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TV Over Phone Lines To Arrive In 2005
prostoalex writes "Associated Press says that telecoms have always considered expanding into digital television since the broadband infrastructure is already in place. But now they are putting billions of dollars into actually building such systems. "If everything goes as planned, the telephone industry will be all about television in 2005. TV over your home phone line. TV on your cell phone. Few topics have been as popular this past year among phone companies and their technology partners.""
I thought it was common knowledge that most phone systems (especially in rural communities) are unable to support broadband data communication. Cable was supposed to solve this problem. Fiber-to-the-home is now replacing cable... how can the telecom industry expect that their old, for the most part outdated copper wiring is capable of distributing this type of media?
Until my grandmother is able to get DSL on her phone line (in the middle of no where), I just can't believe such a thing.
...even more channels with nothing (worthwhile) on.
99.9% of TV blows. Blows big hairy chunks. So now we get yet another delivery system to bring this crap into our homes.
Wonderful.
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
Yeah, or in another way...
They are putting billions of dollars into finding new ways to inundate us with advertisements even though we pay for the content we are watching.
wdd
Telefónica, biggest phone operator and ex-state company, had been offering it for some months in Spain in some cities. They had a restriction to not do so for a couple of years, to allow cable operators to grow, otherwise they would have tried sooner. In the meanwhile they tested and got all ready to smash the other companies as soon as they could (competition here sucks, Telefónica had the plus of keeping all from systems when it was a state monopoly, becoming a de facto monopoly now). The service is named Imagenio.
Sasktel Max Interactive Services I have had 'Sasktel Max' for well over a year. My roomate, whose Dad worked for Sasktel, has had it for about 3 years.
It runs over DSL and you get internet and digital TV on one modem. If you elect to move up to the 5mbps down 768kpbs up Internet service (as I did) you have 2 DSL modems, 1 dedicated for Digital TV and one for Internet. Its interesting that it only requires about 3500kbps to deliver the digital cable.
The price? For 1.5mps down and 384 up with basic cable over DSL= 34.99 above basic monthly telephone fees. God Bless Canada's cheap Internet.
The sad/funny thing is that this service is available to every town larger than 10,000 people in this province of 1,000,000 people. This province is very rural and they are rolling it out to all the smaller communities as well. I find it interesting that Sasktel finds this profitable when so many Americans, in much denser population centres, have such a problem getting similar access.
Which is why I think the 'TV will save the telcos' idea is bogus. These people are hyping the idea to each other, to help convince themselves it is a good idea, but its rather like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Internet usage is up, TV viewership is down, and the interactive nature of the internet makes that a trend in one direction only - doom for broadcasting.
A quote in the FA says: "There's one application knocking on the door and consumers are truly hungering for it: real-time TV and streaming TV,"
I strongly disagree. I own two Replay TV's and really quite dislike real-time TV. That the satellite and cable providers are doing a push to lease PVRs to us end-users is not lost on me.
I do see narrowcasting as a niche that will survive; but, with multiple delivery systems, the profit margin is going to be extremely thin. Add to that the expense of a DRM system (primarily in pissed off customers who cancel service because of it), and the whole thing seems a house of cards.
Bob Cringely points out that WiMax will probably eat the telco's lunch. I think he is right, and this is just a desperate clutching at straws in hopes they don't drown quickly.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
I work for an independent telcom in southern Ohio, Horizon Telcom and we already offer cable TV services to our customers.
Yes, here in Hong Kong, the DSL is provided by the incumbent fixed line operator, PCCW. It is very stable and high quality, compared to the flaky and low performing cable modem system. (Yes I know, this comes as a shock to US folks). If you subscribe to the 6 megabit/sec DSL service, it costs about US $25 a month, and they give you a TV decoder for free. You get about a half dozen TV channels for free (weather, traffic, basic Chinese news) and you can buy "a la carte" channels for about US $2 a month, like BBC, Discovery Channel. HBO, ESPN and others are more, about US $10 a month. A major problem with TV over DSL is the lag time for channel changing. It's worse than DBS satellite delay because there is a whole request-response needed to "tune" another channel. But the picture quality is quite good with fewer artifacts than DBS.
..."no static" on the regular phone line. Some kind of high definitioin TV? Ha! Double Ha! If the best you can get is a scosh over 28.8, I doubt that 90% of the people or so in the US would be able to get clear reasonable definition TV, even if they have some sort of xDSL on the telcos marginal wire. Not on the copper that's out there now, it's cheap crap. The telcos are cheap except for a few limited markets. I've been using POTS since they didn't come with a freaking dial on the machine, and they have always talked big, delivered cheap, charged heavy,and always. They gradually add in new features,and heavily add in new fees, and the big breakup forced some good changes, but it's been kicking and screaming all the way, while promising the moon, the stars, a milkshake and a new pony.
