IPTV. Making the Individual TV Experience commercially viable

Transcription

1 IPTV Making the Individual TV Experience commercially viable IPTV presents enormous possibilities for the industry. But there are challenges too, especially as the future of TV will allow for a multitude of new competitors and business models.

2 Choice, interactivity and personalization Anything, anywhere, anytime and that s just for starters As television moves from a one-way channel towards digital, two-way networks, a new time and place-shifted, interactive and personalized experience will forever change TV. Today s viewing habits and web experiences are merging. We use search engines to find what we re looking for and then just click on the things that interest us. And viewers are already participating in programming and content production which makes watching TV an individual and personalized activity. Interactivity, along with content, is now a driving force. And when we can watch TV anywhere on all types and sizes of screens we ll witness the birth of an entirely new mass market for TV programming, advertising, interactive games and other services. IPTV presents enormous possibilities for the industry. But there are challenges too, especially as the future of TV will allow for a multitude of new competitors and business models. Fixed broadband paved the way. Mobility will add freedom and convenience In addition to changing consumer behaviors and the fact content is increasingly digital, it s the proliferation of broadband that s paved the way for IPTV. And it s through the transformation of today s best-effort broadband networks that IPTV will shape the future of television. As broadband delivery capabilities increase and mobile TV technology expands, the true capabilities of fixed-mobile convergence will give viewers added freedom and convenience. 02 ERICSSON IPTV SOLUTION New revenue streams and new business opportunities Many operators are looking for ways to move beyond the me too position of a bandwidth provider and get a piece of the paid-content and transaction that s streaming through their networks. And for these operators, IPTV is the way to do it. That s because they re in a unique position to transform TV from a one-way, single-stream of channels into a two-way communications service that offers seamless media interactivity, convenience, entertainment and personalization. At the same time, content owners are looking for new ways to reach an audience that s becoming increasingly more fragmented. So they re eagerly eyeing the revenue opportunities offered by more advanced services. And they already understand the opportunities that can be gained from mining the consumer feedback loop enabled by IP-based content distribution. Advertisers are also looking for new ways to spread their messages. Old models are under fire, traditional channels are losing their magnetism and effectiveness, and advertisers are increasingly moving their money online. And as fragmentation decimates audiences and viewers are skipping commercials, the money for producing new, appealing content is drying up. That means program quality suffers and the downward spiral continues. IPTV can change all this. With Ericsson, good things come more easily For operators and others in the industry, the challenge is to choose a solution that provides a full range of TV-related services that consumers will pay for now and in the future. They then have to establish a business model and set a price structure that ll give them their fair share of the revenue pie. It ll also place new and difficult demands on the simplicity and attractiveness for consumers. Not to mention on quick and easy provisioning. With a large number of implementations and a complete end-to-end solution, Ericsson is a proven leader in the next generation of IPTV. That means that we re in a unique position to help operators, content owners and others create profitable IPTV solutions.

3 It s my life, so it should be my TV TV over the Internet on a managed network IPTV will transform today s passive watching into an active, on-demand experience. 03

4 Place shift, time shift and just about any shift in the market One architecture Any service The greatest challenge is how network operators will manage a multitude of services within a unified architecture and back-office. To provide the flexibility and adaptability needed to quickly move new services to market, operators will have to effectively combine applications, a service delivery platform, managed networks and the connected home. They need a full service broadband architecture. Based on that kind of architecture, IPTV providers will be able to deliver consumer experiences that will begin to differentiate telecoms operators from their rivals. They ll build on a depth of cross-platform convergence and levels of personalization previously unseen. TV for the me generation In this converged environment, any individual in a subscriber household will be able to log on to their IPTV service to access their personal settings, including pre-selected RSS feeds and tickers. They ll be able to see their IPTV buddies online and redirect their friends to the channel they re watching and then start discussing the program via instant messaging, texts or voice calls. They ll use video conferencing to experience a sports event together, play games with each other and join communities or social networks that are based on their TV preferences or their lives in general. Individual consumers will be able to recommend and even forward content to other users on a network and, of course, participate in interactive programming via voting and betting. Users will be able to involve themselves in live, interactive IPTV broadcasts using their TV or mobile phone camera. And they ll be able to pause an in-home viewing session and transfer it to their mobile as they leave the house without missing a frame. Then they ll pick up the live program in time-shifted mode and choose whether to watch the delayed broadcast or catch-up with the live broadcast. Individualism and simplicity Consumers will be able to access their personally stored recordings while on the move not to mention manage their own user settings, recording preferences and download schedules. They ll be able to access vast archives of television and special-interest programming wherever they are. And it will all be billed to a single IPTV account holder and itemized if desired. In return for their patronage, an IPTV platform will get to know its users and treat them like a friend, recommend content and help them find their way through all the options available from live TV, local recordings, network recordings and even Internet-based television and VOD (Video On-demand). The platform will know where they are, what they want and make sure they never miss a call, a message or their favorite show. The future of television is now wide open Open standards will play a crucial role in achieving the successful global implementation of IPTV services. This will stimulate economies of scale for IPTV components and reduced integration costs for new TV applications. In the not too distant future, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) will allow consumers to choose a device (TV, PC or mobile) they want to watch TV content on no matter where they are. The Open IPTV Forum ( was created in March 2007 to provide an IPTV solution that enables a plug and play experience for end-users and fill an industry gap that will make it independent from the technology behind it. The Open IPTV Forum is a pan-industry initiative that produces end-to-end specifications for IPTV that ll move the next generation of IPTV to a mass market. 04 ERICSSON IPTV SOLUTION

