UK: LLU done right

bk

Interesting article about Sky's new ADSL2+ LLU product in the UK:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34980

Several days after signing up to Sky via telephone (the only way currently) with a recently acquired MAC address from my previous supplier, the free Sky ADSL wireless broadband router arrived.
.........
The connection became active about a week later, with minimal downtime and no fuss.

Ahem Comreg are you listening, this is how it is supposed to be.

Prices are
# Base: 2mb/s, 2gb cap, free monthly rental, £40 activation
# Mid: 8mb/s, 40gb cap, £5 monthly rental, £20 activation
# Connect: 8mb/s, 40gb cap, £17 monthly rental, £40 activation
# Max: 16mb/s, unlimited cap (with AUP), £10 monthly rental, free activation

Unlimited UK landline calls 24/7 for just £5.00 a month

16mb/s for £10 ffs.

BTW Connect is for costumers, who LLU isn't yet available to, so the basic BT service, which even looks great compared to us.

probe

bk wrote:

Interesting article about Sky's new ADSL2+ LLU product in the UK:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34980



Ahem Comreg are you listening, this is how it is supposed to be.

Prices are
# Base: 2mb/s, 2gb cap, free monthly rental, £40 activation
# Mid: 8mb/s, 40gb cap, £5 monthly rental, £20 activation
# Connect: 8mb/s, 40gb cap, £17 monthly rental, £40 activation
# Max: 16mb/s, unlimited cap (with AUP), £10 monthly rental, free activation

Unlimited UK landline calls 24/7 for just £5.00 a month

16mb/s for £10 ffs.

BTW Connect is for costumers, who LLU isn't yet available to, so the basic BT service, which even looks great compared to us.

Why then is there only 7% unbundling in GB? Because it is almost as badly done as in Ireland.

This is Rupert “giving away the Times for free” to sign up subscribers – i.e. selling below cost. He has deep pockets. He is trying to exit direct to consumer satellite TV in the US but has difficulty in finding takers. His real aim in this DSL power grab is to sell media (HDTV, SDTV, VoD, myspace type stuff) to customers directly because satellite is not very good at it due to bandwidth limitations.

If he starts sending large amounts of multi-media to end users without “owning the local loop” BT and others might start charging him or cutting him off the net.

If he succeeds with this power grab, he will be able to stop other media and content proprietors from supplying his DSL customers with content and we will end up with a walled garden.

LLU done right?

.probe

bk

probe wrote:

Why then is there only 7% unbundling in GB? Because it is almost as badly done as in Ireland.

LLU is really only starting to take off in the UK, but it looks like it is really starting to accelerate now, I expect the LLU rates to qucikly increase over the next 12 months and quickly equal France.

probe wrote:

This is Rupert “giving away the Times for free” to sign up subscribers – i.e. selling below cost. He has deep pockets.

Yes, I'm well aware of that, this is actually the type of thing that happens when you have an open and competitive market, this is a good thing.

probe wrote:

His real aim in this DSL power grab is to sell media (HDTV, SDTV, VoD, myspace type stuff) to customers directly because satellite is not very good at it due to bandwidth limitations.

Of course, every man and his dog knows content is king.

Satellite is very good at SDTV and HDTV, it is just bad at VoD, mixing DSL with Satellite is a very clever idea, you use the excellent shared bandwidth to deliver 90% of what people watch (broadcast TV) and use the DSL to deliver the on demand stuff, movies, etc.

probe wrote:

If he succeeds with this power grab, he will be able to stop other media and content proprietors from supplying his DSL customers with content and we will end up with a walled garden.

LLU done right?

So in order to ensure he doesn't win, the others will need to compete, so BT will probably also rollout ADSL2+ tech (or more likely it's new 21st Century network) with much higher speeds and sell it with an integrated freeview box with VoD and PVR capabilities and NTL will roll out higher speed BB, offer free 40 channel TV if you sign up for their phone service, deliver a VoD service * and offer half price Virgin mobile tariffs.

Shocking isn't it, how when you have an open and free market, it generates great competition and services and the consumer wins.

So yes, it is LLU done right.

* NTL:Telewest is currently the first and only company to deliver VoD services, it was also the first to deliver HDTV.

watty

BT is launching its combined Freeview / dsl box shortly.

Satellite has MUCH more bandwidth than cable, DSL or Terrestrial. 2GHz per Satellite of it each 2 or 3 degrees (I can get 28 satellites = potential 56GHz) . It beats anything else hollow for HDTV. Satellite mostly is one way and high latency, so the ONLY thing it does well is broadcast.

Combined Terrestrial or Satellite broadcast (including push multicast data) and HDD and broadband in a hybrid product, with VOIP sip probabily is a killer service/product.

probe

bk wrote:

Of course, every man and his dog knows content is king.

Rupert is paying BT the equivalent of about €10 per month for each subscriber for the loop, and he is giving this service away free (aside from a once of service setup fee of GBP 40).

BT aside (because they own the loop), no ISP can afford to compete with this “offer”.

So where does Rupert plan to make his money from? When he gets traction in the market, if Google or Yahoo! refuse to pay “access fees” (protection money), anyone going to google.com will find themselves in murdochsearch.com? Go to the Observer website, and find yourself in the Sunday Times?

Where does BT get its TV channels from? BT is constrained by Ofcom in the price it can charge Murdoch for LLU. Murdoch isn’t constrained in the reverse direction – the price he charges for allowing BT to transport Sky rubbish to their subscribers.

At a higher level you have political manipulation – over the years, Rupert has developed his e-voting manipulation machine on steroids to a high level of sophistication – particularly in Britain, Australia and the USA. For example, everything from his Fox news to his print media in Britain and Australia have been strong supporters of Bush/Blair/Howard operations in Iraq, where according to the BBC today 655,000 people have died needlessly since that little “project” started. While I’m not suggesting that Rupert is anti-Islam, (I simply don’t know), it would be naïve not to keep an open mind on his political and other objectives.

