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.
Have you ever wished you could watch the news on the bathroom mirror while you get ready for work? Wave your hand to order a pizza from an irresistible commercial? Not only watch shows, but smell, feel, and taste them, too? Turn your TV viewing into an immersive experience that allows you to engage with characters outside of the storyline and see additional scenes based on your profile and preferences? Well, you might be able to do these things and more in the not-too-distant future.
Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) interviewed 50 TV experts and examined three industry drivers -- technology, consumer behavior, and business models -- to paint a picture of what the future of TV will look like. Our point of view offers the first holistic vision of the future across all key dimensions of the television industry and sheds new light on the likelihood and timing of innovation.
Today, I unveiled our predictions on what the future of television might look like during my keynote presentation at OTTCon -- a trade show that hosts executives from the most innovative technology, media, and entertainment companies including PayTV operators, content producers, consumer electronics manufacturers, media aggregators and service providers.
If you are a service provider, the title of this blog probably has you shaking your head. SPs know only too well that Internet video is costing them money because of the expense of maintaining an infrastructure capable of delivering high-quality online video. The good news is that there is a way to monetize that demanding video traffic.
In 10 to 15 years, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) estimates that consumers will be watching Internet video as much as 50 percent of their video-watching time. Rather than panicking at the thought of supporting that magnitude of video traffic, SPs should be thinking about how to turn it into profits.
SPs have a strategic advantage over current content delivery network (CDN) providers; traditional CDN services allow content providers to bypass Internet congestion points, but do not allow them to bypass potential congestion points within the SP network that provides Internet access to consumers. CDN services delivered via the SP’s network are delivered by CDN caches placed much closer to the final viewer, reducing the probability of having congestion issues over the delivery path.
By Howard Baldwin, Contributing Columnist
Copenhagen (Denmark) based service provider 
