One of Cisco's execs summed it up nicely today when he said John Chambers is extremely careful in treading the fine line between serving media companies and service providers. The company's Media Solutions group is at the front line of what should be a major new revenue stream, for Cisco and others, as media companies seek to distribute digital content to connected devices (See Disney/Streamboat's investment in Edgecast this week), ie, become service providers. At the same time, the Scientific Atlanta team are focused squarely on helping today's "service providers", ie cablecos and telcos, to meet the challenge of digital media. Most Cisco people do a good job of arguing that media firms aren't likely to compete directly with network access providers, at least in the near term. Either the internet isn't ready for media prime time, or cable and telcos will fight back with QoS and QoE tactics. Or media firms don't really want to bypass those folks, but are simply looking for new channels to supplement their existing ones. All those things may be true, and only time will tell. The outcome is inevitably going to be a mix of the two in the marketplace. What is uncertain is how influential advertisers can become in deciding the future. Cisco, like other tech firms, now needs to demonstrate to those companies just how much more effective the internet can be in maximising the effectiveness of their commercial messages. If they do a good job on that score, new business models around content will certainly emerge to take away some of the pain resulting from the inevitable downward pressure on paid content distribution models. The long term direction is unlikely to become clear for the next 2-3 years at least. Client Reading: Digital Disruption: Imminent and Long Term Threats to the Audiovisual Industry Online HD: Disney’s ABC Throws Down Gauntlet To Competitors, and Access Providers