When it comes to LLU, is it not time there was a dividing line in the regulations between people who can unbundle the loop (ie “telcos”) and people who operate substantial media content origination business like Murdoch? An LLU unbundler with substantial media origination interests is likely to promote his own products and strangle access to alternatives wherever possible. Particularly where he is giving away the service free.

He doesn’t even have to block access to google.com (or another site) completely. On his “google.com” homepage, he can put a session ID (un-bookmarkable) to take one to the real google.com at the bottom of the page in 1pt font. The majority of the morons of this world would probably not bother looking for the real thing and put up with whatever he chose to serve on the rest of the screen real-estate.

Satellite is very good at SDTV and

HDTV, it is just bad at VoD, mixing DSL with Satellite is a very clever idea, you use the excellent shared bandwidth to deliver 90% of what people watch (broadcast TV) and use the DSL to deliver the on demand stuff, movies, etc.

Yes if you are looking at the "old model" where people are expected to wait until a programme is aired and the majority of content is in SDTV. With TV audiences shrinking, everything will ultimately have to be available on demand - ie you won't end up with being just able to select channel 11 on the remote control. Channel 11 will bring you to a menu of programmes and you will move the cursor to the one you want to watch and it will begin playing immediately from the start. Much of the content will be in HD. Even satellites have limited HD capability if it came to broadcasting large numbers of TV channels via this medium on a traditional basis.

.probe

probe

watty wrote:

Satellite has MUCH more bandwidth than cable, DSL or Terrestrial. 2GHz per Satellite of it each 2 or 3 degrees (I can get 28 satellites = potential 56GHz) . It beats anything else hollow for HDTV. Satellite mostly is one way and high latency, so the ONLY thing it does well is broadcast.

Please see my reply to BK about the old and new worlds of broadcasting. In any event, if you put up 28 satellites with 2 or 3 degrees of separation, how many satellite dishes would each house require to receive this? Even with multi LNBs on each? Not to mention the cost of broadcasting each channel via satellite - large countries have regional versions of each network which can easily be delivered by DTT, cable or DSL. Put even a few of these on HD and you quickly end up squirting zillions of bits of content all over the place where it is not wanted - if you used satellite.

.probe

bk

Well here is what you are missing from your argument. Yes, Sky can undercut BT on the price of BB, but Sky still needs to make money somewhere, they make it back on the high TV sub, sports and movie subs, pay per play, sky+ sub, etc.

BT (and pretty much all other DSL/LLU providers) might not be able to undercut Sky on the price of BB, they can undercut Sky on the price of the overall package of BB and TV, by simply bundling BB and a Freeview box and maybe delivering some VoD over DSL.

People aren't just looking at the price of BB anymore, they are looking at the overall price of the package of BB, TV and phone and in this regard, BT and all the others can comfortably compete with Sky.

As it is Sky is already terrified of Freeview. Freeview viewer numbers have already surpassed cable and are expected to overtake Sky by this Christmas. It is estimated that in two years from now, Freeview will have about 60% of the market.

And now Freeview is testing a branded PVR service, HDTV and MPEG4. With the analogue switch off they will be able to deliver even more channels and at much better picture quality. Sky is terrified as they are pretty scuppered, Freeview has pretty much destroyed the pay tv market in the UK.

And all the BB providers can (and are) jumping on the bandwagon and they will easily be able to undercut Sky.

This is al a good thing.

Let me put it another way, if Sky launched this in Ireland tomorrow, it would force Eircom to introduce ADSL2+, increase speeds, drop prices and introduce some sort of TV service in order to compete. Wouldn't that be a good thing that would benefit all.

As for your fantasy about Sky controlling the whole BB market and the content that gets delivered, it is exactly that, a fantasy. Firstly it has been proven time and time again that walled gardens simply don't succeed and secondly the EU simply wouldn't allow Sky just willy, nilly change other peoples sites and contents like you describe. This is Europe we are talking about, not China.

probe wrote:

Yes if you are looking at the "old model" where people are expected to wait until a programme is aired and the majority of content is in SDTV. With TV audiences shrinking, everything will ultimately have to be available on demand - ie you won't end up with being just able to select channel 11 on the remote control. Channel 11 will bring you to a menu of programmes and you will move the cursor to the one you want to watch and it will begin playing immediately from the start. Much of the content will be in HD. Even satellites have limited HD capability if it came to broadcasting large numbers of TV channels via this medium on a traditional basis.

Well I have a TiVo and I must say I rarely watch live TV anymore. However I'm not convinced that the general public is ready for it yet (it will happen, but it will be a generational change), in the US where Comcast as a very good VoD service working (I've used it in Boston) it has actually been quiet slow to take off with the general public, most continue to watch TV in the old fashioned way.

Also I'm not convinced that the technology and bandwidth is there yet for the mass take up of true VoD services. For the next few years we will likely see the heavy use of fake VoD services.

An example of this is the use of Sky+, Sky might transmit the 20 new movie releases every month to every Sky customer and it gets recorded to the Sky+ box (but hidden from the user), when the user later orders one of those movies it is played from their Sky+ box rather then being streamed. The user never knows the difference, of course if the user orders something outside the top 20, it will need to be streamed, but they can radically reduce the bandwidth use through these techniques.

Sky already puts aside 50% of the Sky+ box for this use, it is likely Freeview and cable will do similar in the future andit would even be possible to multicast such content over DSL (though less efficient).

watty

probe, the VOD and IPTV you talk of is only possible with fibre to the home.
Most BB suppliers even in the UK can only download to a harddisk and let viewers chose any VOD content on the hard disk. This actually can be done faster and cheaper by Satellite or Terrestial broadcast.

