce system that acts as a clearinghouse between affiliates and cable operators serving to assist with serviceability checks and orders for a variety of services including standard definition digital television and video-on-demand.

G2B accepts customer address serviceability queries from retailers and other affiliates, identifies the appropriate cable company to which to forward the query, and responds back to the retailer with cable operator service availability and offer details. G2B also facilitates the order placement for the consumer once the consumer has decided to subscribe to the service. G2B can handle thousands of messages simultaneously in real time.

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