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Viewing report
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IPTV The Telco's New Light Sword
Information Gatekeepers Inc, June 2005
While FTTP has been the biggest telecommunications story for the last couple of years (first as a potential and now in deployment) next year's story is going to be that the RBOCs are moving into residential video delivery in a big way. This was very clear in this year's SuperComm in Chicago. Everyone there seemed to be selling IPTV or something associated with it. After so much testing, learning, false starts and failures, the RBOCs are really committing to a massive effort to compete on a network basis in residential video delivery! This report will highlight the video effort of the RBOCs; it includes an extensive description of IPTV and its associated technologies; it will provide an in-depth review of the various last mile architectures, and the approaches to video delivery; as well as provide extensive forecasts for subscribers, penetration rates, costs, and revenues from these services.
The RBOCs, all four to greater or lesser extents, are now in the process of rolling out FTTP (fully detailed in our report “FTTP – Going Strong in 2005.”) Verizon has a monumental effort underway, and the others are in various stages (lab tests, minor deployments or preparing massive rollouts) of deployment. The RBOCs are simultaneously on the verge of actually moving into the video business in a massive way. At least two of the four RBOCs are expected to be in the residential TV delivery business before the end of 2005 and they should become major residential video players in 2006. Several relatively new technologies will be deployed in their entries into that business, and the RBOCs will use just about every imaginable combination of those technologies to achieve their objectives. This report covers all details of these video delivery activities with an emphasis on the latest of these technologies - Internet Protocol Television (IPTV.)
IPTV is the heart of the RBOC plans to attack the video market. IPTV is not just a different way to deliver TV (it is, of course, that also) but it has the potential to be the basis of a whole new suite of services.
Some of these could include:
- Four high-quality TV streams, including high-definition TV.
- Instant channel-changing.
- Customizable channel line-ups.
- Video on demand.
- Multimedia interactive program guides.
- Event notifications and remote access to IPG (Individualized Program Guide) and digital video-recording function. The ability to alert a customer of upcoming favourite shows, or Caller ID and instant messaging right on their TV screens.
- Tuner-less picture-in-picture functionality.
- Photos shared from a networked computer and played back through the TV.
- HDTV.
- DVR (digital video recorder) functionality on multiple TV sets.
- Multimedia and interactive video.
- Sharing family videos.
- 3-D gaming.
- Setting camera angles for sporting events.
While some of these are not completely new, most are, and together they are a very impressive list. As noted, they could form the basis for a whole new video service.
This report will consider:
- The details of the various options for deploying video – FTTX, broadcast video and IPTV.
- The details of the RBOC PON.
- Details of the various RBOC access architectures, and how video fits into these architectures.
- The current deployment scenarios of the RBOCs.
- The specific plans of each of the RBOCs.
- Forecasts for deployment scenarios for each of the RBOCs.
- Forecasts of RBOC IPTV subscribers, penetration rates, costs, and revenues from IPTV.
- Market projections for vendors of the equipment and software.
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