G.hn Aims at Asian Powerline Market
After what he called a successful two weeks of meetings with potential clients in Asia on behalf of the HomeGrid Forum, John Egan called to provide an update on G.hn (HomeGrid). Egan is both manager of strategic marketing and standards at chipmaker Marvell and VP of the HomeGrid Forum.
Based on his comments, it seems that G.hn has a marketing opportunity with pay TV services that might otherwise use HomePlug. Service provider dissatisfaction with HomePlug in multiple dwelling units (MDU) is due to "leakage" and interference by the HomePlug signal between dwellings. It's called the "neighboring networks" problem. The problem can be so severe that data from the neighboring networks can knock each other out and cause massive slow-downs in data rates because they share the same bandwidth.
The dissatisfaction rate with HomePlug is so high at some Asian pay TV services, he said, that they are considering running Ethernet or coax wiring to prevent problems.
Egan knows well the leakage/interference powerline problem with neighboring networks, having been at powerline chipmaker DS2 when Marvell acquired DS2's technology.
It turns out that DS2 had developed technology that prevented the leakage and interference problems in MDUs where dwellings often share the same power lines. Marvell contributed that technology to the G.hn standard. G.hn, he said, will see the signals from neighboring networks and block them out.
It could be a major asset for G.hn chipmakers like Marvell and Sigma Designs in Asia, which is becoming a major market for pay TV.
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Cisco: Broadband Boom in Australia
Cisco likes to make rosy predictions about the growth of the Internet, many of which have proven to be correct. Its latest one says the number of Internet-connected devices in Australia will be over 84 million in 2015, three per person.
Let’s see: at least one smart TV, a Blu-ray player, two to three smartphones, a tablet or two plus by then perhaps a Web camera, the refrigerator, microwave and washer. Yep, that’s about an average of three per household even including homes with no broadband (perish the thought) and excluding connected devices in offices.
Cisco also predicts that by 2015 in Australia:
- There will be 20 million Internet users, up from the current 14 million.
- The average Internet user will generate 19.5GB of traffic per month, up 562% from 3GB per month in 2010.
- Internet traffic will be the equivalent of 2 billion DVDs per year, or 175,885 DVDs per hour.
- There will be 3.6 networked devices per capita, up from 2.1 in 2010.
- 15 billion minutes (27,716 years) of video content will cross the Internet every month and make up 81% of all consumer traffic, up from 50% last year.
- IPTV will make up 14% of consumer Internet video traffic, up from 7% last year.
Cisco and other broadband equipment makers and broadband service providers are going to love it. Let’s hope consumers can afford it.
‘Too Much at Stake Not to Work Out Differences with Content Owners’
There’s too much at stake not to overcome the natural tension between the cable-TV companies and content owners over prices and rights for delivering content over the Internet to devices like tablets and smart TVs, according to participants in The Cable Show’s initial general session. Liz Claman, Fox Business News reporter, moderated the panel of Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewekes, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, DirecTV CEO Chase Carey, Cox CEO Pat Esser, Viacom CEO Phillip Dauman and Comcast president Neil Smit.
Claman pointed out that’s there’s more content for people to watch than ever, but much of it is not from the cablecos: it’s mainly delivered over the Net through companies like Netflix. “How did you let that happen?” Claman asked. “How are you going to get them back?” Napster used the Internet (and free but pirated music), and that destroyed the music industry, she pointed out.
In a different session, the financial analyst said the cablecos must me missing something in their offerings as evidenced by the meteoric rise in Netflix subscriptions.
The panelists’ responses were, in general, to smother consumers with their offerings of Internet-delivered content.
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Virgin Media Testing DOCSIS Broadband at Up to 1.5 Gbps
Virgin Media, the UK’s quad-play service, will test broadband speeds up to 1.5 Gbps in east London in partnership with four end-user companies.
It said the service that offers 1.5 Gbps down and 150 Mbps up will use the same DOCSIS 3.0 infrastructure that it currently uses in is home broadband service. DOCSIS technology was developed under the oversight of CableLabs, the cablecos’ overseer of technology engineering.
Virgin Media said similar tests have already proven the capability of its broadband network to deliver download speeds of 1 Gbps using DOCSIS 3.0 technology.
