Cable Operators Fight Google, Apple Threat in European TV

Europe’s cable television operators, faced with a threat from video content aggregators such as Google and Apple, say they'll fight to keep customers. While the continent’s increasingly digitized homes are ringing in higher revenue for the operators, they are also seeing TV customers deserting them for Internet TV, or IPTV, and other so-called over-the-top providers that bypass cable packages and provide content directly through Web browsers. “With companies like Apple, Google and Amazon entering our markets, the stakes are rising and we need to step up to the challenge,” Adrian von Hammerstein, chief executive officer of Germany’s largest cable operator, Kabel Deutschland Holding AG, said yesterday at the Cable Congress in Lucerne, Switzerland. “The TV market is ours to lose.”