With broadcast and HD you can have different HD channels in each room simulatanously. No-one in these Isles can even do one HD channel via live IPTV.

Maget here do a poor clone of a cable channel. Few cable / IPTV operators are able to sort out the rights issues for true VOD, most people do infact want regular broadcast channels. The VOD market is in ADDITION to this.

bk wrote:

An example of this is the use of Sky+, Sky might transmit the 20 new movie releases every month to every Sky customer and it gets recorded to the Sky+ box (but hidden from the user), when the user later orders one of those movies it is played from their Sky+ box rather then being streamed. The user never knows the difference, of course if the user orders something outside the top 20, it will need to be streamed, but they can radically reduce the bandwidth use through these techniques.

If you do the sums, for the OPERATOR, a hybrid IPTV/Broadcast/multicast approach using the users Hard disk is the future, not all viewing by live VOD streams (though some operators are really doing this). With Terabyte+ sized disks the only difference for the user is that the quality is better.

bealtine

bk wrote:

Interesting article about Sky's new ADSL2+ LLU product in the UK:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34980

Here is a counter view:

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1920017,00.html

Broadband disaster should turn to success

Nils Pratley
Thursday October 12, 2006
The Guardian

People like to grumble to newspapers about companies' poor customer service but, boy, do they like to complain about Carphone Warehouse's Talk Talk. Last Saturday our Money section investigated the deluge of complaints about the company's "free broadband forever" offer. Emails from other irate Talk Talkers are still arriving at the rate of one every 20 minutes. Then there are phone calls, the letters...

This will not come as a surprise to Charles Dunstone, Carphone's chief executive. He has been leaping through hoops to sound apologetic about service levels virtually since the day he launched the offer. The official spin is that the company is "a victim of its own success" - by which it means it under-estimated demand - but Carphone is gradually revealing the extent of the logistical cock-up. More than one in 10 of the 625,000 broadband customers who signed up have already left Talk Talk.

The good news, of a sort, is that Carphone feels the pain. It has managed to provide broadband to 421,000 people but only 21,000 have been hooked up via its own gadgets in local telephone exchanges. This is the process known as local loop unbundling, and it's how the Talk Talk business model is meant to work.

For the other 400,000 customers, the company is obliged to buy wholesale capacity from British Telecom. At the moment Talk Talk is losing £5 a month on each of these customers. Carphone sounds bitter about BT's tardiness in opening up its exchanges, but at least it's not daring to seek sympathy. Instead, it will shoulder an extra £20m of start-up losses.

So why did Carphone's share price climb 8% yesterday to an all-time high? Well, the prime reason is that the purchase of AOL's internet service makes financial sense. Supplying broadband is a game where size matters and Talk Talk will now be secure in the number three position, running BT close for second.

In other words, when the dust has settled, the City can see how Dunstone's big gamble on broadband will pay off. He has a lot of dissatisfied customers and ex-customers, but many more who will be profitable. Those £5-a-month loss-makers will generate £7 profit a month once they are hooked up directly via Talk Talk's gadgets.

The risk is that the brand's reputation has been damaged by the chaotic launch, and we won't discover how badly for a year or so. The encouragement for Dunstone is that the other company whose customer service is denounced so vehemently by readers is easyJet, and its planes are still flying profitably. That's life, folks.



nils.pratley@guardian.co.uk

crawler

probe wrote:

Rupert is paying BT the equivalent of about €10 per month for each subscriber for the loop, and he is giving this service away free (aside from a once of service setup fee of GBP 40).
.probe[/FONT]

And By "Rupert" you do mean "James" (for the bit over the pond anyway!) DTH is a horrible business case...

Mr_Man

This is from yesterday's Working Lunch.

M.

probe

bk wrote:

Well here is what you are missing from your argument. Yes, Sky can undercut BT on the price of BB, but Sky still needs to make money somewhere, they make it back on the high TV sub, sports and movie subs, pay per play, sky+ sub, etc.

The idea dates back to the first Gillette razor – maybe earlier. I have no problem with The Phone House (or “Carphone Warehouse”) as they are “antiquatedly” known in so called “British Isles” offering “Free” broadband and trying to make their money from other services. While it sounds as if they are making a pigs dinner of the offering so far, they are not in the content origination business. And they have got Vodafone worried enough to dump them as an authorized reseller of Vodafone mobile subscriptions! The latter is probably worried about convergence of mobile and the LLU, etc. Anyway their (CPW) shares are down nearly 20% over the past 24h.

People aren't just looking at the price of BB anymore, they are looking at the overall price of the package of BB, TV and phone and in this regard, BT and all the others can comfortably compete with Sky.

Very much so. The point I am trying to get across is THE PRICE a country has to pay for “free” broadband from a content originator like Murdoch. If I see two guys having a heated argument in the street, and I give one of them a loaded gun, and say “go on, do it” and guy A kills guy B, despite the fact that I didn’t pull the trigger, I’m just as guilty of the murder of B as A is – probably more so because if I didn’t provide the “intellectual support” for his action, (not to mention the hardware), B would still be alive. Even if guy C provides the loaded gun, I’m still equally guilty of the murder for providing the encouragement to pull the trigger. Media owners have a contributory responsibility for the actions of others arising directly or indirectly as a result of what they publish. Murdoch’s fox news and many of his other outlets in my view have blood on their hands for their position on Iraqi and the 655,000 or however number that lie dead as a result, and this propaganda does work on people’s minds – see
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/102.php?nid=&id=&pnt=102&lb=brusc

This is just one of many issues. If you have diversity in the media markets and diversity of access it provides a safety net. LLU needs to be independent of content creation.

