Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Brought to you by broadband: TV viewing via connected devices up 65% since 2016

Brought to you by broadband: TV viewing via connected devices up 65% since 2016: Connected devices have made video streaming easy and ubiquitous -- 74% of U.S. TV households now have at least one internet-connected TV device, including smart TVs, streaming media devices (like Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast or Apple TV), connected video game systems, and Blu-ray players. Similarly, households with over-the-top video service are expected to exceed 265 million by 2022. Given the tremendous growth of broadband-powered devices, USTelecom remains committed to supporting policies that foster the innovation and investment necessary to keep pace with consumer demand.

This is an important trend driving the vertical integration of advanced telecom infrastructure with content such as this month's merger of AT&T and Time Warner.  It represents the "cable-lization of the Internet" as some have termed it and a return to the "walled gardens" of the early 1990s such as AOL and CompuServe. These services functioned as integrated platforms for content as well as communications such as email for a recurring monthly fee. We are witnessing a revival of the model, this time with bundled video content those early platforms couldn't deliver.

It's a regressive trend and counter to the move toward Internet protocol-based telecommunications since then that enables access to innumerable information and communication services (including Voice Over Internet Protocol or VOIP), obsoleting the walled garden model of a generation ago. It also represents a misplaced emphasis on entertainment over telecommunications. Capital is diverted to purchasing content rather than constructing and upgrading infrastructure. That reinforces neighborhood redlining as the big ISPs concentrate on affluent, high density neighborhoods where they can maximize ARPU and ROI with their video bundles.

Monday, September 22, 2014

CWA's support of AT&T/DIRECTV merger based on fallacious logic

CWA says AT&T-DIRECTV merger will advance broadband buildout, help consumers, Workers | Speed Matters - Internet Speed Test: The AT&T/DIRECTV merger will improve the economics for AT&T’s investment in high-speed broadband, the critical infrastructure for the 21st century, CWA said. Video is the major driver of broadband expansion, producing the revenue stream to support investment in high-speed networks. As a stronger video competitor, a merged AT&T/DIRECTV will have the economic incentives to increase investment in the high-capacity networks that are so essential to drive economic growth, jobs, and the social benefits enabled by high-speed digital technology.

So asserts the Communications Workers of America in comments filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in support of AT&T's acquisition of DIRECTV.

The problem is the logic does not hold up. AT&T's deriving additional revenues from DIRECTV video services does not necessarily mean those additional funds will be invested in landline Internet infrastructure.

And why should that be the case, AT&T will likely ask itself once the deal goes through, when satellite does the job of delivering video content to residential premises? Instead, any video revenue bump from the deal will likely be plowed into earnings and dividends, not CAPex.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

AT&T falls short on California landline infrastructure upgrades




AT&T California has not met requirements for the build out of infrastructure to make Internet-based video services available to at least 50 percent of its California telephone service area as of year-end 2012. 

That’s according to the California Public Utilities Commission’s Sixth Annual DIVCA Report for the year ending December 31, 2012 (issued July 31, 2014). DIVCA – the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006 – specifies a five-year build out period of 2008 through 2012. (The relevant reference is at page 9 of the report.)

AT&T California qualified for relief from the five-year infrastructure build out requirement under a DIVCA exception in cases where a provider has been unable to sell Internet video services to at least 30 percent of households in its telephone service area.

This in turn has resulted in a significant customer quality issue. Many households in AT&T California’s telephone service territory are unable to order landline-delivered Internet services since AT&T video services (branded as U-Verse and which includes bundled Internet access and voice service) are delivered over decades-old copper cable plant. Instead, these customers are offered only substandard, obsolete dialup Internet service that cannot support the delivery of video services.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Pew Internet survey flawed by badly outdated, retro perspective

With the relentless pace of Internet bandwidth demand growth to support multiple services including video, voice and Web-based services as well as a portable devices used in the home, there is near consensus that only fiber to the premises infrastructure will be able to accommodate the demand going forward.

That’s why I’m taken aback to continue to see surveys such as this one issued today by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that take a decidedly retrospective view of telecommunications services with their late 1990s distinction between narrowband (dialup) Internet connectivity and “high speed” broadband connections. 

Dialup service is obsolete and can no longer be considered a useful form of premises Internet connectivity. Had this survey been done in 2000 when the distinction between narrowband and broadband was still relevant, the distinction might have meant something. In 2013, it is a distinction without a difference. 

The other major contextual problem with a survey like this is it concentrates only on computer-based services such as Web browsing and email. That’s also a major flaw in the survey. The Internet now delivers video and voice services including applications such as online learning, videoconferencing and telemedicine – none of which are truly usable via a dialup service.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

NYT op-ed complaining of low Internet subscribership undermines author's credibility

No Country for Slow Broadband - NYTimes.com: The major causes for low subscribership, as extensive survey research shows, are low interest in the Internet and minimal digital literacy. And too many American households lack the money or interest to buy a computer. As a result, more Americans subscribe to cable TV and cellphones than to Internet service. Our broadband subscription rate is 70 percent, but could easily surpass 90 percent if computer ownership and digital literacy were widespread.
So argues Richard Bennett, senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.  There is a big hole in this argument.  Information and communications services are universally verging toward employing Internet Protocol (IP) to deliver them.  People are increasingly viewing video content delivered over the Internet to making voice calls using Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). 

In segmenting discrete services and citing just one type of Internet-enabled service (personal computing), one has to question why someone with Bennett's level of knowledge would even make this point, undermining his credibility and suggesting a hidden agenda.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Study: Poor Online Video Quality Costly | Home Media Magazine

Study: Poor Online Video Quality Costly | Home Media Magazine: Global video content companies left as much as $2.16 billion on the table in 2012 due to poor online video streams, according to a new study.

San Mateo, Calif.-based video streaming company Conviva studied 22.6 billion video streams from 2012, and found approximately 60% experienced quality issues of one kind or another (20.6% impacted by buffering; 19.5% impacted by slow video startup time; 40% impacted by low-resolution picture due to low bitrates).
This item illustrates the significance of having Internet infrastructure capable of delivering quality video content.  Fiber to the premise remains the best current and future infrastructure for the job.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Netflix and Blockbuster video over Internet still not ready for prime time, but a viable a la carte VOD alternative to cable, telco TV

Reuters reports today that Blockbuster is joining rival Netflix in offering video on demand over high speed Internet connections as an alternative to renting DVDs.

This is clearly where viewing films at home is headed. But over the foreseeable, it's going to be logistically constrained to a small market segment: those areas where broadband connections offer adequate bandwidth to support downloading of standard and especially high definition video content.

On line delivery of video on demand provided by these vendors also offers an alternative to those who don't wish to pay for video programming packages offered by cable and telco TV players and instead prefer to take their video a la carte.

Friday, June 08, 2007

The telco video challenge: 25Mbs or bust

Here's an interview in the DesMoines Register with Qwest's Iowa President Max Phillips. It shows while telcos like Qwest desire to get into offering video programming like cable companies and push for state statutes easing the way into the market, they face a daunting technological challenge doing that over existing copper cable pair that was originally designed to carry analog voice signals and not huge amounts of digital data.

"We offer up to seven megabits in Des Moines. You've probably got to get those speeds up somewhere in the 25-megabit range to make this product work," Phillips tells the newspaper.

Getting that kind of throughput on a reliable level in order to support video appears to be a major reach, particularly when much of the telcos' existing copper cable plant can provide only 1.5 Mbs DSL service tops -- and in many areas can't provide DSL at any speed.