Source : Cable Digital News

SCTE ET Speakers Challenge Operators to Learn from Music Industry's Mistakes

In two strongly worded public warnings last month, a leading international futurist and a senior MSO executive separately urged cable operators to plunge into promising new technologies instead of fearing or fighting them.

Speaking at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers' (SCTE's) Emerging Technologies conference in Tampa last month, futurist Jim Carroll and Comcast Media Center COO Gary Traver both challenged MSOs to maintain their competitive edge by constantly pursuing innovative technological products and services. Envisioning an even faster paced, more competitive future, they contended that cable operators could no longer take their sweet time to enter new markets and develop new product offerings.

"The idea cycle has collapsed," Carroll said. "We are now witnessing a sort of infinite idea loop, in which new ideas, inventions and innovations occur faster than ever before... We're getting into the olden days almost overnight."

In his breathless keynote address kicking off the conference, Carroll warned cable officials against making the same kinds of mistakes that the music industry made when it fought tooth-and-nail against unauthorized MP3 downloads from the Internet. Instead, Carroll called on cable executives to embrace such new products and services as portable media players, peer-to-peer file-sharing and Internet-delivered telephony. Contending that "the geeks will always win because they can always rewrite the code," he urged cable officials to view the new technologies as market opportunities to be exploited rather than competitive threats to be squashed.

"Do you really want to go to war with your customers?" he asked. "The music industry went to war with its customers and look where it got them. Do you want to repeat that history?"

Carroll also argued that the long-awaited era of media convergence has finally come to pass, albeit about a decade later than was originally forecast. "We're talking about convergence again," he said. "The difference is that it's real today."

The futurist jokingly likened convergence to "teenage sex" because no one's quite sure what it is but everybody thinks it's great, everybody thinks everybody else is doing it, no one's terribly good at it and it takes lots of time to figure out how to do it well. "The future of your industry is being found and being developed today in the back seats of automobiles," he quipped.

In a more serious vein, Carroll asserted that today's rapid pace of change will only become more furious over the next few years as Baby Boomers reach retirement age and their far more tech-savvy children take their place in the world. He also contended that tomorrow's consumers would be "far more demanding" and "far less loyal" users of technology brands than their parents have been.

"By 2020, we'll be witnessing the retirement of the change-averse," he said. "What will emerge into purchasing power, and into your customer base, is this generation that thinks differently, is wired differently."

In addition, Carroll predicted that consumer demand for media bandwidth and storage would soar over the next few years as more technology choices blossom and Web users start exchanging video files online. Just a few years after the introduction of digital cameras, he noted, consumers are already snapping 80 billion pictures a year and are increasingly sharing them with friends and family through the Internet.

"Everyone is focusing on 100 Mbps or 300 Mbps as being the key question for the year 2010," he said. "I think we should be thinking about yottabits and zetabits when it comes to capacity."

Despite these changes, Carroll suggested that media companies could survive and thrive by delivering high-quality service and providing editorial direction in a time of ever-increasing complexity. "Consumers are drowning in content," he said. "We do want some guidance."

In the other conference keynote speech a day later, Traver called on cable operators to step up their commitments to high-definition TV (HDTV) and IP-based video. Traver, who's also a Comcast senior vice president, said cable providers must "shape emerging technologies into innovative, market-driven solutions" to win the battle for tomorrow's customers. Contending that "the future of personal communications will largely be video-based," he urged the cable industry to "get back to the future" and develop new, advanced video-related products and services before its phone, DBS and other potential rivals do.

Traver especially encouraged cable operators to focus on HDTV and build both a strong HD content offering and a strong HD retail presence. Otherwise, he said, the industry could find itself left behind when the nation makes its long-awaited switch over to digital-only broadcasting in three years.

Calling HDTV "a game changer," Traver argued that "how well we execute on HDTV will emerge as a significant competitive factor. Much of the battle over HD households will be waged at retail. Every consumer purchasing his or her first HDTV set should be considered as a conversion opportunity."

Traver also urged cable operators to speed up their migration to IPTV. With such major phone companies as AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications and BellSouth already shifting in that direction, he asserted that MSOs can't afford to wait a few more years to make the move. "The migration to IP video is not a 2010 activity," he said. "It's a 2006 priority."

Besides HDTV and IPTV, Traver ticked off such other promising new businesses as video-on-demand (VOD), digital video recorders (DVRs), voice-over-IP (VoIP), podcasts, mobile TV, satellite radio and portable media services. Although not all these businesses may take off as projected by industry analysts, he said, it's clear that on-demand services are generally on the rise.

"Sometimes in the early stages, we don't know what will be a fad and what will have the sustainable business models," he said. "But one of the things that we do know is that on-demand content consumption is at the core."

Like Carroll, Traver also contended that the much-anticipated development of "true convergence" has finally begun. As a result, he said, the Internet is "quickly evolving to become video-centric," spurring the need for cable operators to mix and match multimedia services seamlessly on one network.

"Voice, video and data applications have consolidated on an IP-based network architecture," he said. "As market research tells us, the future's less about a triple play or a quadruple play and more about an integrated single play."

Both Carroll and Traver spoke to the biggest crowd ever assembled at an Emerging Technologies conference. The annual winter technology confab easily drew its largest audience yet, attracting 1,028 attendees, up 10% from last year's show in Huntington Beach, CA. In fact, the conference, which has been growing steadily in size for at least four years, sold out registration a week in advance.

While there was still no general exhibit floor at the engineering conference, several companies set up shop in nearby hotel rooms and suites to demonstrate their latest products or services, including SeaChange International and C-COR. Several other companies -- such as BelAir Networks, Concurrent Computer Corp., OpVista Inc. and RGB Networks -- timed product, deal or other announcements for the show.

In a press briefing, BelAir announced the establishment of a wireless mesh and cable technical advisory board. The advisory board, which will be comprised of cable executives, will provide the Canadian vendor with guidance on how to integrate its wireless mesh technologies with cable's wireless service plans. But the privately owned startup, which is funded partly by Comcast Interactive Capital, declined to say who it has named to the board so far.

Concurrent unveiled its new MediaHawk 4500 high-density server for VOD applications. Company officials said the new VOD server, which will be available this summer, will enable cable operators and other video providers to store more than 20,000 hours of on-demand content. They also said it will support VOD ingest rates exceeding 2,500 hours per day.

OpVista said Service Electric Cablevision has deployed a ROADM-based (reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer) network equipped with the vendor's optical transport gear. Service Electric is relying on the network to link cable systems throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania on two interconnected rings. OpVista executives, who have also landed Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications as customers, aim to sign up at least six more cable and telco customers in the first half of the year.

Finally, RGB announced its first MSO deployment deal with Adelphia Communications. Under the agreement, Adelphia will use RGB's Simulcast Edge Processor to perform integrated decoding, modulation and upconversion as part of the MSO's upcoming digital simulcast rollout. Adelphia said it plans to have about six markets "engineering ready" for simulcasts by the end of March.

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