I see LLU as the first leg in a set of steps that will create “the ultimate” platform ending with the necessary bandwidth to the end user’s premises for let’s call it content on demand “nirvana”. While it may end up with no copper and all fibre end to end, it gives the unbundler a step on the ladder, that will be difficult to outmanoeuvre as the technology develops. It is very difficult to compete with “free”, and Mr Murdoch has more “content” and deeper pockets to throw into the ring than anyone else on the planet.

Well I have a TiVo and I must say I rarely watch live TV anymore.

A TiVo is a “crank the handle wax disk” player in comparison to the way I see content on demand going! Besides the TV content in TiVoland is appallingly dumb for the most part. I suppose you have to watch the “news” and might as well see that when it suits you.

As an aside, if you need to store content that is “broadcast” on hard disks – why not put these disks in the MSAN cabinet that serves 100 or 200 households? It would be cheaper per household, easier to maintain, fed directly by fibre.

.probe

probe

watty wrote:

probe, the VOD and IPTV you talk of is only possible with fibre to the home.

There is no requirement for FTTU (fibre to the user) to offer programme content on demand within the NGN (so called “next generation network”) – I say “so called” because the kit is available now, and anyone engaged in spending large sums on new infrastructure would be wasting their investors money if they ignored the possibilities in their strategic planning.

NGN infrastructure provides for FTTE, FTTR and FTTC (fibre to exchange, remote or curb). Forget the notion of the 1970s cable TV set top box, where the coax or fibre feeds every channel available into the box and the channel switching (and latterly content storage) takes place at that point.

In NGN, the switching takes place at the service provision node at the curb, remote or exchange – depending on the location of the end-user. All you need between the service provision node and the user is a pipe fat enough to carry a minimum of one HD/AC3 audio-visual channel at a time + capacity for internet access/VoIP etc.

.probe

probe

crawler wrote:

And By "Rupert" you do mean "James" (for the bit over the pond anyway!) DTH is a horrible business case...

No I don’t. In the big scheme of things James is little more than a “night watchman”, at the moment. Rupert created the monster and signs off on most issues, down to some of the more potent headlines that appear in his tabloids, which gives him a huge influence on voting patterns and leverage over governments all over the anglo-saxon world.

He even gets a two-page spread in France’s almost encyclopaedic guide to power grabbers, global crime and other major issues affecting the world in 2006, just published, (understatedly called “L’Atlas du Monde Diplomatique”), published by Armand Colin ISBN 2200 34614X. Well worth a look, even for people who don’t speak French and good value at under €25 for an A4 size hard cover atlas of about 230 pages.

http://www.amazon.fr/LAtlas-Monde-diplomatique/dp/220034614X/

.probe

watty

probe wrote:

In NGN, the switching takes place at the service provision node at the curb, remote or exchange – depending on the location of the end-user. All you need between the service provision node and the user is a pipe fat enough to carry a minimum of one HD/AC3 audio-visual channel at a time + capacity for internet access/VoIP etc.

.probe

Good point. However you need 2, 3, 4 or more simultanous channels + broadband speed for multiroom viewing to compete with Cable TV or Satellite/DTT + broadband. So about 20Mbps SDTV or 100Mbps HDTV if we want multiroom viewing.

Did the last census ask us how many TVs we have at home?

probe

watty wrote:

Good point. However you need 2, 3, 4 or more simultanous channels + broadband speed for multiroom viewing to compete with Cable TV or Satellite/DTT + broadband. So about 20Mbps SDTV or 100Mbps HDTV if we want multiroom viewing.

Did the last census ask us how many TVs we have at home?

With cabinets at the remote or curb you can easily get 50 to 100 Mbits/sec over the last leg. Using MPEG4, you can squeeze 4 x HD TV feeds into the equation. And any house that has more than four HD flat screen TVs has more than one phone line...

probe is not attempting to write off satellite or wireless, which no doubt you know lots about. I get the best sound quality music from satellite - live concerts on Astra 1 with AC3/Dolby Digital sound from Bayern Klassik and HR Radio in Germany (available all over Europe free to air) put CD sound quality to shame. I'm simply trying to point out the risks of letting content owners get into loop unbundling and letting them grab everything (including our democratic government system) in the process.

.probe

http://www.br-online.de/bayern4/
http://www.hr-online.de/website/radio/hr2/

watty

Keep the content owners separate from networks.
Force realistic LLU wholesale rental or operators can't afford to offer the fast services VOD & IPTV need.

probe

Al Gore is fighting the Murdoch neocon merchants with his own TV station which is available on cable in some US cities and on the net. www.current.tv

The station uses VC2 (viewer created content), and everything is available on a VoD basis on the net. Viewers vote on each programme, and the producer gets paid accordingly. Much better organised than youtube or video.google.com.


.probe

JohnC.

probe wrote:

Al Gore is fighting the Murdoch neocon merchants with his own TV station which is available on cable in some US cities and on the net. www.current.tv

So there is a certain irony in the fact that he is bringing this channel to the UK in conjunction with Sky
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds37862.html

probe

Kahless wrote:

So there is a certain irony in the fact that he is bringing this channel to the UK in conjunction with Sky
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds37862.html

One assumes that Murdoch junior can see the impact of consumer created content VoD in terms of audience grabbing power (father will probably fire son soon if he doesn't come up with something to improve their TV fortunes in GB) - if you can't beat em, join em. It probably suits Gore because he wouldn't have had to spend his time and money on current.tv if Fox didn't exist. Might as well get Mr Fox contribute towards the costs of the current.tv exercise (which runs up a big internet connection bill every month) by selling him rights to the platform. If the British public and making the programmes, no worries - it won't be neo-con trash. Gore's not dumb!

