Motorola will introduce a new alternative for cable companies that want to offer services using FTTH technology. Called RF Over Glass (RFoG), this technology transports an RF cable signal to each home using a fiber connection. An NIU at each home converts the optical signal to a signal that can be transmitted over the coax network in the home. RFoG provides standard cable video, data, and telephony services in the home.
This is a separate development from its Cable PON products that have been discussed earlier in this blog. Cable PON can provide and RF signal over the fiber for the broadcast video channels, but uses 2.4 Mbps in the case of GPON to support data, VoIP, and video on demand services.
RFoG does not improve the performance of an HFC cable network. It is still limited to the 850 MHz to 1 GHz of spectrum that is available today. Consequently, this approach does not provide any advantage for cable compared to a telco FTTH service.
Motorola is introducing RFoG and Cable PON as alternative architectures to respond to the requests from new housing developments for fiber connections. Developers find that they can command a premium up to $10,000 for new fiber connected homes. Verizon and ATT are both offering GPON FTTH services for these greenfield developments.
Cable companies can compete head on with the telcos using Motorola's Cable PON products. Some cable companies would like to stay close to their existing architecture and are interested in the RFoG approach and believe that their existing networks provide sufficient performance to be competitive. Motorola stated that it is looking at ways to facilitate the evolution of an RFoG network to a Cable PON network so that cable companies initially selecting an RFoG approach can move to Cable PON as performance requirements increase. Motorola will start delivering RFoG in 2H08 for trials and initial deployments.
It looks like Motorola has the cable companies covered with both GPON and RFoG technologies. Personally, I think there will be increasing resistance to RFoG as people realize that they are not getting any additional performance with their $10,000 fiber connections.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
ITU Delivers IPTV Standards
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced standards for IPTV. The standards were built with technical contributions from leading service providers and manufacturers. The new standards were developed by the Focus Group on IPTV (FG IPTV) in ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T).
These standards are intended to give service providers — broadcasters, ISPs, cable operators or telecom service providers — control over their platforms and their offerings. Standards will encourage innovation, help mask the complexity of services, guarantee quality of service, ensure interoperability and help players remain competitive.
Contained within the documents produced by the Focus Group are the high-level architecture and frameworks needed by service providers in order to rollout IPTV services. ITU’s next phase of IPTV work — IPTV-GSI (global standards initiative) — will centre on the preparation of standards based on documents produced by FG IPTV as well as on the detailed protocols required.
Twenty-one documents covering IPTV requirements, architecture, quality of service (QoS), security, digital rights management (DRM), unicast and multicast, protocols, metadata, middleware and home networks will be submitted to the ITU-T Study Group charged with progressing and distributing the work. The IPTV-GSI will build on the momentum generated over the past 20 months, and it is foreseen that contributions and participation will continue to increase.
The first meeting of IPTV-GSI will convene in Seoul, Republic of Korea from 15 to 22 January 2008.
IPTV standards are surely needed, but they will probably be too late to strongly influence the major IPTV deployments already underway in Europe, Asia, and North America. These IPTV services have made their implementation decisions and are not likely to change them in major ways to accommodate new standards.
These standards are intended to give service providers — broadcasters, ISPs, cable operators or telecom service providers — control over their platforms and their offerings. Standards will encourage innovation, help mask the complexity of services, guarantee quality of service, ensure interoperability and help players remain competitive.
Contained within the documents produced by the Focus Group are the high-level architecture and frameworks needed by service providers in order to rollout IPTV services. ITU’s next phase of IPTV work — IPTV-GSI (global standards initiative) — will centre on the preparation of standards based on documents produced by FG IPTV as well as on the detailed protocols required.
Twenty-one documents covering IPTV requirements, architecture, quality of service (QoS), security, digital rights management (DRM), unicast and multicast, protocols, metadata, middleware and home networks will be submitted to the ITU-T Study Group charged with progressing and distributing the work. The IPTV-GSI will build on the momentum generated over the past 20 months, and it is foreseen that contributions and participation will continue to increase.
The first meeting of IPTV-GSI will convene in Seoul, Republic of Korea from 15 to 22 January 2008.
IPTV standards are surely needed, but they will probably be too late to strongly influence the major IPTV deployments already underway in Europe, Asia, and North America. These IPTV services have made their implementation decisions and are not likely to change them in major ways to accommodate new standards.
Chinese AVS Alliance
Eighteen Chinese companies including telecom service providers, content creators, and system manufacturers including China Telecom and Huawei recently formed China Interactive Media Industry Alliance (CIMIA). CIMIA aims to develop and promote technologies for AVS standard based IPTV.
It does appear that AVS will become a significant factor in the Chinese IPTV market. IPTV encoder, video on demand systems, and set-top box manufacturers should pay close attention to these developments.
It does appear that AVS will become a significant factor in the Chinese IPTV market. IPTV encoder, video on demand systems, and set-top box manufacturers should pay close attention to these developments.
