IPTV - the industry's next big motion picture

During the past year, IPTV has emerged as a viable technology for carrying broadband services over traditional telephone copper wires, says Agere CTO David Sonnier.

Internet protocol television (IPTV) has blasted onto the communications industry's radar screen during the past year.

The technology has emerged as a viable "killer application" for finally bringing more entertaining, more affordable and more secure broadband services to homes and businesses over traditional telephone copper wires.

You may be skeptical about a trade show buzz about yet another technology with a four letter acronym.

Rid yourself of such a mindset.

IPTV is not, I emphasise, another one of the communication industry's cryptic acronyms designed to confuse and amuse and be ultimately forgotten, long before it becomes relevant in your life or mine.

This acronym really has substantial relevance supporting it for you and me.

To understand how and why, it's helpful to put in context how IPTV compares with technologies often associated with delivering better broadband experiences to homes and businesses that you may be familiar with.

IPTV is not switched digital video technology, referred to as SDV, which emerged some 10-15 years ago as a visionary, futuristic interactive video technology piped into peoples' homes through fibre optic and copper wires.

Switched digital video was way ahead of its time mainly because it banked on much more rapid and widespread installation of fibre optics near and inside homes - which has progressed to date at a relatively sluggish pace compared with many forecasters, because of its high costs to deploy by telecom service providers.

IPTV can run on copper wires.

And switched digital video did not take into consideration the Internet, which was not widely pervasive as it is now.

Switched digital video is similar conceptually to IPTV in that it enables interactive applications between the TV viewer and the TV set.

IPTV also is not high definition television, commonly referred to as HDTV.

A technology accelerating in worldwide deployment, HDTV makes TV images more detailed and clear.

One key way the IPTV and HDTV relate is that HDTV signals could travel over an IPTV network.

Now for a description of what IPTV is.

At a high level, IPTV is conceptually like overlaying and blending the Internet and all its wireline and wireless capabilities and technologies with those of a TV set - all on one high speed copper based network.

Voice, data and video signals on such a network are organised into Internet Protocol packets, which are more efficiently put together than previous generation technology.

Those packets are transported over a digital network using network processor chip technology.

In addition to copper, the technology's transmission vehicle could also be fibre optic glass, but not much of that is deployed near and inside peoples' homes.

IPTV functions like a simultaneous three ring circus of sorts, with the rings being the TV broadcast network, the Internet and the wireless network - all integrated as one system.

Put another way, IPTV is akin to combining peanut butter (the TV network) and jelly (the Internet) in the same jar to improve a product's costs, versatility, convenience and quality.

The IPTV vision centres on offering a more exciting, more secure and simpler entertainment experience than alternatives.

This technology is well positioned to do this because, for instance, people can access more personalised services and information faster and at lower costs than alternatives.

The technology delivers TV over a traditional phone line - an achievement the industry has been striving to offer at affordable costs at higher performance levels, such as faster speeds and higher bandwidth (higher information carrying capacity), for more than a decade.

IPTV differs from alternatives because it consolidates the information onto one pipe and one network, whereas alternatives typically require separate pipes and networks to cart voice, data and video signals.

Using one pipe within one network, instead of several pipes and networks, reduces operational and capital expenses for telecomms equipment manufacturers and service providers.

Eventually IPTV will likely make it possible to surf the Internet using your TV remote control by pushing the buttons representing www and then the name of the website you want to go to.

One key technology accelerating momentum of IPTV deployment is traffic management.

Functionality embedded within network processor chips, traffic management classifies, organises and prioritises voice, data and video signals traveling on the network.

This traffic management helps keep the TV signals clear and deliver information rapidly, without noticeable delays and in an intelligent fashion.

Other key and related traffic management functions include statistics gathering, dynamic rate shaping, flow identification, multicast flow rate monitoring, congestion control, QoS mapping and encoding for multiple services per subscriber, buffer management, call admission control.

Using high speed asymmetrical digital subscriber line 2+ technology, which pumps the signals at up to approximately 24Mbit/s downstream (from network to user) and 3Mbit/s upstream (from user to network), combined with the traffic management to improve signal quality on the TV and minimise signal delays.

