Next Generation Service Providers Panel
October 4, 2011, TVNext, San Jose, CA–A panel considered the issues of competitive pressures, new TV ecosystems, and emerging technologies on existing and future service providers.
Colin Dixon from the Diffusion Group acted as moderator. The panel included David Jacobs form Amdocs, Ben Huang from Microsoft, Keith Kelley from Motorola Mobility, Eric Freund from SureWest Communications, and Jim Louderback from Revision3.
As the service providers are seeing decreasing subscribers, it seems that people are moving to OTT services. By ’16, the forecast is for 2B connected TV devices.
Jacobs suggested that it’s all part of the multi-screen experience. Size matters and the IP, context, and platforms are integrating functions to include Web and other functions. All of these new services require changes to the user interface and raise the complexity of all systems. IP is just a carrier change, the context is still the same. Everyone needs to move to more immersive experiences by mixing social media and other functions with the video.
Louderback added that IPTV providers are delivering streaming and downloads for content. Huang agreed that users want a good context across all platforms. Freund commented that the service providers are not the only ones seeing changes. People are moving from telcos to OTT as their expectations, use cases, and managed home networks come together. Kelley opined that people are trying to make their home media networks interoperable across all end points and transport media–coax, wireless, Ethernet, etc.
The panel agreed that the set-top box has been around a long time, and will continue to be the main media hub. There will be some disruptions as the industry decides upon open or closed systems. Users will want more capabilities from their systems to enable search and discovery of new and interesting content. Unfortunately, enhancing the search and discovery functions will greatly increase the complexity of the STB.
The home media network may need some type of gateway to handle the additional functions. Distribution and rights management are big issues that the industry still needs to address. The integration of social functions to improve search and discovery raises some privacy issues which is very much unlike Pandora’s music suggestions.
On the network side, infrastructure and distribution issues dominate the conversations. The increased demand for broadband services for OTT and cloud services loads down the servers and storage for the service providers. The increase in use of VoD services calls for new technologies to better manage bandwidth in an any platform, any time environment
