Cable Revelations on Going IP and Over-the-Top
Image from Cisco keynote presentation at Light Reading Cable event
Cable TV operators have debated loudly about transitioning to IP delivery since about 2008. However, the discussions have gotten a lot less theoretical, and a lot more reality-based in the last year. At an event held by Light Reading Cable yesterday, industry execs were willing to make some predictions on timing for an industry shift, and the numbers suggest we’re not all that far off from widespread deployments of TV over IP.
Cisco’s Ken Morse predicted cable operators will be delivering over IP from end to end in the next seven to ten years, and in the next three years we’ll start to see a lot of IP devices from cable operators in the home. Meanwhile, Anthony Wood, CEO of Roku and the acknowledged inventor of the DVR, believes that at least one cable operator will deliver a fully over-the-top Internet video service in the next 12 to 24 months. That’s not IP delivery in the way cablecos traditionally think of it, but it is a form of IPTV, and certainly a very different model from the one operators use today.
All of the predictions aren’t coming out of nowhere. First, the situation is reasonably analogous to cable’s shift from analog to digital, and that transition took about 15 years altogether. Second, several cable operators have been very vocal about the changes they’re enacting on their networks as part of the migration to IP. Comcast exec Sree Kotay talked at length yesterday about some of the changes going on within the cable giant’s network infrastructure, including plans for temporarily blending QAM and IP delivery, creating ways to enable developers access to Comcast systems at the edge of the network for faster innovation, and the institution of a true beta platform for testing beta video products on a live IP network before deployment.
Interestingly, as the IP migration takes place, the cable industry is learning some of the lessons Limelight Networks learned in the early years of becoming the first video-optimized content delivery network: lessons on how to distribute content most effectively, how to scale infrastructure systems for rapid growth, and how to contain costs. There’s a lot of infrastructure work that many operators will ultimately manage by partnering with or even fully outsourcing to other companies. Particularly in the era of Internet everywhere, few operators will be able to go it alone. More importantly, even fewer will want to when their margins are made elsewhere.
October 17th, 2011 at 5:30 pm
[...] Many of the same lessons apply to VOD CDNs that we’ve learned in the Internet world. Cable companies are looking to create VOD CDNs in order to distribute content more effectively by storing popular video at the edge of the network. Comcast so far has been most active on this front, building out a national CDN, and increasing its VOD library to roughly 25,000 video titles. [...]