While traveling this week I had the opportunity to read David Meerman Scott’s great new book, Real-Time Marketing, dealing with the new ways that marketers are engaging with their customers. It is a definite worthwhile read, full of examples of how the case studies highlighted there could be applied to our business…but what struck me was that TV isn’t really as much of a factor anymore as it used to be…
In industry journals, there has been an on-going debate about the extent of “cord-cutting,” the act of a consumer like you or me (also considered a subscriber by the service providers themselves) deciding to cancel their cable or IPTV service now that they can view a show via the internet, say from a service like iTunes or Hulu in the U.S. Conflicting statistics are being quoted left and right by different sides of the argument, which reminds me of Chris Brogan’s hilarious quote at a presentation I saw him give this Summer which, paraphrased, is “83.7 percent of all statistics are false.” Now I’m not saying one side or another is false but are likely just looking at the situation from different perspectives. Regardless of who’s right and what the extent really is, there is certainly some element of truth to it which means TV isn’t as much of a factor anymore as it used to be…
Personally, I wouldn’t want to get rid of my TV service. Without being able to get my Formula 1 fix or watching the Longhorn game (which in Austin is mandatory for citizenship), it would be like all the sacrifice but none of the grace of joining a monastery. But I have to admit that in my daily life, I am spending more time than ever with my tablet, PC, and phone…and as much as I love my TV, it isn’t really as much of a factor as it used to be… Read More »
Welcome back to our fourth and final installment of the updated Cisco Connected Life User Experience (CLUE) Index findings. We’ve previously covered residential and business services, and today, mobile services will be in the spotlight. The “On the Move” portion of the CLUE Index grew 19.45 points, from the baseline 100 index points value (based on 2008 global service adoption data) to 119.45 (based on 2009 global service adoption data). On the Move grew more than other segment in our study. Personal mobile devices (smartphones, PCs/laptops, tablets, E-readers, et al.) have become indispensable communications, information and entertainment gear for global wireless consumers. The combination of expanded 3G/4G networks, broader wi-fi access and greater device computing power for advanced mobile broadband applications and services has enabled this segment to flourish in spite of a challenging global economy. Here’s a graphic summary of business services global growth:
We tracked global penetration of the following mobile services as part of our CLUE research:
Mobile text messaging: mobile text-based services, including Short Message Service (SMS) and instant messaging
Mobile Multimedia Service (MMS): mobile services that include multimedia objects such as images, videos, audio, and rich text in addition to text
Mobile email: email on mobile phones
Mobile gaming: downloads of full games as well as online gaming on mobile phones, including single-player and multiplayer online games
Mobile music: full track downloads and music streaming services on mobile phones
Mobile television: scheduled TV content delivered over cellular and broadcast infrastructures
Mobile video: on-demand video content downloaded or streamed to the mobile handset
Mobile social networking: mobile services ranging from simple chat rooms with only texting tools, to multimedia-rich environments and user-generated content (UGC) sharing communities
Mobile LBS: services that include personal navigation, point of interest (POI), friend-finder, and family-tracker services
Mobile commerce: services such as mobile banking, local and remote mobile payments, and domestic and international funds transfer
Yesterday, we discussed the “At Home” or residential services category of our Cisco Connected Life User Experience (CLUE) Index findings. Today, we’ll focus on the “At Work” or business services category of our CLUE research. The At Work portion of the CLUE Index grew 14.17 points, from the baseline 100 index points value (based on 2008 global service adoption data) to 114.17 (based on 2009 global service adoption data). Globally, businesses are supporting telecommuting employees, remote workforces, and improved communication with partners and customers through network systems and resources. As businesses have had to re-evaluate their travel policies and budgets, video conferencing and other web-based collaboration services have been adopted as cost-effective alternatives. Here’s a graphic summary of business services global growth:
We tracked global penetration of the following business services as part of our CLUE research:
Business instant messaging: fixed-line business instant messaging, including all business users of on-premises and hosted email
Business IP telephony: IP telephony lines or end points that are attached to a dedicated IP-enabled or a dedicated IP phone system, not including shared or multitenant solutions
Business audio conferencing: phone-based conferencing with no video
Business web conferencing without video: collaborative sessions that use a standard web browser or downloaded client to share an application or to make a remote presentation over the Internet
Business personal video conferencing: includes client-server PC-software-based desktop conferencing, video telephony, web conferencing with video, and executive video conferencing
Business room-based video conferencing: group video conferencing that includes Cisco TelePresence® systems and multicodec and single codec conferencing systems
Mobile business email: mobile business email for users on an enterprise mobile account; this is considered an extension of office email service
Mobile business messaging: messaging for users on an enterprise mobile account; this is considered an extension of the office messaging service
Mobile business location-based services (LBS): business LBS for mobile employees such as the salesforce, and other location-tracking services for industries such as transportation, health, and security
One clear trend, here at the close of 2010, is the rise in importance of Content Distribution Networks, or CDNs, to cable service providers.
Here at Cisco, CDNs are similarly front-of-mind.
In this video, I outline three drivers for the growth of Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) in service provider networks:
To more easily reach video-capable, IP-connectable end points, with more types of video assets
To centralize movie and video asset distribution, instead of manually populating hundreds of distributed video on demand servers
To attract new revenue sources, such as wholesale content distribution.
Our ongoing work with British Telecom, for instance, helped them establish an important and new business model: Extending BT’s quality of service (QoS-)enabled CDN to their broadcasting and media partners, within the YouView [Canvas] initiative.
Plus, as service providers prepare competitive video offerings to serve screens beyond the television - an undeniable trend across our customer base - CDNs provide a great mechanism to scale streaming video.
Let’s face it - dancing cats are cute and apocalyptic visions of the future without IPv6 can be entertaining, but a glitch or two…or a “video not available” won’t violate any service level agreements. But what happens if the FIFA World Cup broadcast goes down? Or the “Auburn-Alabama” football game? Or the amazing live video feed of those copper miners in Chile being rescued? Millions will know immediately, and if it’s a paid event - millions of dollars of advertising or pay-per- revenue could be lost.
As it happened previously with voice, video transport is now moving from TDM to IP and this brings many benefits in terms of flexibility, the potential for application integration, and the opportunity to reach new customers watching on mobile and computing devices. However, this creates a new set of challenges for today’s operators - to not just carry a diverse set of video formats, but also to more endpoints while still ensuring a uniform high quality of experience.
Let’s face it - 