Rutledge: Charter to start Worldbox rollout ‘momentarily,’ but full deployment may take time
December 8, 2015
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Originally Appeared in FierceCable
By Mike Dano
December 7, 2015
Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) CEO Tom Rutledge said the MSO’s Worldbox set-top box “is finished and we’re ready to deploy it.” However, he hedged when questioned how long the carrier’s rollout of Worldbox would take.
Charter announced its Worldbox set-top box early this year. Rutledge explained in comments at an investor meeting that the Worldbox represents Charter’s thin-client approach to the set-top box market; instead of packing high-performance computing and video capabilities in an expensive device, Charter’s Worldbox conducts most of its work in the cloud, thereby allowing Charter’s Spectrum Guide user interface to be deployed onto a wide range of inexpensive set-top boxes. Cisco has announced it will supply a “substantial share” of Charter’s forthcoming Worldbox set-top boxes.
“Our intent is to begin rolling that out momentarily,” Rutledge said of Worldbox. “It really is complete and it works.”