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May June 2008
Triple play and beyond: Does cable need FTTH?
A recent event on FTTH saw over 2,000 delegates, some of them from the cable sector, treated to the costs and benefits of pushing fibre as far (in)to the home as possible. The assumption is that video plays a big part in the telco FTTx business case. Cable's ability to go 100Mbps and higher with DOCSIS 3.0 further represents a strong incentive for telcos to move to FTTx. An, unanswered question, however, was whether the same argument goes both ways – would cable benefit from FTTH too?
With cable operators gearing for DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts, options such as 1GHz upgrades and bandwidth saving measures such as switched digital video, these would seem to negate the FTTH need, at least in the short to medium terms. So should cablecos start thinking about the long term, and all the associate investments, now? Is the still emerging DOCSIS 3.0 technology sufficient for MSOs long-term needs?
When Motorola unveiled its C-PON strategy, which aims to facilitate the migration to PON in an HFC environment non-disruptively (ie, making it cable-friendly), it was seen by many as nothing but a marketing gimmick. Motorola itself admits that the interest from the operator community was low, but now claims that interest has reawaken among European and Asian telcos, partly as a result of growing moves from telcos to FTTH. It has visited a number of operators to see what their needs and interests are with fibre, and found that the main concern, besides ease of transition, is that it has to tie with the back office.
With this in mind, can PON or FTTH in general be made DOCSIS friendly? To be sure, managing and optimising DOCSIS over fibre is a necessary step, as is a smooth transition. CableLabs and the SCTE are, in fact, both looking at taking the PON standard and adapting it to cable. In January, the SCTE issued a call for papers on FTTH/FTTx, showing that it is on the organisation’s radar.
Operators are emphasising the ‘need for speed’. Everyone expects future consumer demand for multimedia services to accelerate (very high-speed internet combined with HD multi-room VoD etc etc), but tying this with a workable business case is another matter. Qwest plan to invest $1.8 billion in a FTTN deployment; of course, telecoms is a high investment game.
Assuming cable does decide to go down an all-fibre route, what issue and challenges exist here with regards to topologies, costs, services etc and how could this best be resolved? Is cable PON inherently a better FTTH approach for cable than Ethernet point-to-point? When all is said and done, is it just a Greenfield opportunity?
Word count: 1,800
This feature will be written by: Philip Hunter
He can be contacted on: phunter@philiphunter.com
Editorial deadline: Friday 18 April 2008
Material may be edited, altered or adapted as the publisher sees fit, and material will not be defamatory or in breach of copyright. CSI will own the copyright on the article for use in both paper and electronic media.
The business VoIP opportunity
A recent analyst report concluded that this year will finally see VoIP come of age. "As household broadband penetration increases, it will facilitate greater use of digital services, helping to improve the call quality of industry services," it said.
More specifically, one CTO identified the European VoIP small and medium business (SMB) market as one on “the cusp of a land-grab”, one that cable operators should think about positioning to exploit. He pointed to the rise of SIP application servers and some of the wholesale type capabilities offered from the large companies lowering the barrier to entry. White label organisations and virtual IP telephony service providers (vITSPs) are creating a more appealing model where what was previously a big IT integration project is now turning into a manageable environment.
In the US, Comcast is launching a new service, called Business Class Voice, which offers regional businesses voice services, high-speed internet and CATV, taking on telco incumbents with the offering.
European cable has been predominantly focused on the residential triple play market, so while this represents a new opportunity, MSOs have to think about the strategies to target this space. Working on the assumption that VoIP technology has matured sufficiently to be considered by the SMB segment, how best can cable profit? What strategies exist and does a one-size fit all approach work? What’s the likely impact on the back office systems, CMTS and CPE equipment? Can DOCSIS 3.0 with its promise of higher QoS help, or should they move now in the first instance to ensure the opportunity does not pass them by?
Word count: 1,800
This feature will be written by: David Adams
He can be contacted on: david_j_adams@hotmail.com
Editorial deadline: Friday 18 April 2008
Material may be edited, altered or adapted as the publisher sees fit, and material will not be defamatory or in breach of copyright. CSI will own the copyright on the article for use in both paper and electronic media.
Targeted advertising: a multi-platform analysis
It is common knowledge that advertising, just like television itself, is slowly changing from broadcast to unicast. The Holy Grail is to have finely granular ad streams to the individual household. The argument goes that these adverts will then be highly personalised in nature, which will help sustain next-generation business models. Alcatel-Lucent acquired Tamblin, a specialist in interactive advertising solutions, in September, hoping to exploit the opportunities with tools enabling user profiling and presence management.
In an (all-) IP environment, each device, such as set top boxes, has an IP address, whereby information specified and defined by the user can be provided as a customised content overlay. Following on from this, advanced advertising technology will allow consumers to receive localised and other relevant information.
This feature will consider how satellite and cable operators can match the IPTV proposition, and the issues relating to insertion. Can tools such as switched digital video help cable compete on an even footing? With cable and satellite moving to (end-to-end) IP, are telcos inherently still at an advantage?
