Cisco Predicts Video Will Dominate IP Traffic

A Light Reading article has Cisco tables that gives their forecast for global IP traffic out to 2012. This forecast makes the following conclusions:

• Internet IP traffic dominates but non Internet IP will grow more quickly
• Consumer IP traffic dominates and will grow faster than business IP traffic
• Telco IPTV will be one of the fastest growing sources of metro IP traffic

This study confirms our analysis that Telco IPTV services will become a significant factor in carrier metro IP networks.

Microsoft adds Mediaroom Partners

Microsoft announced that it added three new system integration partners, HP, Tech Mahindra, and 180Squared. These companies are in addition to Alcatel-Lucent, which is Microsoft's only end-to-end system integrator as well as its only reseller.

Microsoft also stated that Mediaroom is not supporting more than 2 million TV sets worldwide.

This is interesting because it may indicate some weakening of the Microsoft/Alcatel-Lucent arrangement. Alcatel-Lucent offers two middleware software systems as well as Mediaroom. Whether or not this is true, Microsoft's service provider customers can benefit from the incremental skills that these three new partners bring. HP has a strong server hardware base. Tech Mahindra has strong back office skills, and 180Squared provides applications and the ability to support smaller deployments.

The 2 million TV sets does not mean 2 million subscribers. AT&T in the U.S. provides multiple set-top boxes per home. In any case, Microsoft is experiencing strong growth in homes served.

China Telecom Wants 574K IPTV Set-top Boxes

China Telecom launched a unified bidding process for 574,000 IPTV set-top boxes. The bid covers 536,000 SD and 38,000 HD units all with H.264 . China Telecom set this figure after consulting with its provincial branches on their growth plans for IPTV . The bidding is taking place through a unified framework managed by China Telecom, while each province is involved with its own procurement. Only Guangdong Telecom will not be ordering any terminals, as its IPTV platform will not be upgraded to the latest version of IPTV this year.

This bodes well for IPTV in China in 2008 and marks the start of HD services. It will be interesting to see if this rate of growth continues beyond the Beijing Olympics.

Creating a Level Playing Field for Content in India.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) held meetings the May 14 through 16th with the broadcasters of pay channels to discuss the rates and packaging of channels they offer to facilitate faster growth of IPTV services in the country. TRAI had previously recommended that the broadcasters should be allowed provide signals to all distributors of TV channels including IPTV service providers.

Some of IPTV have had difficulty getting broadcast channels at prices as the DTH satellite service. providers are getting in line with TRAI’s determination of a-la-carte and bouquet prices on advisory basis. In the meetings there was a general consensus for non-discriminatory pricing as well as pricing channels on both an a la carte and a bundled basis for IPTV services.

This is a step forward for IPTV in India that will help the Telcos to compete with the existing satellite providers.

Shanghai Telecom at 420K IPTV Subscribers

Shanghai Telecom now has 420 thousand IPTV subscribers in the city compared to 230 thousand one year ago. Shanghai's IPTV service is adding value added products and developing new services. For example, its relaxation games, which were launched on May 31, attracted 34 thousand users in four days, which illustrates the popularity of interactive products.

China's IPTV subscribers is expected to grow at a significant pace this year due to the Beijing Olympic Games. The service is expected grow rapidly during the next five years and is expected to reach 35 million in 2012.

Shanghai has the most successful IPTV service in China and is experiencing rapid growth. IPTV has not been as successful in the other deployments in the country.

Free Negotiating for Alice France

Free, the competitive carrier in France, is negotiating to buy Telecom Italia's Alice broadband service in France for about 800 million euros. Free stated that it expects to complete this transaction by the end of 3Q08 subject to consultation with the employee representatives and other necessary approvals.

Free also stated that this transaction would move it back into the position of the leading competitive broadband carrier in France. It lost that position last year when Neuf Cegetel acquired Deutsche Telekom's Club Internet broadband service in France.

Free makes it sound like a done deal. It appears to be a good move by Free as long as the subscriber turnover is low during the transition.

Alcatel-Lucent Improves IPTV Network Architecture

Alcatel-Lucent announced improvements to its Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture (TPSDA) that includes:

• Increased capacity and density
• Policy enforcement with per-subscriber resolution
• The equivalent of 19.2 million queues per telecom rack, which enables more fine-grain service control to ensure each service is delivered with the appropriate Quality of Experience (QoE) and uses network resources in the most efficient manner
• PPPoE termination, which facilitates the smooth migration of legacy networks to TPSDA
• A reporting and analysis system which provides tools to warehouse, aggregate and process per subscriber application-level statistics

Alcatel-Lucent's TPSDA has been successful and fifty service providers globally have adopted it along with Alcatel-Lucent products, including AT&T in the U.S. TPSDA is providing more granular control over flows in order to assure QoE. Zeugma is attacking the same problem with its new system.

These architectures will clearly be important for insuring QoE for VoIP and mobile services. It is still not clear to me that it will be effective for IPTV traffic as IPTV moves from a broadcast/multicast approach to an on demand/unicast approach. Unicast TV will saturate these networks and be quite difficult to manage using packet based techniques.