Time Warner Cable Stepping up to Home Networking?

File this under "I'll believe it when I see it." Time Warner Cable's President and Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said yeterday at the Sanford C. Berstein & Co. Strategic Decisions Conference that we can expect to see cable operators offering wireless residential gateways (technically, Britt called them "wireless cable modems") that not only enable in the in-home networking features, but also allow for services like Web video to be streamed to TVs. I suppose then it would work very much the Freebox in France, where there's a wireless gateway and a media adapter to link the Web services and content to the TV.

Last July, I wrote about being disappointed in cable's efforts in home networking. Maybe it was just a matter of giving it some time. A couple of years ago, who would have thought that cable and telephone providers would be investing in P2P companies (Comcast investing in GridNetworks after also talking about collaborating with BitTorrent), launching their own broadband video sites (Comcast again), and offering subscription online video services (Verizon with Starz)? Well, we'll see how Time Warner's prediction pans out.

Memo to self - check on this in November 2009.