10%, sure, places that have redundant and highly competetive broadband markets, ie, the top 100 or so major urban areas. The rest of the nation? Ain't seeing it,my opinion, we'll see better wireless networks and P2P ad hoc streaming/mesh networks/whatever from actual users before they actually build robust wired solutions,cable or fiber or whathaveyou, it's just vastly cheaper and easier to implement. Tv over that then? Sure, possible. Tv over bottom rung dsl and 40 year old copper that's still up all over by the thousands of miles? Huh? And most folks in that 90% of what I will term the "higher tech near blackout area" that actually care to have decent TV beyond whatever any OTA they might have already run a satellite dish to get it, it's installed and works and is cheap and for most purposes doesn't interfere with the already too expensive for what you get phone bill. I mean, they give away the hardware now by the multiple room setup it's that cheap. Let's see the wired telcos compete with that.
So, the wireless guys, I can see it *somewhat* happening IF they really add enough to their backends to handle it,for the massive increase in bandwith, because it'll make a few bit torrent trackers look like a dialup dynapic webhost, ie, "small". Good quality TV real time is whole nuther ball game from the web, and it's there already called "cable" and it's put where they are going to put it like a decade ago, it's not expanding all that much. Wired,from the entrenched telcos? Having to actually install decent wires or lit fiber of some flavor to every abode? Nope, market buzz speak to keep their stock share prices up. They can't do it on their stuff, only in limited places. Proof is in the pudding you can buy now, if they could they would be offering killer SDSL everywhere for cheap, and they ain't, are they? It's the Telco equivalent of flying cars articles in 1950s popular mechanics magazine. Watching Tv on the cellphone? Contrary to popular PR spokesweasel beliefs, the US isn't Japan and 7/8ths of the nation doesn't climb onto a commuter train every day for hours to go to work, we drive cars, meaning they won't be watching TV on their cellphones for x-hours a day to kill time, especially if it's pay by the minute or some noise like that.
I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
This has been available for about a year, and the telco is constantly expanding their area of service. Prices are pretty much on par with cable, but the packages are much more interesting.
The telco has broken channels down to ~3-5 channels per package. You can get basic, with a small fee for each additional package. So you could get Discovery, A&E and TLC in one package, and 3 music channels in another. They also have "packages of packages" - basic + 1/3/5/9 packages.
The current promotion is 30 days of full service and free installation. You can also bundle your TV with your DSL package.
if the new TV Bells offered the ability to pick specific channels instead of packages, they'd find themselves filling a niche market that would. After the first generation of members gets the kinks out, their subscribers should grow expenantually. No one wants to pay for packages.
:). If you ask me, its about time someone came around to challenge the cable cos.
If the Bells allowed us to pick our chans, the cable cos would have to fall in too. Competition is always good
[Just Shut Up and Do What I say]
The telcos are still stuck in the old ways of thinking.
They could be providing all sorts of digital services right now, if they just restructured their systems so you'd have unlimited bandwidth to their local network, and bandwidth limitations only to the rest of the internet... That would make everyone happy. DSL providers could have caching proxies, and customers would love to use them, which makes things faster for users, and saves the ISP lots of money on internet bandwidth.
In addition, this would give the DSL providers an advantage in providing digital services, like TV. Imagine if you could watch 2 simultaneous video streams from your DSL provider, and not even slow down your internet connection.
If they want to provide fibre over the last-mile, that's fine, but even then, I'm sure the TV service they will provide will be no better than cable or satellite. You see, they don't realize that the multicast abilities of computer networks provide an effectively unlimited ammount of bandwidth, and hence, unlimited channels. Ala carte TV service would be trivial, and could offer billions of channels to select from. In fact, anyone could setup a server, and provide a new TV station for $1/month directly to the users.
Instead, competition has stagnated, corporations have grown, and the only competition is to be nominally better than the other 2 companies providing competiting services. So, they clone the other services as best they can, and make a profit, only because corporate policies have made it's impossible for smaller companies to compete at all.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I used to work for Kingston Interactive Television which delivers real Interactive Digital Television and true Video on Demand within a wall garden of managed content and high speed Internet Access via IP on ADSL.
The technology works and has done for years, KIT was the first to commercially launch in 1999 and like others it had been running technology trials of Video over POTS for about 6 years previously.
There is little doubt that the platform blows the competing options out the water. DSL based DTV services cost about one tenth that of pure cable system since they doesn't require a fresh dig. They are also truly interactive instead of the faked-out client side interactions of satellite systems. It also offer a realatively pain-free experience of the internet for most ordinary consumers.
The problem is the incumbents who tend to have the content deals stitched up with the studios/distubutors.
Read more here : Kingston Case Study