Want Broadband? Then the U.S. and Western Europe are for you. JupiterResearch
is predicting 79 million US broadband households by 2011,
while Western Europe checks in with 110 million.
Impressive numbers, for sure, but even more telling is the
rise of DSL service, which Jupiter predicts will overtake
cable in the U.S. by 2010. “In the U.S., strong momentum on
the part of telephone companies means that DSL will overtake
cable modems in market share by 2010,” says Joe Laszio, research
director at Jupiter.
And in Western Europe, DSL will retain its dominant position
over cable modems. The research firm forecasts that by 2011,
88.9 million out of the 110 million total broadband households
will be utilizing DSL. That is definitely dominance.
And what should cable be doing about it? “U.S. cable operators
will have to combine price cuts and better marketing efforts
to forestall this outcome,” Laszio suggests.
And the US market will continue to lag behind Western Europe,
Jupiter adds. The reason? Far lower broadband prices are driving
up penetration rates, with the average European household
generating 54 percent less broadband access revenue in 2011
compared with 2005.
That will prompt a sea change in Western Europe, says Jupiter
Senior Analyst, Ian Fogg. “Broadband Internet providers must
control their costs as they look to new revenue sources enabled
by widespread broadband adoption.”
Yet margins count, and, according to Parks
Associates, DSL’s ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)
is just $34/month, per subscriber, versus cable’s more advantageous
$41/month per subscriber.
It won’t be long, however, until DSL service becomes an even
more integral part of the telcos’ bundled strategy. When that
happens, be assured the DSL ARPU will head north.
—Craig
Kuhl, IP Capsule Editor, and CED Magazine
Contributing Editor
Telkonet starts beta testing
IPTV in NY
Telkonet
Inc. will begin beta testing customers for its IPTV
service in New York City via its NuVisions branded service,
the company announced.
The NuVisions service will be offered via the service provider’s
gigabit network that connects the properties it serves in
a redundant gigabit ring within New York City-a virtual “fiber
optic network in the air,” according to Telkonet.
NuVisions also plans to add more channels and features, including
VOD, movies, games and Internet content, the company noted.
Why the test? Worldwide IPTV service revenue is expected
to grow to $44 billion by 2009, with the number of IPTV subscribers
reaching 54 million (Infonetics Research). New York is expected
to be a lucrative part of that market.
FISION gets Fox
Optical Entertainment
Network (OEN) has signed an IPTV carriage agreement
directly with Fox Cable Networks to provide all of their content
to OEN subscribers.
The agreement allows OEN’s FISION to offer a full menu of
Fox Cable programming, including Fox Movie Channel, National
Geographic Channel, SPEED, Fox regional sports networks and
more.
FISION is OEN’s IPTV service which offers triple play services
over Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) technology. It is scheduled
to launch in Houston, Texas, the company said.
What’s the deal? Securing programming content agreements
directly with content providers is paramount for IPTV providers
if they intend on competing with incumbent video service providers.
New software by mPhase to help
scale IPTV nets
mPhase
Technologies has introduced new software platform
designed to help telcos scale their IPTV networks.
The new version (System Release 5.0) will allow engineers
to manage multiple set-top boxes, multiple accounts per subscriber
and multiple STB managers that provide scalable failure recovery
and load balancing.
Concurrent, Adtec integrating
Concurrent
Computer Corp. and Adtec are working on an integrated
IPTV solution that teams the Concurrent MiniHawk server with
Adtec’s IPTV headend systems.
And the research says….
Cable’s doing just fine, says Kagan
Total revenue for the cable industry is up nearly 13 percent
to $29.9 billion in 2005, with revenues expected to reach
$33.8 billion in 2006, says Kagan
Research.
What’s driving the revenue uptick? License fees for networks
owned by media conglomerates are rising 2-5 percent a year,
while ad revenue is predicted to remain in double-digit growth
mode for the foreseeable future.
Other findings weren’t as rosy, however. Media conglomerates
will have a difficult time launching new spinoffs, and independently
owned networks will find it almost impossible to get carriage
without the backing of a major multichannel operator, the
survey pointed out.
Shaw defends ‘QoS enhancement’
package
Shaw Communications
and its Canada-based cable MSO subsidiary have filed a series
of court documents that aim to “set to record straight” regarding
a “Quality
of Service Enhancement” package being offered to Vonage
customers and customers of other third-party VoIP services
that leverage the public Internet.
The documents, filed in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench
in Calgary, note that Shaw’s IP-based phone service is offered
over the operator’s QoS-enabled, managed network, while Vonage’s
service travels the public Internet and is open to packet
delays and other “inherent limitations.”
Shaw reiterated that its high-speed data customers who also
use the Vonage service can take the QoS Enhancement service
on a completely optional basis. The enhancement runs $10 per
month.
Vonage has previously
complained of the tactic, referring to it as a “thinly-veiled
VoIP tax,” and has since requested that the Canadian Radio-Television
& Telecommunications Commission step in to investigate
the matter.
Shaw officials have
told CED previously that the enhancement includes
an upgrade to a DOCSIS 2.0 modem and the cleaning up of RF
interference in the home. Shaw also “marks” the modem’s MAC
address.
Vonage is also facing attacks in the U.S. On Monday, Vonage
acknowledged it has been served with a patent infringement
lawsuit filed by Verizon
Services Corp. and Verizon Laboratories Inc. The suit
claims Vonage is infringing on some intellectual property
tied to Verizon’s VoIP technology. Verizon presently offers
a VoIP service called VoiceWing.
Vonage said it believes its services have been developed
with its own proprietary technology or technologies licensed
from third parties, and therefore “intends to vigorously defend
the lawsuit.
