Telecoms Tech

TelecomsTech has previously reported about Google’s “Fiber” initiative, bringing high-speed broadband and TV packages to select areas of Kansas City. As part of the TV service a mobile app had been released on Android – and now a similar app has just been unleashed on the iPad.

Most TV viewers have likely heard of Nielsen at some stage. If you haven’t, they are generally the organisation which offers industry-standard ratings to measure viewership. Up until now these ratings have been becoming more and more irrelevant as audiences move online.

Already a favourite service in many households, Netflix has become an indispensable service for on-demand entertainment consumption. With successful ventures into original programming, where do they expand from here?

According to the latest market study by ABI Research, American companies like Netflix, Hulu, Apple and Amazon helped to drive the over-the-top (OTT) video entertainment market past $8 billion in 2012.
The three largest markets -- North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific experienced year-over-year growth in excess of 50 percent in 2012.

The notion that broadband providers are scared of on-demand TV is not new, and it’s an understatement. All of the recent assaults that we have seen on Net Neutrality from ISPs around the world can be summarized in two issues: SMS and TV. The latter is of course of more relevance to wireline NGA networks, and this is what I wanted to focus on today.

There is an insatiable demand for content of the video variety. It is so great infact that sports networks like ESPN are getting an outsized portion of your cable bill. The network infact gets more than $5 per subscriber per month regardless of whether you ever watch their networks.

U.S. broadband subscriptions are forecast to reach the same level as pay-TV subscriptions in 2016. Meanwhile, American cable and satellite TV service providers will soon reach a critical point in their evolution -- where future success will hinge on the adoption of their TV Everywhere services.

Samsung is set to showcase its new Smart TV design at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2013 show in Las Vegas on January 8-11, with the rumour mill going into overdrive as to what features it will contain.