Moreover, what opportunities are presented by time shifted and on demand viewing, as well as user generated content? Are there any examples of “successful” targeted advertising campaigns?
Word count: 1,800
This feature will be written by: Philip Hunter
He can be contacted on: phunter@philiphunter.com
Editorial deadline: Friday 18 April 2008
Material may be edited, altered or adapted as the publisher sees fit, and material will not be defamatory or in breach of copyright. CSI will own the copyright on the article for use in both paper and electronic media.
VoD Supplement
Business models
A number of surveys have shown that people are now on average spending more time on the Internet than watching TV, and this is particularly true of younger demographics. Other statistics bear witness to this trend. There were 300m online video viewers at the end of 2007, according to ABI Research, with 900m expected by 2012. The iPlayer has seen 2.2m viewers and 0.5m programmes watched daily. Certainly, “traditional” broadcasters and content owners are realising the importance of online as audiences grow and will want to avoid the Napsterisation of video.
Hulu and Project Kangaroo are two well publicised examples of large destination sites and content syndication networks that have emerged to this end. Will these traditional players dominate and dictate the market, or will Joost, Babelgum etc have more than just a niche role to fill? What impact will large content companies have on the development of Web TV as they look to take greater control of the market? Specifically, will it mean that the Web will match traditional broadcast models?
(Online video is a good way to “catch-up” up on missed episodes, a complement to “live TV” linear broadcasting. Arguably, live TV will only be watched online if having to work in the office during a football game. And even then, rights are an issue…)
Many don’t like the word ‘monetisation’, a way of making money out of Internet TV must be found. Will operators have yield to a model based entirely on advertising (widget advertising anyone?), or will they be able to charge for premium content and high definition on the Web? French broadcaster M6 launched an online catch-up TV service this month, which offers shows on a free-to-view basis with each video preceded by an in-stream ad. Is there a role for subscription (ethnic programming), on-demand and other models? How is the market likely to evolve in this respect?
Word count: 1,800
This feature will be written by: Adrian Pennington
He can be contacted at: adrian@melissi.co.uk
Editorial deadline: Friday 18 April 2008
Material may be edited, altered or adapted as the publisher sees fit, and material will not be defamatory or in breach of copyright. CSI will own the copyright on the article for use in both paper and electronic media.
Security
The Internet has traditionally been seen as something of a Wild West in terms of video content. An executive in the Internet TV space recently outlined the main challenge as follows: “In this new industry we need to work hard to convince a traditionally conservative television industry that this new form of video distribution can protect their assets in a secure, piracy free environment and deliver a commercial return.”
Indeed, security is usually one of the three or four key issues identified when talking about Internet TV. Content security matters; in particular premium, high-quality video content does and will continue to matter, whether online or another medium. In the Web space, it is exacerbated by the fact that rights owners have had their assets exposed in an environment in which it’s quite easy to pirate, share and abuse the property.
Vendors here are either launching Web-specific solutions or optimising existing products to tale into account the multi-screen approach. How far are copyright protection issues close to being resolved? What approaches are common today? Are content owners satisfied with the robustness of current security solutions, or are next-generation ones such as fingerprinting being demanded? What trends are emerging (eg, geographical restrictions, time-limited access licences…)? The ultimate goal is for security solutions to encourage, rather than stifle, online video.
Word count: 1,800
This feature will be written by: David Adams
He can be contacted at: david_j_adams@hotmail.com
Editorial deadline: Friday 18 April 2008
Material may be edited, altered or adapted as the publisher sees fit, and material will not be defamatory or in breach of copyright. CSI will own the copyright on the article for use in both paper and electronic media.
QoS
Web TV providers claim that technical challenges have been overcome, that technology and capacity now exists to provide on-demand, broadcast quality programming via the Internet. Despite this talk, however, strong reservations exist from many quarters on whether the internet is ready to cope with the rise in multimedia usage. Primary among this is a question mark over whether Internet TV can scale.
Cisco released a study last year forecasting that video and Web 2.0 networked-based applications will quadruple internet bandwidth in the next five years. Issues here revolve around how to guarantee QoS in what is a best-efforts service, unlike the closed managed IPTV networks run by the telcos. There was a notorious case recently in the US of Comcast influencing bit torrent traffic because of these concerns.
Once the novelty fades, consumers will (in most cases) expect better streaming quality, as do the content owners for fear of disrupting their brand image.
An interesting question is what role P2P content distribution can play in easing QoS issues. Akamai claims that its CDN/P2P approach delivers a consistent, high-definition video experience for optimal delivery of HD files online. What kind of potential exists in the development of legal P2P networks (by content owners etc)?
Away from mere bandwidth availability, what other considerations exist (eg, compression, transcoding, deep packet inspection…) and how can they best be leveraged to ensure a good Web TV end-user experience?
Word count: 1,800
This feature will be written by: Nick Flaherty
He can be contacted at: npflaherty@googlemail.com
Editorial deadline: Friday 18 April 2008
Material may be edited, altered or adapted as the publisher sees fit, and material will not be defamatory or in breach of copyright. CSI will own the copyright on the article for use in both paper and electronic media.