Boston gets Access
AccessLine
Communications will launch the retail version of its
SmartVoice hosted VoIP service in the Boston area, the company
announced. The retail SmartVoice is designed and built for
the SMB (Small and Medium sized Business) market.
In a related move, AccessLine also announced an expanded
relationship with OneCall, a SmartVoice dealer that serves
the Boston market.
Apptix forms alliance with
BroadSoft
Apptix,
a provider of on demand messaging and collaboration solutions
for the SMB market, has forged an alliance with BroadSoft
and New Global
Telecom (NGT) to provide new VoIP applications, including
hosted IP-PBX, voice conferencing and voice mail to email
integration, the companies announced.
BroadSoft will assist in the integration of its VoIP technology
to Apptix’s TECOS On-Demand Service Management Platform, while
Apptix will market and sell voice applications using BroadSoft’s
VoIP technology.
In addition, the agreement calls for NGT to provide service
delivery for Apptix’s voice solutions, while all three of
the companies will co-market the unified messaging and voice
solution.
PeerMe software gets smart
PeerMe Inc.
will make its software available for the Motorola Q smart
phone, which, according to PeerMe, marks the first VoIP software
to be teamed with the new Q phone.
PeerMe uses VoIP technology to enable mobile phone users
to communicate with each other from anywhere in the world
for free. Users pay their mobile carrier a flat fee for a
high-speed mobile data plan and can use PeerMe to make unlimited
calls from their cell phones, the company said.
So what’s the big deal? PeerMe is a little VoIP provider
that could. It’s competing against the much bigger Skype for
similar service.
Charter recommends Jones
Charter
Communications is recommending that its installation
and service technicians, along with its installation contractors,
add supplemental training to their training schedules, and
the company they’re recommending is Jones/NCTI
for its VoIP training, the companies said.
The Web-based Jones/NCTI IP Voice program is an online course
that includes three hours of video featuring a step-by-step
experience through all aspects of IP voice service.
Why the recommendation? With the rapid deployment of VoIP
services by a host of service providers, the training of skilled
VoIP technicians, installers and even sales teams is top of
mind.
Cedar
Point has shipped more than 1 million VoIP lines served
by its SAFARI C3 platform.
Cedar Point says thanks a million
Cedar
Point says it has shipped its one-millionth VoIP
line, courtesy of a deployment by Charter Communications’
central division. All of those lines are supported by Cedar
Point’s flagship, the SAFARI C3.
Safari C3 is an integrated carrier class VoIP switch that
provides a seamless evolution to SIP-based features and an
IP MultiMedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture.
And the research says…
VoIP the buzz…again
The next generation of technology to change the telecommunications
landscape is, you guessed it, VoIP. At least according to
market intelligence and advisory firm IDC.
The analysts at IDC predict the US consumer VoIP market will
grow from 10.3 million in 2006, to 44 million in 2010, and
that VoIP will be used in 62 percent of broadband households
in 2010.
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Narad
Networks has introduced a line of Ethernet switches
designed to offer dedicated, 100 Mbps connections that, the
company claims, can help operators compete in contested markets
served by high capacity data services fed by fiber-to-the-premises
(FTTP) technology.
Narad said the system can be used to support commercial and
residential services and be deployed in existing fiber-to-the-curb
architectures. The company added that the electronics of its
system is “loosely” equivalent to passive optical network
(PON) architectures, but with less fiber construction costs.
Narad estimates that fiber construction costs with its platform
will average roughly $50 per home passed, though costs will
vary by region and geography.
The platform itself places switches at the coax cable tap.
Ethernet from fiber and existing video, voice and data services
from the coax are then fed into the Narad modular tap switch.
Narad modems within the switch convert Ethernet into a modulated
carrier at frequencies above existing cable services. Previously,
Narad has said its platform works above 860 MHz, but below
1.1 GHz.
“With this new platform, cable operators can future-proof
their network to support more advanced services by delivering
higher capacity at lower costs and in less time than anything
offered by Verizon or AT&T,” said Narad CEO Michael Collette,
in a statement.
Cablevision
Systems Corp. is already using Narad’s out-of-band
overlay to delivery data services to business customers starting
at 50 Mbps. With that deployment, Cablevision initially Narad-enabled
two nodes serving customers in Oyster Bay, N.Y.
On the residential end, cable operators already are planning
to use DOCSIS 3.0 and channel bonding techniques to deliver
Internet services in the 100 Mbps range that will be shared
— rather than dedicated — by customers on the node. To meet
more near-term competitive pressures, operators are also considering
an interim step to DOCSIS 3.0 called DOCSIS
2.0b, which will bond a minimum of two 6 MHz channels
and enlist the shared bandwidth model.
Quad play a no play says Pyramid
The quadruple play of video, voice, data and wireless services
won’t work, at least for everyone, says Pyramid
Research.
“Not everyone wants the triple play, let alone quadruple
play, which assumes that fixed voice remains a key, attractive
option; in the Skype and mobile age, that is hardly the case,”
says Guy Zibi, lead author of Pyramid’s report: “Transforming
Triple Play: Key Lessons and Best Practices for Winning RGU
Strategies.”
He points to most telcos’ selling 1 to 1.5 revenue generating
units (RGUs) per customer and cable companies selling just
slightly better. The double play, the report says, has enjoyed
higher adoption than triple play because operators “can offer
different combinations of the three services with double play
bundles,” the report notes.
Claim to Fame: Provides hosted and managed VoIP applications
for telecommunications service providers to build and monitor
flexible and scalable VoIP networks.
Recent news of note: Integrated Sylantro Systems’
server into its core class 5 VoIP network platform. VoIP Logic’s
network platform now offers service providers several new
features, including a Web-based interface and services portal.