Besides, the next US president won’t be George W. It just might be Gore. Murdoch Junior probably thinks it is better to curry favo(u)r at this stage with the latter. Or else Gore’s first bill before Congress might be one withdrawing Rupert’s “passports for sale” US “citizenship” which he bought a decade or so ago in order to get his hands on Fox. In which event they may have to dispose of their Fox business at fire sale terms!

.probe

damien

How come this always ends in some debate about IPTV or some debate about codecs? I don't see TV in the name of this forum.

watty

Point taken.
A bit daft worrying about the fact that most broadband can't support IPTV, when maybe 60%+ can't get Broadband at all and there is no flat rate dialup other than 3G.

probe

damien.m wrote:

How come this always ends in some debate about IPTV or some debate about codecs? I don't see TV in the name of this forum.

Broadband and being online is not just surfing or e-mail. Broadband (ie IP) is the common denominator highway that can transport everything - www, email, ftp, VoD, VoIP, gaming, and a zillion other protocols and services.

As broadband use matures, only a fraction of the capacity will be used carrying e-mail or static web surfing. The majority of the capacity will be taken up by multi-media services of various kinds. Any discussion about the future of broadband can't surely ignore the trend otherwise we risk ending up with yet another overloaded infrastructure?

With digital cable TV people don't go into their set-top boxes to see how many zillion bits they have "downloaded" that night or week watching TV. Because it is irrelevant to them and the network that has been engineered to meet the demand. Why should broadband - which encompasses everything be any different?

If broadband is to become universal, it will have to be able to appeal to all tastes - not just the "nerd" market (for want of a better word), from the "couch potato" up. Only then might we find the couch potatoes trying to use their connection for other applications and the service becoming ubiquitous. There is no point in having several duplicative networks coming into your premises – if one can do the job efficiently. The only one that can do this is broadband.

.probe

damien

Forgive me for not really giving a damn about the future delivery methods for the Men and Motors channel.

watty

I think TV / IPTV is a waste of a valuable resource. Broadcast TV has 100% coverage cheaply. VOD is a luxury comodity.

Foxwood

watty wrote:

VOD is a luxury comodity.

Broadband is a luxury commodity. Joe Public will pay a lot more for TV and "added value" services such as VOD than he will for broadband. Sky Digital Sports & Movies costs over £40/month. HD service costs an extra £10. That's over £50/month.

That's a lot more revenue than you'll get for just broadband and telephony on your LLU copper.

dizzywizzard

damien.m wrote:

Forgive me for not really giving a damn about the future delivery methods for the Men and Motors channel.

Damien,

Two points really. To quote you directly 'Forgive me for not really giving a damn about the future'. Time to stop looking backwards and recognise where we are at now and where we will be very soon. I agree with probe completely in all his posts (bar the kinda paranoid ones!) But to sum up, your arguments are getting tired and jaded, change the rekid!

You also groan in a previous post that 'Why do these always end up going on about tv. blah blah.'

Because that is the future , are you afraid of it?

DW

bealtine

dizzywizzard wrote:

Damien,

Two points really. To quote you directly 'Forgive me for not really giving a damn about the future'. Time to stop looking backwards and recognise where we are at now and where we will be very soon.

Just one point really, it may well be the future on the continent and in the UK. But seemingly those poor UK broadband users are "in the slow lane" with their measly 8Mb lines. Having said that IPTV does not seem to be in our (collective futures) here in ireland.

Most lines are struggling to get to 3mbs and people are going on about whether mpegX or mpegY is better...how about we just get broadband to the majority of users here first?

damien

dizzywizzard wrote:

the future , are you

Oh look! I can misquote too!

When people in the present can't get the most basic forms of broadband I have little time for fanboys describing their waking technological wetdreams and arguing moot points just so they can massage their own egos.

thebman

I think showing people that companies are progressing to delivering movies/games etc.. via broadband is the only way to wake people up to the fact that we need broadband and that we are miles behind. People want entertainment.

Media will take notice when you point out that International trends in media point toward increasing delivery over broadband and they can't do it here because nobody in the country has a line capable of recieving it and most don't have broadband at all.

PS3 will have an online store to buy Sony's Music/Movies and additional game content). Piss off the kids and they'll hassle the parents. Steam is an online games store where you download the games instead of buying in a store etc..

Dreams for us but not for the rest of the world it seems. Step one is waking up the nation to the nightmare we are currently in when it comes to broadband penetration. It seems to be starting if you ask me. There seems to be more and more interest in the fact that people can't get broadband in this country and there are more and more people that want it.

The reality is people will only want it when they realise they can get fun stuff with it. Otherwise they'll just make tea and watch television when waiting for the email with the extra large attachment to be recieved.

The Irish media needs to wake up that online delivery is the near future and that it's a new market that they can compete in Internationally but that we need the infastructure to support it. The web has long past email and information. Google didn't buy youtube (a company not making profit) for nothing ya know.

Liam Byrne

dizzywizard wrote:

To quote [damien.m] directly 'Forgive me for not really giving a damn about the future'.

That isn't quoting him directly......let me give another example:

Imagine someone quoting "London police are going to arrest all of the Muslims", without leaving in the final part of the quote that said ".....involved in 07/07" :eek:

There are 4 levels:
1) The overall "future" (literally, as misquoted by dizzywizard)
Very interesting, we're all in there somewhere

2) The "future" of technology (probably implied in the dizzywizard's misquote)
Ditto, since we're all interested enough to be on the boards

3) The "future" of TV delivery
Less interesting, considering crap like Big Brother and other brain-dead reality rubbish, but for the same reason somewhat interesting considering that the fewer good programmes are on, the higher the chance of missing them

4) The future delivery methods of Men & Motors (the actual quote from damien.m), where I'm probably 90% in agreement with damien.m

If you're gonna quote, quote accurately!

watty

Foxwood wrote:

Broadband is a luxury commodity. Joe Public will pay a lot more for TV and "added value" services such as VOD than he will for broadband. Sky Digital Sports & Movies costs over £40/month. HD service costs an extra £10. That's over £50/month.

