In the midst of tremendous disruption, it is impossible to tell where the global media industry is ultimately heading. But a recent analysis from the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) explores four possible future scenarios for the media industry. While they do not “predict” the future, the scenarios help build our understanding of possible outcomes — and how various industry players could be affected.

The Shape of Things To Come: Four Scenarios

We explored the ways certain industry developments could swing future outcomes. Combining these drivers into logical groupings (consumer behavior, regulatory requirements, technology, and macroeconomic conditions), we were able to define the following four scenarios, as shown in Figure 1. These scenarios are differentiated by consumer demand, industry structure, and content supply:

• Dark Ages — low demand, consolidated industry, and relatively low content supply
• Survival of the Fittest — low demand, fragmented industry, and high content supply
• Golden Age of Content — high demand, consolidated industry, and controlled content supply
• Wonderland — high demand, fragmented industry, and high content supply

Obviously, each of the scenarios will have different winners and losers. The financial impact and the implications for players across the industry value chain will substantially change by scenario. And in each scenario, distributors and infrastructure providers will need to consider different types of investments. Consequently, each type of player will need to adapt its competitive responses to the future scenario taking shape.

Figure 1.   Four Future Scenarios Are Based on Various Groupings of Industry Drivers.

 Source: Cisco IBSG, 2013

Following are examples of how two future scenarios could play out: Read More »

Tags: broadband, Cisco, cloud, cloud services, content, IBSG, infrastructure, media, media industry, monetization, over-the-top, regulatory requirements, service providers, video

By Andrew Yourtchenko, Technical Leader, Network Operations Systems Technology Group

As any geek, I find it a lot of fun to get some hands with the new technology -- be it a new gadget, new product or a solution.

It’s not very often that I have a chance to play with a whole new protocol. EANTC (European Advanced Network Testing Center) interoperability testing gave me such a chance. The bulk of the work happened on EANTC premises in Germany this past February. The overall activity involved many representatives from various vendors making their devices talk to each other. The goal is to test the protocols in several areas, including MPLS, SDN, and IPv6, but the highlight for me was the testing of MAP (Mapping Address and Port) -- a new protocol to enable the sharing of IPv4 addresses by several customer premise devices without keeping the state at the service provider end.

This protocol is being developed by IETF, and has two flavours, the standards-track “MAP” which uses encapsulation to transmit the packets, otherwise known also as MAP, and the experimental track “MAP-T” -- which uses the address family translation in order to send packets, instead of the encapsulation. Read More »

Tags: asr 9000, asr9k, ipv4, IPv6, Service Provider

Traveling has been a large part of my career at Cisco. Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to travel to customer meetings around the world, discussing their innovation and use cases for Cisco Small Cell Solutions.  What’s interesting is when I spoke with operators in Europe, the prime drivers for WIFI has been connecting cities and stadiums for special events….the summer Olympics was a great example.,   While in the US, I have met with operators about connected stadiums, retail malls, museums and more.   The most interesting story was a visit to the Middle East. We were in Dubai, and seeing some of the examples of where they wanted to take Cisco SP Wi-Fi Solution was fascinating. There was one location in particular that I dubbed “Candy Land”, because it had a retail venue, it had an amusement park, it had a stadium, it had a race track — all in one location on an island. This operator was going to talk to the owner of the island about how they could provide SP Wi-Fi for all of those venues. I was talking to another operator in the Middle East, and one of the things they were looking to provide SP Wi-Fi for was The Hajj. There are millions of people that go to Mecca yearly, and they just need connectivity, for a lot of different reasons; I found that absolutely fascinating. Each part of the globe has unique use cases to each of their country’s cultures and people, but they all want to be part of the wireless world. Read More »

Tags: big thinkers in small cells, mobility, Service Provider, small cell, wi-fi, wifi

By Steve Simlo, IPv6 Product Manager, Cisco Network Operating Systems Technology Group

As IPv6 gains more and more ground within the Internet we are starting to see recognition amongst the wider community that technologies such as Carrier Grade NAT (CGNAT) have some significant drawbacks from a service and scalability standpoint. Some of the issues were recently highlighted by a major carrier which actually issued a public “opt out” option to their customers if needed.

However, there are some applications such as online gaming, VPN access, FTP service, surveillance cameras, etc., that may not work when broadband service is provided via a CGN. For our customers utilizing these types of applications, we provide the ability to “opt out” of CGN Read More »

Tags: cgv6, Cisco, Internet of Everything, internet of things, IoT, IPv6, map, Service Provider, Steve Simlo, World IPv6 Congress

As President of Fiber to the Home Council Asia-Pacific, I am really excited about the forthcoming annual conference to be held in May 19-21, 2013 in Auckland, New Zealand.

Let’s look at some of the compelling facts for the region:

By year-end 2016, nine economies are forecasted to reach FTTx household penetration rates of 20% or higher: Read More »

Tags: apac, Asia-Pacific, fiber, Service Provider