As we approach the start of NAB 2012, I am struck by how much has changed in a year. What was vision 12 months ago is reality today. TV Everywhere is reaching the mainstream and consumer demand on continues to grow at a breathtaking place.  Media companies and service providers who are enabling this transition are wrestling with questions about how to manage, monetize, secure, process, and deliver quality experiences.

Amidst the growth some underlying trends reveal current consumer preferences -  compiling information from more than 10 billion video views shows that 60 percent of mobile videos consumed are done using an iPhone and iPod, while the iPad alone accounted for 20 percent of video consumption.  Add it all together and 80 percent of all mobile video is viewed using an iOS device. Keep in mind the iPad was first released in 2010!  We believe the multiple device phenomenon will diversify -- the number tells the tale.

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Tags: multiple devices, nab, national association of broadcasters, Service Provider, tv, video, videoscape

Think back to the year 1997. Back then, Bill Clinton had just begun his second Presidential term. Princess Diana’s funeral was watched by 1.5 billion people. Internet Explorer version 4 was new. The Hale-Bopp comet made its closest approach to Earth – and the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) was released publicly for the first time (March 1997), marking the beginning of the broadband revolution.

That’s why our John Chapman, a Cisco Fellow and one of the original contributors to the DOCSIS specification, chose to highlight the subject, during his March 20 keynote at the Light Reading Cable Next-Gen Broadband Strategies conference in Denver.

The highlights: By year-end 1997, some 10,000 DOCSIS-based cable modems were installed in Canada. At the time, services ran on a single carrier, for 40 Mbps downstream – spread across 20+ fiber nodes.

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Tags: cable, ccap, Cisco, docsis, john chapman, Service Provider

Schools, government agencies, health care organizations, and businesses all across the Mid-Atlantic may soon have an option for 100 Gigabit per second (Gbps) connectivity, thanks to the hard work by Lumos Networks on its fiber optic plant in that region.  Lumos Networks, if you aren’t familiar with the name — is the wireline side of nTelos which split off last year (the wireless part of the company kept the nTelos moniker).

Specifically, Lumos announced the completion of validation testing of our 100 Gbps coherent DWDM technology, running on Cisco’s ONS 15454 platform, “which proves that our network is ready to support extremely high speed services,” notes Lumos President Michael B. Moneymaker.   This successful validation comes on the heels of a successful demonstration, conducted by the European Advanced Network Test Center (EANTC), of Cisco’s coherent 100G dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) solution exceeding 3,000 km.

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It’s been a great week for AT&T at the IP&TV World Forum, and by proxy, a great week for Cisco!

In case you hadn’t heard the word from “over the pond,” the IP&TV World Forum recognized AT&T with not one, but TWO accolades: Best TV App, for its U-verse for Tablet, and “Best Consumer Device,” for the U-Verse TV Wireless Receiver (built by guess who!)

The IP&TV Industry Awards, which occurred in London on the evening of March 21, honor service providers for their innovation, excellence, and achievement in the IPTV sector.

The AT&T Wireless Receiver, which launched across U-verse markets last October, is an IPTV set-top equipped with video-optimized Wi-Fi. From a consumer perspective, it means hanging the TV set anywhere, and not necessarily near a coaxial wall outlet — a no-wires way to arrange the TV to go with people’s lives, furniture, and living environments.

In Cisco-speak, we call this fabulous device the ISB7005 wireless DVR set-top, coupled with our VEN401 wireless access point. The former is a set-top that can go anywhere in the house; the latter is the video-optimized wireless access point.

So allow me to raise a (virtual) glass, on behalf of the hardworking team here at Cisco who helped make these technologies possible — and to our colleagues at AT&T, for making it happen! Clink and congrats.

Tags: AT&T, consumer, IPTV, mobility, tablet, Uverse, wi-fi, wifi, wireless

To borrow from Walt Disney, it’s a small (cell) world after all . . .

Not only was this Cisco’s message at Mobile World Congress 2012 but, in the weeks since, the mobile industry has been singing the same refrain.  The media, analysts, our partners, customers and competitors have enthusiastically joined the chorus, acknowledging that the post-macrocell era is upon us.

As Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers has said, “radio type no longer defines the network architecture — and small cells are critical in delivering the mobile Internet.” To be competitive, mobile operators must support heterogeneous network access including licensed and unlicensed (Wi-Fi) radio, have an intelligent core and offer cloud-based services that deliver more applications faster in a scalable, flexible and resilient environment.

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Tags: microcell, mobile world congress, mobility, mwc, small cell, wifi, wireless