That's a lot more revenue than you'll get for just broadband and telephony on your LLU copper.

But the cost [Of VOD services] on Broadband is disproprotionaly higher. Why should that investment be done for 10% of people in ireland when maybe >50% can't get ANY DSL broadband?

And really is more than 10% of TV content WORTH spending money on? PVRs with 1tera byte will be common so broadcast and your ow VOD server (PVR) is the future for consumers. Realtime VOD /IP is driven by PAY TV and equipment vendors. Not by what consumers want.

Your own Terabyte VOD (PVR) works when no broadcast or broadband is available. You can archive. Heavily DRM'd IPTV content you pay EVERY VIEWING and in a year may be off the catalogue.

Foxwood

damien.m wrote:

When people in the present can't get the most basic forms of broadband I have little time for fanboys describing their waking technological wetdreams and arguing moot points just so they can massage their own egos.

By that logic, Ireland Offline should stick to campaigning for universal 56K dialup, as even 1Mb broadband is still a "technological wetdream" for more than a few people in Ireland.

If IOFFL had waited until everyone had "decent" dialup speeds before it started to focus on Broadband, it'd still be talking (to itself) about dialup. If it waits to talk about the technologies in use in other EU countries until everyone has 1Mb DSL, then it won't have much of a support base left by the time it decides to upgrade it's objectives.

watty

Foxwood wrote:

By that logic, Ireland Offline should stick to campaigning for universal 56K dialup, as even 1Mb broadband is still a "technological wetdream" for more than a few people in Ireland.

If IOFFL had waited until everyone had "decent" dialup speeds before it started to focus on Broadband, it'd still be talking (to itself) about dialup. If it waits to talk about the technologies in use in other EU countries until everyone has 1Mb DSL, then it won't have much of a support base left by the time it decides to upgrade it's objectives.

But VOD/IPTV on 20Mbps is more about PayTV and corporate control than real consumer choice or need. The big back catalogue of material on VOD is a myth. VOD content is more like Xtra vision or Sky PPV box office. The closest you can get to back catalog VOD is to buildup your own DVD library, scouring Internet for limited back catalog releases that don't make it to the High Street. But even Virign, Golden Discs or HMV in high street has more choice than any current VOD systems.

Broadcast (esp. FTA channels) + DVDs and a big PVR is always going to make VOD look like an eliteist Corporate controlled toy.

The 56K dialup vs 1Mbps broadband and Broadband Vs IPTV/VOD arguement does not hold water, it is not comparable.

There is NO sensible alternative to Broadband. Broadcast + PVR + DVD is better than IPTV will ever be.

I'm shortly & cheaply upgrading to HDTV + HDTV sat (PVR) and next year probabily get HD or BD HD DVD player upgrade. That combo gives more quality and more choice at a lower cost than Comcast Fibre IPTV or French IPTV. The DVD & PVR give me VOD.

Foxwood

watty wrote:

But the cost [Of VOD services] on Broadband is disproprotionaly higher. Why should that investment be done for 10% of people in ireland when maybe >50% can't get ANY DSL broadband?

Why should any investment be made in any broadband at all? Because it'll make money for someone. NTL are never going to deliver cable TV to lots of people in Ireland - does that mean that they shouldn't be allowed to deliver it to the people that it makes economic sense for them to deliver it to?

Why should eircom be investing in ANY DSL equipment when there are people who can't even get V92 dialup speeds? Should everyone wait for the lowest common denominator before moving, in lock step, up to the next level? That attitude delayed DSL rollout in Ireland by 3 years, because Telecom Eireann was afraid of the political backlash if it rolled out DSL in affluent Dublin 4 (where it made economic sense) and didn't roll it out in less affluent areas. As a result, the first commercial availability of DSL in Ireland occurred almost 5 years after the technlogy was available in the US (in affluent suburbs)

And really is more than 10% of TV content WORTH spending money on? PVRs with 1tera byte will be common so broadcast and your ow VOD server (PVR) is the future for consumers. Realtime VOD /IP is driven by PAY TV and equipment vendors. Not by what consumers want.

It doesn't matter what consumers want - it only matters what they are willing to pay for. (That's not my personal opinion, by the way, it's just the way the market works, whether I like it or not). I love my Tivo, but Tivo might just kill ad-supported "free" broadcasting, so pay to view (whether it's a bundle of 50 channels for 30 euro, or a single progam for 3 euro) is going to be playing an increasing role in everyones future.

Your own Terabyte VOD (PVR) works when no broadcast or broadband is available. You can archive. Heavily DRM'd IPTV content you pay EVERY VIEWING and in a year may be off the catalogue.

Do you honestly think that kids who grow up spending 10c to send a 10 character text message will have any difficulty with paying per view? We're in a minority, Watty. The services won't be built to serve customers like us.

watty

It's depressing. Foxwood. You might be right.

However I'll keep beavering away "behind the scenes" for more broadband coverage and quality and more TV services with real choice and quality.

Anyhow my point about VOD is that anyone can make more money easier out of actual broadband than VOD. Though VOD brings in more revenue, the costs are disproportionaly higher. Some companies have fallen for the hype and not done the sums properly.

Foxwood

watty wrote:

Anyhow my point about VOD is that anyone can make more money easier out of actual broadband than VOD. Though VOD brings in more revenue, the costs are disproportionaly higher. Some companies have fallen for the hype and not done the sums properly.

