While I Was Sleeping, Momentous Developments for Cable's Future

[Commentary] Sometimes the onslaught of daily deals and lush forecasts obscures their real importance: They are collective indicators of the industry's direction, overshadowing the big picture (a version of the forest/trees conundrum). While May included a stunning array of "big deals" in telecommunications and media, their significance looms even larger when, as I've just done, you absorb the whole month's news in a single dose. Obviously, the biggest deals, especially Charter-Time Warner Cable-Bright House Networks plus Altice-Suddenlink, underscore the consolidation of the industry, especially with Altice's appetite for more acquisitions on this side of the Atlantic.

The "internationalization" of domestic cable also pokes through, notably with the role that Liberty Media/Liberty Global can play in bringing content deals across the ocean; Altice may do the same. Maybe it was just my overwhelming, sudden immersion into so many aspects of the business that instilled a sense of a "pivotal moment." The merry month of May 2015 could someday be identified as a changing point for the industry, or maybe it was merely an accelerator for all the daily developments that we see unfolding but can rarely put into context.