Powerline access to outpace DSL and cable

Broadband over power line (BPL) subscriber growth in the U.S. will outpace DSL and cable over the next five years. Research from Parks Associates forecasts subscriber numbers to increase from 400,000 in 2007 to 2.5 m by 2011.

One reason for the growth is the delivery of broadband to households in rural areas, which cannot be served with conventional broadband services.

Soundbite: IMS timelines

"No one vendor has all the IMS pieces. Carriers are choosing to use components [from several vendors] and a system integrator, and now they are separating the myth from reality. That's why you are seeing lots of lab trials and [IMS] plug fests. [For IMS,] 2007 will be a critical year: carriers will learn and draw conclusions. If it turns out well and it is a reasonable solution and all the pieces work, there will be some deployments in 2008. If it proves hard to work and is a complex integration there will be no definite timeline."

Dr. Vikram Saksena, chief technology officer, Sonus Networks.

BT's 21 CN

Interesting write-up of BT's NGN in this month's IEEE Spectrum. Click here

Q&A with DiBcom's CEO

NGN caught up with Yannick Lévy, the CEO of Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) chip specialist DiBcom, to ask his views about the emerging mobile TV market.


NGN: DIBcom backs DVB-H (DVB-Handheld). When we last spoke in early 2006, you said that: “DVB-H [technology] has the lowest power consumption, is supported exclusively by handset makers Nokia and Motorola, and the cost of rolling out a network is a third that of DMB.” Can you point to events since we last spoke that further strengthens the case for DVB-H?

YL: All the narrowband initiatives based on DAB derived standards such as T-DMB, DAB-IP have not been successful. The main reason is that they only offer four TV channels at reasonable quality, or up to six channels (in South Korea) with degraded quality. This is not enough to have people subscribe to mobile TV. Therefore, Germany and UK failed on these commercial trials.

This is pushing forward the broadband solutions such as DVB-H in priority. DVB-H was launched in Italy and South Africa in 2006. It offers 15 channels, and several handsets from Samsung and LG have been launched in 2006, as well as Sagem. The availability of handsets is key for this market, since end users want to have the choice. The reduced number of suppliers in the handset industry (down to 5 players now) makes it challenging for carriers to provide enough handsets for the services they are launching. This is the reason why DVB-H is still very much the major standard DiBcom believes in.


NGN: What are you seeing regarding DVB-H delivery via satellite? What are the merits of DVB-SH and where will it be used?

YL: DVB-SH (Satellite services for Handhelds) will be used as a complementary solution to DVB-H in rural areas. Potentially, the satellite can offer mobile TV outdoor and on the road - usage in cars on long distance, for example. So, DiBcom believes that DVB-SH development will occur in 2009-2010 after an initial launch of DVB-H in 2007-2008.

Alcatel-Lucent has frequencies available in Europe today. They may develop partnerships in the future to extend their solutions to outside Europe, like U.S.A. and China. Currently, China is looking at a similar standard called STIMI, which is similar to DVB-SH.


NGN: TDtv has emerged quite recently. In a UK there is a trial involving four key 3G operators and it appears to offer several advantages such as using available spectrum already owned by the operators. What is your take?

YL: TDtv is a narrowband solution, just like DAB/DMB is. So although there are frequencies available for TDtv, these frequencies are higher and narrowband compared to UHF. Also, they require the installation of new base station equipment which represents a cost similar to DVB-H, but only offering a few channels. In our opinion, it is therefore not a good solution, unless it is used as a complement to DVB-H for local TV channels.


NGN: MediaFlo scored a coup with its trial with BskyB on European soil. Do you see MediaFlo as a threat to DVB-H in Europe?

YL: MediaFlo has not been selected by BskyB. It has only been trialed in comparison with DVB-H, in order to give a better idea to BskyB about which solution they could potentially bid for in the case of a frequency auction in the UK. As opposed to other countries in Europe, UK regulator Ofcom lets the bidders choose their technology. Therefore, it is quite logical that BskyB wanted to test MediaFlo. However, independently of the technological comparison between DVB-H and MediaFlo which showed very little difference after long debates (less than 0.5 dB in favor of DVB-H), the availability of terminals will once again make a difference. The operators will have to understand that GSM will be mostly associated with DVB-H, whereas MediaFlo will be associated to CDMA (because of the Verizon launch in the U.S.) and there will be no GSM/Flo terminal, making it impossible for a European operator to chose MediaFlo and be successful with it.


