Euromedia May June | Page 5

flannel2005_flannel 21/05/2016 08:59 Page 1 EUROMEDIA DIGITAL MEDIA INTELLIGENCE PUBLISHER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Nick Snow [email protected] MANAGING EDITOR Colin Mann [email protected] CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Chris Forrester [email protected] PUBLISHING ASSISTANT Nik Roseveare [email protected] ART EDITOR Steve Overbury [email protected] COLUMNIST Larry Gerbrandt CONTRIBUTORS David del Valle - Madrid Howard Greenfield - San Francisco Pascale Paoli-Lebailly - Paris Branislav Pekic - Rome INSIGHT ASSOCIATES ABI Research Ampere Analysis CCS Insight Decipher Media Consultants Digital TV Research Futuresource Consulting IHS Parks Associates SNL Kagan Strategy Analytics SALES DIRECTOR Sanjeev Bhavnani [email protected] PUBLISHED BY Advanced Television Limited Unit N202 Vox Studios 1-45 Durham Street London SE11 5JH Tel: [phone] www.advanced-television.com PRINTED BY Headley Brothers Ltd The Invicta Press Queens Road Ashford Kent TN24 8HH, UK Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] [email protected] © Advanced Television Limited 2016. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. Choice is universally promoted as a good thing – the more consumer choice the better: cars, homes, healthcare, TV. The more the better. In TV, it has proved easier to provide than in some other areas and, in fact, there’s now so much choice that providers are keen to provide solutions – perhaps a choice of solutions – to narrow the choice down again through recommendation. Tough choices are also out there for Providers, be they telcos, cable companies or national governments. Everyone wants more bandwidth. But national governments decide whether the emphasis should be on the speed or the ubiquity, as very few seem able to provide both. So, Spain, for example, is encouraging the market to go to fibre and via some vibrant provider competition, most urban centres are getting fast fibre at competitive rates. But if you live out of town, you won’t see the back of your dish for some time to come. While here in the UK, a law has just been proposed that will make it a citizen’s right to have ‘fast’ broadband. However, with the incumbent BT still providing wholesale access, while also being the biggest retail player, that right is actually to receive a supercharged but superannuated copper service that no other market would get away with calling high speed. Whether a country or a network, the decision is similar; go for broke and capex your way to a genuinely 21st Century solution or upgrade what you’ve got. If what you’ve got is newish copper plant, then G.fast may get you there, for now anyway. And if you’ve got coax, then DOCSIS 3.1 does provide some genuine speed. If you want to be the class of the field, then go for glass. How pressing your need is depends to some extent on the progress made in making the ever more demanding content (in both volume and size) fit down the same bandwidth. HEVC is a big step forward – let’s leave aside how it may stumble on its own licensing structure – and other compression techniques will always evolve. So, maybe you can spin your copper as speedy enough for the foreseeable future? Not likely. Interestingly, a number of our expert contributors to the cover feature on bandwidth venture that less than optimum solutions probably can cope with IP video demands – even live linear – going forward, but when new services such as AR and VR catch on they will demand Gb not Mb. Oh dear. ISSN 1477-8092 EUROMEDIA 5