It doesn't cost 10,000 times as much to deliver TV to 10,000 people than it does to deliver it to 1 person. While there are economies of scale in delivering broadband, they are dwarfed by the economies of scale in delivering TV - after a certain point, every extra customer is gravy, pure profit. In an area that's sufficiently densely populated and where the existing copper infrastructure is up to the job, the sums work out very nicely. Whether they'll work out nicely in Ireland is another question, but the lack of Digital Terrestrial, the price of Sky, and the presence of 100,000 Poles who might pay for Polish TV definitely makes it worth considering. And a company like Magnet doesn't have to even pretend that it's aiming for nation-wide coverage, because nobody expects it of them.

watty

Leaving out Content costs:
Broadcast costs almost exactly the same for 4Million as 1.
True realtime VOD *DOES* almost cost 10,000x more for 10,000 people and non-watching users of Broadband end up slightly subsidizing the network costs.

Much more Polish TV is on satellite than ANY IPTV or cable company will offer, including some FTA. The Cyfra+ subs are inexpensive and widespread in Limerick.

Satellite has nationwide coverage and nearly 100 languages. Magnet is unlikely to do more than cherrypick expensive developments. 10% coverage max with a tiny line up compared even with NTL. They may be IPTV, but a poorer choice, poorer quality clone of cable TV. Magent are not a good example of IPTV. Comcast who have a big catalogue or real VOD as well as the standard cable channels is a better example.

On Terrestrial & Satellite each extra customer once you are in profit, *is* nearly pure profit (apart from 200 Euro to 400 Euro install cost). Ordinay Cable TV is less profitable as more cable needs run as well as box install and box cost.

IPTV/VOD has more expensive cable costs, similar box/install costs and added extra backhaul costs than per user always. There is no gravey. CableTV is much cheaper and Satellite cheaper still.

Satellite companies particularly love online/phone orders from those with a self installed or subscription renewal as the install cost is zero. IPTV and Cable will always have install cost, usually a renewal involves install/replacement box.

The PayTV is a very hard buisness model compared with selling broadband. IPTV pay TV over broadband is harder per customer forever compared with Broadcast, and also worse than cable broadcast.

IPTV can be on dsl copper, fibre or cable TV coax. It really needs fibre as far as each street at least to be viable amount of bandwidth.

At least Magnet have very deep pockets, but it is hard to see how they can make money unless they charge many times more than Sky or NTL.

oscarBravo

*cough*

probe

If IPTV is so expensive to deliver, one has to wonder how Iliad made an operating profit of €89.5 m on revenues of €448 million (http://www.iliad.fr/en/finances/2006/CP20060907_Eng.pdf), virtually of all of which is earned from their 1.9 million DSL subscribers in France, of which 1.26 million use the free TV that comes with their DSL modem and 273,000 pay for extra optional TV programming? After all they only charge €29.99 per month for the 28 Mbits/sec broadband, phone (including unlimited free calls to 28 countries) and TV (adsl.free.fr/tv).

Satellite will never be able to deliver video on demand. Neither will DTT. Cable TV is dead unless it goes total FTTP – and even then the cable architecture has severe VoD limitations. In effect, cable will have to become like DSL – which implies an upgrade to fibre and links running directly from street cabinets to each premises (rather than house to house coax).

IPTV can use HD caching at various points in the network – depending on the popularity of the content, user preferences etc. Some content could be stored on a HD in the set-top box (i.e. very user specific stuff). More stored at the service access node on HDs shared by 100 to 200 households in a neighbourhood (e.g. popular programming – the latest news and the last four or five hours of content on popular channels for people who are playing catch-up. Even more VoD content (less in demand stuff) can be stored at a central point and streamed when requested. The good old 80:20 rule.

Swisscom’s DSL service offers a useful set top box that can be accessed over the internet from anywhere. It can store up to 200 hours of programmes from any cable service.
http://fr.bluewin.ch/services/index.php/tv/
To use it, you go into the website (eg from home, at the office, from your mobile phone), enter your user ID and password, surf through the TV guide and click on the ones you plan to watch.

The next stage in this scenario is you get home, go into the web based TV guide, and see a programme listing for an item that you have missed – click on it and it is streamed to your TV immediately either from the HD in the MSAN box that serves your home (located on the curb side, in the RSU or from the service centre) – depending on where the URL for that programme points to.

Iliad isn’t standing still with their €29.99 everything offer. On 5 October they announced some VoIP mobile phone convergence products – including a WiFi GSM mobile phone that allows you to call 28 countries free when you are within a WiFi coverage zone. It can also work with the rip-off cellular network Mafiosi when you only have GSM coverage available to you.
http://www.iliad.fr/en/presse/2006/CP_051006_Eng.pdf

Iliad also announced that their new Paris-wide fibre to the premises network will be open to all operators to “unbundle” to provide their own services over this infrastructure.
http://www.iliad.fr/en/presse/2006/CP_11092006_cp4_eng.pdf
No doubt they recognise the benefit of having lots of guys creating and selling products and services which ends up travelling over their pipe.

A refreshing difference from the head in the sand approach generally found in Ireland.

.probe

bk

probe wrote:

If IPTV is so expensive to deliver

He didn't say that IPTV was expensive to deliver (it isn't it can easily be multicast, like Verizon does in the US), he said a true VoD system, where people get all their content via VoD is expensive to deliver.

In reality no true VoD system exists anywhere in the world. In reality most services deliver TV by normal broadcasting methods (over DTT, cable, Sat, IPTV multicast) and only deliver a very small percentage of TV viewing via VoD.

probe wrote:

Cable TV is dead unless it goes total FTTP – and even then the cable architecture has severe VoD limitations. In effect, cable will have to become like DSL – which implies an upgrade to fibre and links running directly from street cabinets to each premises (rather than house to house coax).

