CENTRIS and Media Business Corp (MBC) announced the formation of C+MBC, a new joint business venture that provides a comprehensive solution for identifying and tracking household demand for broadband, media and entertainment services.

"This opportunity to work with the premier research company for tracking household behavior gives us a chance to serve our communications clients with more mission-critical information than anyone else in the country," said MBC founder Paul Maxwell. "With the growing competitive landscape, our combined ability to address detailed behavioral and current status data gives our clients the competitive edge."

Presenting initial findings from its new IPTV demand study, C+MBC unveiled its new venture at the CableFAX Leaders Retreat in Puerto Rico, an invitation-only, informal summit for cable MSOs and other influential leaders in the industry.

C+MBC's core capacities include accurate coverage of cable and DBS markets; projections of household demand; industry best assessment of broadband availability and emerging fiber-to-the-home; evaluations of VoIP, IPTV and other nascent technologies; household scoring and direct mail solutions.

"Its not often you find a company that can provide one stop shopping for information to track, for local markets, the pulse of household demand for video-data-voice products and services," said Dr. Paul Rappoport of Temple University. "C+MBC is that source."

The company tracks more than 100 products and services and offers post- sale consulting and analysis, creating a turn-key solution for its clients.

Among the advantages of the C+MBC approach to reporting and analysis is the ability to extend its core metrics to multiple geographies -- from Census block groups to ZIP codes, cable systems, telco wire centers, custom trade areas, DMAs, etc. -- with consistency across all levels.

"A critical input to any competitive analysis is timely access to accurate measures of market trends and firm performance," said Rappoport. "Since the battlegrounds for the video-data-voice wars are inherently local, national summaries simply will not work. The strength of C+MBC is precisely this ability to provide detailed and accurate information for every local market."

The company's approach also takes advantage of CENTRIS' omnibus survey, which utilizes random-digit-dialing to sample more than 60,000 households annually -- one of the largest surveys of its kind.