CTAM CABLE MARKETING EUROSUMMIT – BARCELONA. Following the most successful Eurosummit so far, CTAM Europe has big ambitions for future events. “We want to expand our membership base, here in the Iberian peninsula and in Germany,” said Chad Raube, who has taken over from Dennis Hodges as the chairman of CTAM Europe, “and we also want to encourage the small to medium sized operators to join. There can be a lot of value in it for them.”
The idea is to have regional sessions as well as specialist sessions for specific disciplines. This can also be a big plus for the smaller operator, which will have access to a lot of expertise.
Raube is now chief commercial officer at FiberNet Cable Holding based in Budapest and takes care “of the customer facing functions.” With interests in a number of cable operations in several countries in Eastern and Central Europe he faces lots of challenges in these emerging markets. “We have to be much more entrepreneurial there, be very hands on.”
Raube has a long history in the industry, which started 15 years ago in New Zealand, then to Harvard Business School and Media1/Comcast in the US. In 2000 he came to the UK, when Telewest was owned by US interests.
These are challenging times for the cable industry, with competition coming from incumbent telecom operators, over the top providers of content, fibre network overbuilds and others. CTAM Europe can be of great help to all operators in helping them to face the competition. “Cable must be like Apple for the consumer and become the entertainment gateway for them, as a user interface we must create our own version of the iPod for cable over multiple platforms.”
