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.
It’s springtime in London (or near enough), which must mean it’s time again for the IP&TV World Forum. Here’s a handful of reasons why you should come by and see us this week!
1. Strong coffee that is free and plentiful. Enough said.
2. To check out a (deployed) way of wiring homes that aren’t wired. Last year, AT&T launched its “Free Your TV” offering in its U.S. footprint – an instantly popular product, because it lets consumers place their HDTV screens wherever they want – regardless of whether there’s a coaxial outlet nearby. If getting to signal to usual or unusual places in your house is on your wish list, come by. We’ll fill you in on how the AT&T deployment is going (hint: really, really well). Check out the AT&T ad here:
And while you’re in the stand, do check out our Videoscape demonstrations – Lots of cool new developments to see!. And if that’s not enough, ask us about progress to date with recent Videoscape newsmakers TELUS, Rogers, and Numericable. Read More »
If you read the trade press, service provider video business models are under assault. IPTV operators are challenged by the high cost of video services, while traditional pay-TV operators are seeing growing OTT traffic threatening their cost and revenue structures. Amidst all this, ACG Research recently reported that the service provider video infrastructure market grew 4.5% sequentially in Q2 2011, to $3.5 billion. According to ACG, Cisco grew its market leadership position in the overall service provider video infrastructure market to 41.9%, added three share points in the CMTS market to 65.8%, and gained a commanding 34.6% share in the IPTV set top box market.
What’s contributing to this growth? Two factors: an evolving understanding of video, and an appreciation of the shifting composition of network traffic. Read More »
The ultimate cultural vision of video streaming was laid out in an iconic Qwest TV commercial from 1999. In it, a man wanders into a dusty, remote motel asking about room amenities. It’s not promising. The bored young lady behind the desk recites in an apathetic tone that the beds are all king-size, and the only breakfast offered is donuts and coffee.
But when the man asks about entertainment, that’s a little different. In the same monotone, the girl answers, “All rooms have every movie ever made in every language any time day or night.” It’s taken a while — probably longer than the technoptomists among us expected — but we’re getting closer to that vision.
For one thing, according to a survey recently conducted by Goldman Sachs and reported by HedgeFundLive, 27 percent of Americans now stream TV shows and movies, up from 16 percent in 2010.
With NAB in full swing this week, everyone is talking about delivering video services. Makes it a good time to discuss how Copenhagen (Denmark) based service provider Nianet has combined an extensive fiber deployment (100K+ km ) with a new investment in their IP network to offer video conferencing as a cloud service to business customers. For the small and medium sized business owner, you get big business productivity. Lease video conferencing on demand!
Nianet, which offers high-speed fiber communications throughout Denmark also distributes content from its sister company Waoo. They are now seeing the impact of companies increasingly producing their own video content, and therefore demanding faster and more symmetrical high speed data connections. The combination of fiber and high performance routers results in much faster speeds on both up and downstream.
“Businesses have really taken video communication as an alternative to physical meetings, and the technology is now spreading also from dedicated telepresence rooms for desktops and mobile devices. This places greater demands on both up and downstream, and Nianet has chosen to expand its backbone with twelve Cisco ASR 9000 routers to meet the increasing traffic and quality needs.
We also offer video conferencing as a cloud service to companies that want to begin with HD video communications. It therefore becomes easier to implement a full videoconferencing setup since we provide the server space, management software and plenty of bandwidth,” says Rasmus Helmich, CEO of Nianet.
By Howard Baldwin, Contributing Columnist
Copenhagen (Denmark) based service provider 