All of the four companies that are testing with Virgin are in the creative industry. They use video for online and mobile streaming, producing interactive applications for the Web and custom broadcasting. The faster broadband, it said, is needed for interactive entertainment and services such as remote healthcare and online education. With petrol at $4 per gallon or £1.30 per liter and rising, the elimination of travel will bring financial benefits to consumers in addition to reducing the stress that work-related travel can cause.
Virgin Media said it has spent £13 billion of its own money — no taxpayer funds involved — to connect every home in its footprint to fiber optic network with a high-grade coaxial line. Rival BT’s infrastructure, it pointed out, remains a captive of copper and aluminum telephone wiring. Copper telephone wire will be used even in BT’s fiber-to-the-cabinet (or node) to connect homes to the cabinet. It’s an infrastructure similar to what AT&T is using.
Because of bonding downstreams and upstreams, Virgin said its network is future-proof with, theoretically, nearly infinite capacity.
Sam Orams, co-founder of BespokeBanter.com, one of the companies involved in the test, said, “While the average home might not need these speeds quite yet, we certainly will. The Internet is critical to what we do and intrinsically linked to our future growth.
The Cablecos That Kicked the Hornets’ Nest
Time Warner Cable (TWC) knocked down the hornets’ nest of streaming live TV to iPads, but it is Cablevision that kicked it. Cablevision is taking the same path as TWC but offering more live channels as well as on-demand videos. Comcast, the world’s largest pay-TV service, has promised to do the same by year-end.
Cablevision released an iPad app that offers nearly 300 linear TV channels and 2,000 on-demand videos. This summer, the app will let subscribers also control their DVRs. Unlike TWC, it does not require users to have a broadband subscription with it.
Cablevision says the iPad functions exactly as a TV set does in the home, giving it the right to stream live shows to the iPad.
“This application allows the iPad to function as a television, delivering the full richness and diversity of our cable television service to a display device in the home,” said Tom Rutledge, Cablevision’s COO. “It gives our customers the additional flexibility and convenience of watching television throughout the home, in places where set-top boxes might not be ideal or even practical, like the kitchen, bathroom or workroom. This is the future of Advanced Digital Cable televisions served with virtual set-top boxes, and just one of many digital displays we are going to be serving through a variety of applications.”
It makes the point that the shows are not delivered over the Net but over a secure home network. The app, it says, merely turns an iPad into another TV.
“Cablevision has the right to distribute programming over its cable system to iPads configured in this way under its existing distribution agreements with programming providers,” the company said. “Cablevision has been serving customers with switched digital cable for more than five years. Advanced Digital Cable allows the company to switch in multiple digital formats, as its customers continue to buy the latest display devices.”
Cablevision said it plans to add apps with similar functions to other tablets and display devices that function as TV sets.
Time Warner Removes 12 Channels, Adds 25
The cablecos know that the more their subscribers watch content from Netflix, Hulu and other OTT video services, the less they are watching what the cableco offers. Netflix continues to add must-see content; this week it added all “Mad Men” reruns on an exclusive basis.
Last Thursday TWC removed 12 channels from its app that streams live channels to iPads in the home, including MTV and FX, after receiving complaints from Discovery, News Corp and Viacom. The content companies evidently want the pay-TV companies to pay them more for such apps. They offer their own apps for in-home streaming.
TWC said it would replace the channels with 25 others including Bloomberg, CNN, the Lifetime Movie Network and the Golf Channel.
TWC said it believed it had “every right to carry the programming on our iPad app” in the home but “for the time being, we have decided to focus our iPad efforts on those enlightened programmers who understand the benefit and importance of allowing our subscribers — and their viewers — to watch their programming on any screen in their homes.”
It said it would “pursue all of our legal rights against the programmers who don’t share our vision.”
TWC said the response by subscribers has been positive: “The enthusiasm of our customers and the programming partners who have embraced the app, rather than those who are solely focused on finding additional ways to reach into wallets of their own viewers, have convinced us more than ever that we are on the right path.”
It is doubtlessly on the right path. The question is whether it has the legal right to stream live channels to tablets in the home. Do the contracts it has with the media companies give it the right to transmit their channels to secure and authenticated devices in the home and not specifically only to the TV set? In short, is the tablet just another TV screen?
“We will continue to fight to ensure that our customers have access to the content they pay for, no matter which screen in their home they choose to view it on,” the company said.
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