THE PRINCIPAL THEMES FOR TODAY were around the migration to an all digital IP distribution (IPTV like) and enabling the convergence of wireless with fixed service delivery.
Morning sessions moderated by Ken Wright CTO C-COR presented different approaches for reclaiming the cable systems distribution bandwidth and preparing it for a more unicast (enabling the distribution of a unique service to a single customer on the customer’s request) configuration. The various speakers went through alternate scenarios the cable system operators might take to evolve the current HFC analog and MPEG2 QAM digital service distribution architecture to a fully IP centric architecture with immense flexibility and potential for inexpensive IP technology based CPE (customer premise equipment).
The merits and disadvantages of an IPTV platform, so praised by the telcos industry, were contrasted with cable’s current HFC platform.
Traditional HFC Platform
Shared access
Broadcast & Switched Broadcast
Narrowcast VOD
Tuner Based STB (tuner is essentially the "switch")
Variable VBR (statistical multiplexing) or Constant bit rate video
Passive Tuning
Telco IPTV Platform
Point to Point
Switched Narrowcast
VOD Ready
No Tuner Required
Constant bit rate video (CBR)
Active Tuning
Customer Experience (IPTV)
Unlimited program "channels"
Fast channel
Video rich (mosaic like) program navigation
Picture-in-picture
VOD
Targeted advertising insert
Variety of Internet content on TV
Telephone Caller ID on TV
Speaker Basil Bandawaiyeh (Adelphia) provided an interesting road map for enabling 230 HD (high definition) services to be distributed through 750MHz BW cable plant.
Principal enabling technologies being the application of switched broadcast (unicast) architecture, advanced statistical multiplexing/rate shaping and migration to advanced digital encoding/decoding such as MPEG4 H.264 AVC. During the Q/A session the speakers identified the move to a switched broadcast architecture as the most flexible tool for enabling MSO migration to advanced video encoding and IP distribution at a pace required to meet new service demands and competition.
The afternoon sessions moderated by Matt Stump, Technology Editor, Multichannel News overviewed the various aspects of enabling quadruple play services (voice, data, video, wireless). Customers are becoming enamored with untethered communications (mobility/portability/nomadity).
The presentations reviewed the role and present state-of-the-art of Wi-Fi, Meshed Wi-Fi, Gen3 cellular (HSDPA/EV-DO RevA) and Wi-Max and the enabling network "glue" for the converged services based on Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture. The impression left is that a converged seamless service environment will be a reality by 2010 or before
Nick Hamilton-Piercy is the former CTO at Rogers Communications and now works as a company advisor. He was in Tampa this week covering the SCTE Emerging Technologies conference for www.cartt.ca
