Chris Forrester, on 10-09-2008
IPTV is the phrase on almost everyone’s lips at this year’s IBC broadcasting show in Amsterdam. The technology is maturing, and spreading into all aspects of TV. But how do operators cope with Over The Top traffic from bandwidth-hungry web-sites like YouTube and MySpace
Rapid TV News’ has just held one of its regular ‘Round Table’ discussion forums looking at all aspects of the IPTV sector, and Over The Top content quickly came up in the conversation. “Frankly I’m not sure the industry fully understands these yet,” says Simon Cothliff, set-top supplier ADB’s New Business Development manager. “One hundred and forty billion downloads a year is a potential problem. The question is what might they (the operators) do with this
There are obviously two options. One is that the operators embrace it and they try and work with those services. The other option, sometimes called the Doomsday Scenario, is that content simply becomes ubiquitous and is available everywhere.”
Cothliff reminded the panel that even YouTube struggles to monetise its own services. “The other point to remember is that TV is still essentially television. No one wants to be spamming their customers with all sorts of click-throughs by integrating internet stuff too much. The service has to remain TV centric. I think the reality is that services like YouTube will become part of a ‘me too’ proposition. I think these types of services will be integrated into the core IPTV proposition but we have to be extremely careful as to how it is managed while bearing in mind that operators are being forced to offer increasingly onerous bandwidth volumes. It’s all very well expecting BT or Deutsche Telekom to fibre the whole of the country but they must also be given a chance to earn some cash from their investment.”
Simon McGrath, CMO at SeaChange International (which also owns On Demand Group) says operators will ‘bundle’ the costs and charges for these services into the usual tiers. “Speaking from experience, the combination of SeaChange and our subsidiary the On Demand Group manages for example the complete end-to-end Virgin Media on demand platform and what we see there is the usual tiers of services and as viewers move up to the top level XL Pack, everything is free and bundled in. It would be difficult for users to differentiate all these services but the overall package is impressive and the services provide what the consumer wants. The content is therefore being paid for but is monetised as part of a larger package. This is part of the retail and marketing challenge that IPTV operators will have to address.”
However, Sebastian Kramer, founder and CEO of Quative, part of the Kudelski Group, issues a strong warning. “Telcos come to us seeking an IPTV solution. They want it immediately and it must include YouTube and we advise them that YouTube content isn’t Mpeg, it’s Adobe Flash-wrapped content, a proprietary format, and whilst STB companies know how to handle this, we ask why do they want YouTube. If you want to raise ARPU, go to the On Demand Group because if you promote YouTube, you give valuable time away from your subscribers when they could be buying other, more valuable, content. And these telcos begin to get the message.”
If they insist on YouTube, then Quative goes to Google “and we access their APIs via a license agreement with Google and sign a co-marketing agreement with them offering the top ten YouTube titles of the day where we capture the images from their servers, we transcode it and deliver it to the set top. This is one example and where we make it complementary to the service being provided,” adds Kramer.
Source: Rapid TV News 2008
12-09-2008, 10:41 AM
if you find post usefull.
Threaded Mode