The Coax cable running to the house is capable of up to 8.5Gbit/s and is excellently suited to being used for data networks. In fact it is much the same as the cable used in Cat5.

And in most cases of well developed cable networks, the Fibre is already run very close to the home. Fibre To The Node tends to be much closer to the homes then telephone exchanges and DSL. That is why modern cable networks are called Hybrid Fibre Coax networks.

I also find it funny that you mock cable like this, yet probably the most successful VoD network in the world is the Comcast cable network in Boston, which has an excellent VoD service that I've had the pleasure to use.

Liam Byrne

Forgive me if technology has overtaken me, but I seem to remember that coax was only feasible for something like 22 metres, after which CAT5 was the only option ?

Admittedly this was back in 1992, when I was involved in such things, so maybe this doesn't apply anymore ?

bk

Liam Byrne wrote:

Forgive me if technology has overtaken me, but I seem to remember that coax was only feasible for something like 22 metres, after which CAT5 was the only option ?

You are probably thinking of 10BASE2, which used RG-58 coaxial cable , which has far less well shielded.

Cable industry usually uses RG-6 or RG-11 coaxial cable which have far better shielding and can be used over very far distances.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coax

watty

It wasn't the coax that is the problem but the CDCA algorthim. It isn't to do with shielding either. The 10base2 is a BUS system, up to 100m. Each tap affects the quality and any can try talking at same time. On Twisted pair you only have your own "conversation" if it is a swtich. If it is a Hub, it really like 10base2 with all the transeivers onto the bus inside the box, instead of on NIC (in cheapernet, RG58) or on vampire tap (The thicker RG213 style).

The distance increase in Cable TV and DOCSIS is more to do with a different kind of signal than the cable.

probe

bk wrote:

The Coax cable running to the house is capable of up to 8.5Gbit/s and is excellently suited to being used for data networks. In fact it is much the same as the cable used in Cat5.

And in most cases of well developed cable networks, the Fibre is already run very close to the home. Fibre To The Node tends to be much closer to the homes then telephone exchanges and DSL. That is why modern cable networks are called Hybrid Fibre Coax networks.

I also find it funny that you mock cable like this, yet probably the most successful VoD network in the world is the Comcast cable network in Boston, which has an excellent VoD service that I've had the pleasure to use.

Probe is not "mocking" cable! It has had its day and the cable companies do not appear willing to bring it up to date in Ireland. In the town I live in, cable was upgraded for HDTV 2 years ago and we have had stereo sound for decades. Chorus is still delivering mono sound (ie not NICAM) and no cable in Ireland has been upgraded to HD. And the choice of channels in Ireland on cable is appallingly narrow. Endless Simpsons. British sports and soap operas. No specialist channels - such as Mezzo (www.mezzo.tv), Meteo, www.hd-1.tv,
Deutsche Welle TV, Arte, etc.

Anyway it’s not the speed of the coax that is the key limiting factor - it is the architecture of the cable TV networks in Ireland which generally run the cable from house to house to house. The bandwidth has to be shared by all the houses en route. Not a problem with broadcast TV – providing one has enough bandwidth to carry the required number of channels at an acceptable bitrate to deliver a good quality sound/picture.

This cable architecture does not lend itself to VoD because each VoD stream requires a separate TV channel running back to the service provision node. Internet access over cable is also limited in terms of the max speed and contention ratios deliverable to each subscriber. Security alarm services over cable have other problems – chop the cable at the right point and you can break into every house in the street without an alarm being reported to the control centre.

While the cable companies could fix that problem by re-wiring every house individually to a curb side MSAN, it would be akin to VDSL running at 5 Gbits/sec rather than 50 Mbits/sec and wouldn’t provide much in the line of extra benefits over using the copper pair.

.probe

bk

probe wrote:

Probe is not "mocking" cable! It has had its day and the cable companies do not appear willing to bring it up to date in Ireland. In the town I live in, cable was upgraded for HDTV 2 years ago and we have had stereo sound for decades. Chorus is still delivering mono sound (ie not NICAM) and no cable in Ireland has been upgraded to HD. And the choice of channels in Ireland on cable is appallingly narrow. Endless Simpsons. British sports and soap operas. No specialist channels - such as Mezzo (www.mezzo.tv), Meteo, www.hd-1.tv,
Deutsche Welle TV, Arte, etc.

Anyway it’s not the speed of the coax that is the key limiting factor - it is the architecture of the cable TV networks in Ireland which generally run the cable from house to house to house. The bandwidth has to be shared by all the houses en route. Not a problem with broadcast TV – providing one has enough bandwidth to carry the required number of channels at an acceptable bitrate to deliver a good quality sound/picture.

When you specify Ireland, what you say above is fine. I agree that the cable network in Ireland is bad (but getting better), but what you say above is certainly not true of most modern cable networks around the world.

probe wrote:

This cable architecture does not lend itself to VoD because each VoD stream requires a separate TV channel running back to the service provision node. Internet access over cable is also limited in terms of the max speed and contention ratios deliverable to each subscriber.

As I said the most successful (has something like 80% of all VoD streams last year) is Comcasts cable network in the US.

Cable has plenty of bandwidth, as long as the network is well designed, it will well be much more then VDSL and equal to residential fibre. Take a look at this article (andkeep in mind that in the US they carry 70 or so analogue channels including HD channels, using far more bandwidth then in Ireland):
http://blog.cabledigitalnews.com/index.php?id=570

Actually this is great site for lots of news and analysis of the cable industry.

probe wrote:

While the cable companies could fix that problem by re-wiring every house individually to a curb side MSAN, it would be akin to VDSL running at 5 Gbits/sec rather than 50 Mbits/sec and wouldn’t provide much in the line of extra benefits over using the copper pair.

Most modern HFC networks are already very like what curb side MSAN's would become.