Whether the mega mergers roiling cable lead to intense new competition among top players or to new levels of cooperation, it seems safe to say that one result of the intensifying scramble to stay on top could be the eventual dominance of cable's infrastructure in local broadband communications transport. This possibility rests on the fact that, no matter how AT&T and the new AOL Time Warner conglomerate work out their complex dealings, they've raised the stakes so high that they have no choice but to futureproof their networks as quickly as possible. And because they can do it in more or less uniform fashion across a newly standardized multiservice platform, they are assured of having the mass market scale essential to making their presence felt on retail shelves, where consumer purchases of modems, set-tops and other devices will decide who wins and loses in the broadband network services marketplace.
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