|
Backoffice & OSS
NXTComm 2008: Cox feeling hospitable in Vegas
Cable provider pushing more HDTV, wireless data to big resort hotels
by Jim Barthold
Big resorts are big business for Cox Communications in Las
Vegas where hotel guests sometimes get better
telecommunications offerings than they have at home. As an
example, the Cox Business/Hospitality Network (CB/HN) has
launched high definition video-on-demand (VoD) in the new
Encore at Wynn Las Vegas resort hotel.
The VoD will be provided via a hybrid IP/coax network that
feeds all 2,716 rooms at Wynn Las Vegas and 2,034 rooms
at Encore as well as wired and wireless Internet connectivity
for guest rooms and convention and meeting rooms.
“There’s lots of demand for more and more HD,” said David
Blau, vice president and general manager of CB/HN, an affiliate
of Cox Communications that serves clients in Nevada, New
Jersey and Mississippi, generally through relationships started
with the gaming hotels in Vegas.
Hotels, said Blau, are “much more focused on a guest
experience … in the room” and are providing more amenities
such as HD along with greater data capabilities. Cox, he said,
provides up to 100 Mbps of throughput to hotel rooms within
greenfield deployments. “We’re focused on bringing things
that interconnect on the guest platform.”
Blau said he is not particularly concerned that the hotel
experience could outstrip the guest’s home experience —
especially if that guest is a Cox Communications cable
subscriber. Part of that is because Cox doesn’t brand its hotel
service.
“We let the hotel brand drive” because it’s “not critical to us in
a hotel room to have our brand there,” he said.
Hospitality is an important piece of the Cox commercial
services package — to some extent more so because Cox has
a franchise in Las Vegas — but also because what’s learned in
these giant hotel resorts can bleed down to smaller hotels
and hospitality customers, said Kristine Faulkner, vice
president of product development and management for Cox
Business.
“There is an embedded base (of business) with hospitality,”
she said.
Cox also has an embedded base of TDM voice equipment
within its commercial space, which is a big reason why Cox
because the first cable operator to join the SIP Forum. Cox is
promoting a business plan that includes SIP trunking and
direct links between the Cox Business IP network and SIP-
enabled IP-PBXs for customers who want to communicate with
locations outside their corporate networks using VoIP over
existing data networks.
|