NGN: What about the spectrum status in Europe - the availability of UHF spectrum that is most suited to DVB-H? Early markets where spectrum is, or will be, released include Finland, Italy and Germany. Do you agree?

YL: France and Spain have also found UHF spectrum for DVB-H. So in 2007, we could have as much as 260 million inhabitants covered by DVB-H in Europe (Spain, Germany, France, Italy)

NGN: In markets where the spectrum is not so forthcoming operators can’t afford to wait meaning they will need to adopt interim or alternative strategies that will only harm DVB-H’s uptake.

YL: Some tried with DMB for instance, but realize that there is no point in doing early launches with a bad technology. They do not find enough handsets, and subscribers do not adopt the service. It is a waste of money and creates legacy that they will have to handle.


NGN: Do you have a view on how the operators’ preferred mobile TV business models are shaping?

YL: Operators want to have a subscription-based model with a flat fee between 6 and 10 euros/month. This is the only way that a deep indoor coverage network can be setup properly. Ads based models are not sufficient to cover network costs. DiBcom has calculated that a deep indoor coverage requires a network 10 times more expensive than an outdoor coverage. So, this amounts to about 10M$/100 sq.km CAPEX. This cannot be financed otherwise but by subscribers.


NGN: What you expect to see for Mobile TV in 2007 in Europe and globally?

YL: In Europe, we expect to see France and Germany launch for sure. Spain is less secured at this point, but may follow if they see the success in France and Germany.

Globally, we expect to see more trials in Asia and emerging countries (India, Brazil, Vietnam). The U.S.A. will do a major DVB-H trial in Las Vegas with SES Americom on the Aloha/Hiwire UHF frequencies, but we would see a commercial launch only at the beginning of 2008. Modeo will also do a reduced launch in New-York early 2007.


NGN: One analyst has pointed out there are approaching 2.5 billion 2G mobile users, a huge potential audience for mobile TV, which currently is almost exclusively available only to 3G users. With the emergence of new technologies, such as Evolved EDGE, mobile TV could be made available to these users at minimal incremental cost - a new handset and a base station software upgrade only. This would bring immediate economies of scale and leave the rest of the market standing.

YL: Orange has just launched its “HD-mobile” service using 3G/HSDPA channel at more than 300 kb/s. This allows them to offer much better [image] quality than what is offered with simple 2.5G. However, Orange also realises that this will allow at most two users/base station, which is incompatible with an uptake of Mobile TV. So, these solutions are short term and provide good short term revenue and customer base build-up for the carriers, but only broadcasting can survive in the longer term, or a combination of broadcasting for major TV channels and 3G for lower audience channels.


Comment: Will DVB-H become the dominant technology for mobile TV?

The IMS message

We were having a conversation in the office, or more a remote e-mail conversation. It concerned a recent analyst report suggesting that softswitches will be around for longer than people might think as carriers are not moving to IMS as fast as had been thought, if at all. This led to the following response from a Total Telecom colleague:

"The problem for IMS is it doesn’t spell ‘product’ i.e the vendors aren’t defining the products/applications the operator will get out of it, whereas softswitches spell VoIP and managed VoIP – a no brainer!"

Comment?

TDtv for mobile TV?

The results of the current TDtv mobile TV involving operators 3UK, Telefonica, Orange and Vodafone will be announced at this month’s 3GSM. But NGN has already been told the technology “works and works well”. TDtv uses the 3G broadcast standard Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) but in an idle part of the 3G spectrum. It has several merits for the operators but is a latecomer - see table. It is a technology to watch.

Table: TDtv versus DVB-H, the mobile TV technology frontrunner

Pros	Cons
It uses existing spectrum and sites owned by the 3G operators	Yet to see handset support for TDtv. Limited equipment support too.
It requires simpler and cheaper base stations. The goal is that only one in four base stations will need a TDtv line card.	DVB-H is proven and already deployed commercially. TDtv is some two years behind.
The handset hardware to support TDtv could be made part of the existing 3G chipset compared to a separate DVB-H (or multi-standard) handset IC.	Not all 3G operators has TDD spectrum, Vodafone in the UK for example.
Operator owns and controls one network, which it fully understands.	Higher frequency of operation and hence inferior indoor coverage compared to DVB-H at UHF.

HDTV as a broadband bandwidth driver

High Definition TVs can now be found in over a third of US broadband households. So claims market research firm, The Diffusion Group. There are close to 40 million HDTVs in U.S. broadband households, according to data it collected in December. And among these households, some 40% of HDTVs reside in rooms other than the primarily family or living room.