Qwest Says "No" to IPTV
Qwest has gone on record as saying that it will not include IPTV as a part of its intended VDSL rollout to pass 1.5 million homes in 20 markets. It believes that it can pay back its expected $300 million VDSL investment with an increase of $10 per month in ARPU. It expects that other applications other than IPTV such as gaming would generate the additional revenue. Based on its current VDSL/IPTV trials in Arizona and Colorado, it expects that its VDSL service will achieve a 40 percent market penetration.
Qwest is taking on a significant strategic risk by not going against its cable competitors head on. The cable companies can provide all of the services that Qwest's subscriber's want - voice, data, and video. Qwest will only be able to offer the first two. Its video offering will depend on reselling satellite services. This may not be strong enough.
Qwest has had long running IPTV trials in Phoenix and areas near Denver. It understands how to offer these services. It is also interesting that it is acquiring video licenses in cities such as Portland, Oregon, but will not use them. Strong success by ATT and Verizon could cause Qwest to change its strategy.
Qwest is taking on a significant strategic risk by not going against its cable competitors head on. The cable companies can provide all of the services that Qwest's subscriber's want - voice, data, and video. Qwest will only be able to offer the first two. Its video offering will depend on reselling satellite services. This may not be strong enough.
Qwest has had long running IPTV trials in Phoenix and areas near Denver. It understands how to offer these services. It is also interesting that it is acquiring video licenses in cities such as Portland, Oregon, but will not use them. Strong success by ATT and Verizon could cause Qwest to change its strategy.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Vyyo Increasing Cable Capacity
Vyyo is offering products that increase the amount of spectrum that cable companies can use in the coaxial cable portion of their Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) networks by 860 MHz. I recently had interviews with the CEO and the CTO of Vyyo to understand the impact of its technology on cable networks competing with the new Telco IPTV networks.
Vyyo stated that if the new spectrum that it makes available is used for IP based services such as IPTV, video on demand, and DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem services, that cable companies can support four TVs simultaneously watching HD on demand content as well as support VoIP and DOCSIS 3.0 100 Mbps data services for groups of 50 to 100 homes.
The cable companies introduced HFC to groups of about 500 homes and several of them are decreasing the size of these groups down to about 100 homes. The Vyyo system does not require a significant decrease in the size of these groups to provide services that should be competitive with ATT's U-verse and Verizon's FiOS services in the U.S. It appears that Vyyo's products go further in making the cable companies competitive with Telco IPTV services than other technologies such as switched digital and coarse wave division multiplexing.
Vyyo stated that if the new spectrum that it makes available is used for IP based services such as IPTV, video on demand, and DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem services, that cable companies can support four TVs simultaneously watching HD on demand content as well as support VoIP and DOCSIS 3.0 100 Mbps data services for groups of 50 to 100 homes.
The cable companies introduced HFC to groups of about 500 homes and several of them are decreasing the size of these groups down to about 100 homes. The Vyyo system does not require a significant decrease in the size of these groups to provide services that should be competitive with ATT's U-verse and Verizon's FiOS services in the U.S. It appears that Vyyo's products go further in making the cable companies competitive with Telco IPTV services than other technologies such as switched digital and coarse wave division multiplexing.
Orca Introduces Content Search
Orca Interactive has introduced a content recommendation engine called COMPASS as part of its IPTV middleware software system. COMPASS will be in beta test at a small number of IPTV service providers in 1H08 and will be released for general availability before the start of 2H08.
There are three components to COMPASS:
The recommendation engine is the software that generates recommendations. Its recommendations will be based on popularity, recommendations, and user preferences as defined by past selections. The recommendation engine that Orca provides is based on research work funded in part by the Israeli government.
The backend management console permits the IPTV service provider to define how the selection process works. For example, the IPTV service provider can define:
I think that Orca is onto an important feature here. Identifying content and having interesting content presented to you without having to search for it will be a key to IPTV and other long tail services. It will be interesting to see how well Orca's efforts pan out.
There are three components to COMPASS:
- The user interface
- The recommendation engine
- The backend management console
The recommendation engine is the software that generates recommendations. Its recommendations will be based on popularity, recommendations, and user preferences as defined by past selections. The recommendation engine that Orca provides is based on research work funded in part by the Israeli government.
The backend management console permits the IPTV service provider to define how the selection process works. For example, the IPTV service provider can define:
- The relative importance of each type of recommendation type in the results. For example, the weighting of popularity, ratings, and user preference can be adjusted to favor one over the other to optimize the results for the service providers specific subscriber population.
- The IPTV service provider can include recommendations from premium packages that the viewer does not subscribe to to encourage up selling and increasing ARPUs.
I think that Orca is onto an important feature here. Identifying content and having interesting content presented to you without having to search for it will be a key to IPTV and other long tail services. It will be interesting to see how well Orca's efforts pan out.
Accenture Reports on Digital Advertising
Accenture has published brief results of a survey on Digital Advertising in two parts at the following link. There were only a few results published, including:
- 79 percent say that advertising will become more performance based.
- 87 percent say that analytics will become more accurate and more critical to the business.
- 97 percent say that advertising relationships with customers will become more interactive.
- 52 percent of DVR users skip all ads and 36 percent skip most ads.
None of these results is surprising, but it is interesting to see them confirmed. The reports give some of the background behind these numbers.
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