What is an IPTV?
IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) describes a system where a digital television service is delivered using the Internet Protocol (IP) over a network infrastructure, which may include delivery by a broadband connection. IPTV enables broadcaster to deliver high-quality video in conjunction with many advanced features like VoD (Video on Demand), games, and Interactivity and personalized services. Following are example of IPTV
• Competitive TV services over managed IP networks with two way connection
• Broadcast Television
• Video on Demand
WHAT IS NOT AN IPTV?
IPTV is distinctly different from “Internet Video” that simply allows users to watch videos, like movie previews and web-cams, over the Internet in a “best effort” fashion with no end-to-end service management and quality of service considerations. Following are not IPTV
• Video streaming over internet
• Watching TV on your PC(Personal Computer)
• Best Efforts video services
Now instead of engaging ourselves in the technical complexities of IPTV let us focus on the commercial aspects of IPTV which can be the determinants of success or failure of the IPTV deployment worldwide……
Nitty-Gritty of IPTV
Capex Breakdown for IPTV Architecture:
Network and Set-Top box forms the maximum chunk of the initial CAPEX. The software part is considered middleware and is the heaviest cost component for the IPTV service providers. It is approximately 20 % right now, but the integration but futuristic interactive applications in the middleware would see this investment going up and will reach upto 35% in another year or two.
If we consider the OPEX, then Content acquisition and enrichment constitute 60-80% of the total OPEX. Therefore making it the most expensive cost component for the service providers. Securing compelling content is arguably the most serious challenge that IPTV providers face. A small but increasing share of operators, however, believe the content part of their IPTV model is now ready, and a majority think it's on the way to being so. For a new operator that lacks experience of the industry, this can be a huge barrier to entering the market. Owing to the Content Acquisition, Protection and Provisioning issues time to market for the newer operators is large, more than 2 years on an average. Therefore their competitors who have already started their services have an even bigger advantage over them.
Other challenges are on the technical front. Most critical of them is to ensure the inter-operatibility among various vendor equipments used in content management. QoS issues must also be catered to when video content is transferred between media or transcoded from one format to another. Errors can occur in this process, which can lead to image break-up and colour problems within decoded macro blocks.
IPTV: Road Ahead
• Targeted or addressable advertising is a thing that is considered by many of the experts as the big thing that can bring lots of revenues for the service providers.
• New solutions are coming up that have embedded QoE and QoS monitoring capabilities in them. E.g. Companies like Applied ElectroMagnetics are providing STB embedded with monitoring capabilities and monitoring in the network is being handled by the end-to-end solution providers.
• A new solution that adheres to most of the challenges discussed above and can act as an elixir for newer operators is:
The model would be an end-to-end solution for a new service provider to fasten his time to market and whole of the content management is provided to him.
The description of the model is as follows
• It’ll leverage a super-headend—that is, a headend that provides the MPEG4 AVC encoding and compression for dozens or ultimately hundreds of telcos—and, for a nominal monthly fee, transport this access-ready content.
This model would offer the main headend service, middleware and DRM for international channels, and leaving billing, marketing and headend for local channels to telephone companies.
To conclude, I would say that IPTV is nowhere close to harnessing its full potential until now. Reasons being lack of infrastructure, Content Acquisition issues, Inter-operability among hardware devices, QoS and QoE issues and most importantly lack of the differentiated and interactive content which gives it an edge over Cable and DTH operators. Now whether operators are able to cater to these issues successfully is for everybody to see.
Posted by : SAURABH MITTAL
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National Telecom Seminar is the biggest student endeavour to bring the stalwarts from Telecom Industry on a common platform to discuss about the most relevant and contemporary issues surrounding the telecom and related industries organised by Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management, Pune...This blog is an attempt to discuss theme and topics for the XIII National Telecom Seminar - Communique 09
9 comments:
Good figures provided about the costs and issues involved in actual IPTV deployment.
Just one question I want to ask : The model suggested in the blog that leverages the super headend looks very good as far as the broadcast content is concerned..but what about the VoD content that is the biggest differentiator in any service provider's offering?
Well,,answering your question about VoD content I would like to give you some figures about that...As per the industry research 85% of the content in the IPTV offering is broadcast content and only 15% is VoD content..So by this model we would decrease the time to market for the new players(which currentky lies between 14-20 months) by giving them the ready content upto their IP network and they can then build VoD content in their portfolio...
I hope this answers your question.
A good holistic view provided regarding the IPTV concept. I just want to know about the Indian Perspective of IPTV and is it possible for state owned BSNL to leverage on this, after the failure of their PILOT PROJECT in Pune
Well talking about Indian Perspective,,Airtel, Reliance and Smart Digivision are trying to jump the bandwagon but still it'll take atleast 2 years for IPTV to challenge the cable and DTH Operators owing to the challenges like : Lack of consumer understanding of Product Propostion, QoS and QoE issues with IPTV (Reason being that companies like Reliance, Airtel) etc are going for end-to-end solutions and these solution providers don't allow any external Service Assurance tool to monintor for QoS and QoE, issues with content acquisitions since the VoD content is very expensive and ofcourse the biggest issue is lack of proper infrastructure..
Taling about the prospects of BSNL : It has an advantage of ready infrasrtucture but still in order to leverage that and launch the commercially viable IPTV service it must cater following issues:
1. Get the newer content like a new bollywood movie on the date of release even if it customer has to pay higher amount.
2. Employ Software probes for monitoring and measuring of QoS and QoE at all the points in IPTV delivery chain.
3. Interactive Services like online voting, authored content in VoD should be employed to make the experience differentiable from the cable or DTH..
the article provides a good insight on the IPTV scenario in India.A good thing about IPTV is that the interactivity opens up a new platform for advertisers, which further escalates the ARPU for the telecom firms.There are a few limitations like high costs of acquisition. The television broadcasters charge telecom companies much more than cable operators for programme feeds. Another big hurdle to popularising IPTV is the low broadband penetration.
A wholistic approach on a futuristic technology .As in every new project initial hurdles like lack of infrastructure etc will be there.With the passage of time it will become a household name.
The article talks about the new technology called IPTV which provides the customers with benefits like convenience of timeslots, recording of more than one programs at a given time and better quality and content. The two way transmission is speedier and reliable. But inspite of a lot of marketing and engineering effort put in by the software companies in IPTV, the subsequent releases have been very complex. Another flaw is that most of the current IPTV models are undifferentiated aiming at gaining a mere parity with the cable operators. Thus for a new technology as IPTV to be successful in the challenging telecom market segment will require a dramatic cultural change besides building a strong IPTV capable network.
Well Said :: However as it is broadly claimed by IPTV- Service providers that 2mbps last mile would be good enough, it isnt practically, there would be increased switching times.
The only difference that IPTV would probably talk about is VOD, else whether its IP or its via DTH etc etc as an end user no difference.
also in India VOD isnt a killer service yet because of premium charged, which seems to be unreasonably high.
So IPTV doesnt excite much mainly because of last mile/infra issues & Pricing models.
Also the way DTH is entering the Indian homes, replacing it would be a tough job due to almost same time entry of both the services, DTH being the winner because entered first and demands less vis-a-vis customer equipment/costs.
VOD propaganda:: dont know how far it would be justified in Indian perspective....
Vaibhav Pruthi
Batch::2006-08
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