Video signal are much more bandwidth rich than voice signals and traffic management technology is designed to handle such heavy doses of traffic with high levels of granular organisations and groupings.

And ADSL 2+ technology transports the information at much faster rates than previous generation DSL technologies.

This faster speed improves the quality of IPTV services.

The network processor chips powering IPTV networks are housed within digital subscriber line access multiplexers, wireless basestations and other types of telecomms equipment.

This technology could also be used in cable modems, the primary type of box likely to be used for delivering cable TV IPTV services into homes and businesses.

ADSL 2+ and traffic management are viable, commercially available technologies that make IPTV more affordable and beneficial in multiple ways for consumer and business end users, as well as telecomms service providers and equipment manufacturers.

From a telecomms service provider perspective, such robust traffic management and ADSL 2+ technology enable them to offer consumers and businesses new, differentiated services with minimal network investments, thereby boosting total revenues.

This financial benefit is one of the main reasons IPTV now gathers so much industry steam.

The benefits of IPTV are numerous.

Suppose you love to watch March Madness, the annual college basketball extravaganza held in March.

Using IPTV technology offered by your phone company, you could get multiple benefits you can't get now.

For example, you could receive on your TV any one of the dozens of March Madness basketball games, rather than just the one CBS TV network decides to deliver to my local area.

Simultaneously, you can access not just the visual of basketball game but also information related to it, such as player specific statistics.

While enjoying these benefits, you could look at another game on a smaller, super imposed screen on your TV and access player specific statistics and other information about that other game.

In the context of your house and March Madness, imagine the following scenario in which IPTV could prove beneficial to you.

While your kids talk on the phone, your wife can work on her laptop computer and you can watch the basketball games on TV.

All three could use a single pipe and network.

Previously, the three groups would have had to use three different networks, including three different sets of wires, to use these technologies.

This results in increased clutter, inconvenience, waste of time, higher expenses.

Other user benefits of IPTV include the ability to: send photos of home movies from your PC directly into the TV and view them on the TV screen; view photos and listen to music via the TV; send email messages to your friends through the TV screen while you watch a TV show together across great distances; use a cellphone to change channels on your TV; allow service providers to deliver only those channels the consumer wants at a given time, rather than all the channels available as happens with today's cable TV networks; access specific TV channels you want to watch when you want to watch them as well as access more different TV channels; receive brief and unobtrusive telephone network caller ID information on your TV screen while still watching TV, to decide whether you want to answer the phone or not this would enable you to screen telemarketers, among other things; play video games using your TV set rather than your computer; and reduce the number of remote controls in your house for use with the TV, VCR and DVD player, thereby reducing home electronics costs and clutter and simplifying the experience using such equipment.

From a telephone company competitive standpoint, IPTV amounts to their key strategic weapons to battle cable TV companies in delivering broadband services to peoples' homes and businesses.

Cable TV companies already have TV and Internet services transporting to such customers; and they are starting to offer voice services.

There are an estimated 5 million IPTV network set top boxes in trials or early deployments.

Set top boxes are the main type of equipment the cable TV can use for delivering IPTV services.

Telecomms service providers offer voice and Internet but lag behind cable TV companies in video offerings.

IPTV helps them fill that missing piece to the puzzle, accelerating them them forward with an affordable and competitively attractive set of offerings.

The IPTV market is generally in the trial stage throughout the world.

Experts predict this technology could be widely deployed around the world within two to four years.

Worldwide, the IPTV market is expected to quadruple during the next two years.

IPTV gains particularly fast momentum these days in the international arena, particularly in the Asia/Pacific region.

The number of IPTV subscribers in Asia is expected to double during the next year, according to the Gartner Group's March 2005 study.

China - a hotbed for all sorts of large scale broadband telecomms business - ranks among the world leaders in IPTV progress.

It is estimated that China has already announced plans to have 1 million IPTV subscribers by the end of this year.

Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong are also out in front using this technology.

Although it lags Asia and Europe and IPTV deployment, the USA has serious initiatives underway as well.

BellSouth is working with Microsoft to deliver IPTV services this year.

The telecomms company is also working on technical IPTV trials.

So be assured that IPTV isn't one of those four letter acronyms this industry chews up and spits out.

This technology has its own real teeth bound to make some important things happen in our lives and soon.

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