5 Dave s watching his favorite football team, the game s tied and there s only 5 minutes left. The thing is, he s already late for a train that he absolutely has to catch. Now imagine that he, with just a click of his remote, can move the game from his TV to his mobile phone and keep watching while he s on the move. Words that spell new business opportunities for operators AMS Asset Management System MPEG Moving Picture Expert Group ARPU Average Revenue Per User NPVR Networked Personal Video Recorder BSS Business Support System OSS Operational Support System CA Conditional Access QoS Quality of Service CDP Content Distribution Platform PPB Pay-Per-Block DRM Digital Rights Management PPV Pay-Per-View DVB-T Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial PIP Picture-in-Picture EPG Electronic Program Guide PVR Personal Video Recording GUI Graphical User Interface SDK Software Development Kit HDTV High Definition Television SMPTE Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers HA High Availability STB Set-Top Box IMS IP Multimedia Subsystem SVOD Subscription Video On-demand IPTV Internet Protocol Television UI User Interface LPVR Local Personal Video Recorder VOD Video On-demand Good things get better with IMS IMS is an open standard, supported by all major telecommunication operators, that has a common control framework for fixed and mobile devices. It opens the door to lots of new possibilities, including session portability between fixed and mobile devices. The fact that IMS is a standard that is now adopted by the Open IPTV Forum will soon create a mass market that s based on an open specification in contrast to today s proprietary IPTV solutions. An important capability of IMS is the possibility to blend applications in various ways, for example integrate messaging within a game, sharing pictures and videos while talking and dynamically change a communication channel during communication. For operators, IMS will allow one common horizontal platform for controlling IP services and new possibilities to differentiate the TV offering. This will help operators increase customer satisfaction and improve ARPU while increasing the value of services per average user. With IMS, consumers will not only be able to view TV wherever they are, but also talk, chat, send text messages and take part in things like voting and consumer polling. And that could easily translate into purchase transactions and targeted, interactive advertising. 05

6 Getting the whole picture with Ericsson The Ericsson IPTV solution offers all the components necessary for the successful deployment of IPTV services in an IPTV enabled infrastructure. The solution includes everything from the network infrastructure and application platform to the content distribution platform, headend solutions, digital rights management, quality of service monitoring and professional services. When building for the future you need a strong foundation IPTV Application Platform Asset Mgmt System IPTV Compression CA/DRM IPTV Applications Media Servers QoS Monitoring Today s best effort broadband isn t good enough for people who want to watch their favorite TV programs. And that s because the Individual TV Experience places heavy demands on a network. That s why IPTV is now a key driver in the architectural shift from legacy broadband networks that are primarily optimized for Internet surfing at moderate speeds to full service broadband networks. In order to deliver all the promises of the new IPTV experience, networks have to cope with basic demands of capacity, QoS and geographic coverage. The solution for gradually meeting future demands, such as multiple channels and HDTV, is to take fiber as deep as possible. Experience has shown that, in reality, there s only one viable alternative for the access and aggregation network. And that s to build it on Ethernet and IP. This allows for efficient and cost-effective solutions in Access, Metro and Edge. Capability and resilience must be provided by the metro transport and QoS per service in the IP Edge these are cornerstones in a glitch-free IPTV experience. Ericsson s IPTV portfolio includes IPTV Middleware, content distribution platform, headend solution, digital rights management, a range of pre-integrated Set-Top Boxes, access nodes that support a wide range of access technologies and metro aggregation nodes. 06 ERICSSON IPTV SOLUTION

7 Ericsson provides a comprehensive product portfolio of IPTV network infrastructure products designed for IPTV delivery and connecting a home environment with the back-end service network. The Ericsson network solution is a telecoms grade network based on the Full Service Broadband architecture. Fully optimized for IPTV, it offers end-to-end verification on solution levels, QoS priority and service separation. It also comes with redundancy features and overload protection. It s prepared for new interactive communications services via IMS and it s designed for interactive HD mass market deployment that offers efficient deep fiber access deployment as well as scalability and capacity features in access, metro and edge. video processing technologies. They re used for streaming, transrating, transcoding, high density encoding and premium encoding with products that are shipping today for standard definition and high definition MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and SMPTE VC-1. Picture unit Ericsson IPTV middleware Ericsson IPTV Middleware is a key component in the Ericsson IPTV solution. It lets operators quickly create trials and deploy the individual TV services that are most important to their subscribers, as well as provide a complete TV package that includes interactive and mobile functionality. The middleware is based on open standards and is aligned with the first release of Open IPTV Forum s architecture. IPTV Middleware includes the business logics for the IPTV service, provides the end user portal interface with individual user profiles for personalization and the electronic program guide (EPG). It s also the connection point for integrating other IPTV nodes in an IPTV solution. The middleware comes with a browser-based, customized portal that can be completely adapted to an operators requirements for branding and look and feel as well as easy expansion for new services. And by making use of standard web technologies, it provides instant response times for browsing the portal s different menus. IPTV Middleware allows an operator to offer additional rich, personalized and interactive communication services and features such as broadcast reminder on mobile, extended parental control from mobile, presence and messaging. Ericsson Headend Solutions The Ericsson range of award-winning headend solutions will help operators acquire, process and deliver video in a flexible and efficient way. It will also help them to manage this content, its metadata and associated advertising. All to deliver new viewer experiences and advertising opportunities that generate an increased return on investment. They include the next-generation compression platform that enables HDTV services to be delivered at data rates down to 6 Mbps, with similar improvements to SD services below 2.2 Mbps. Packaged in telco or broadcast chassis form factors, the Ericsson TV award-winning IPTV solutions offers the industry s widest selection of encoding and The content distribution platform On-demand services, such as VOD, are a key differentiator for IPTV service providers that want to enter the pay TV market and challenge existing cable, satellite and terrestrial providers. The Ericsson Content Distribution Platform (CDP) is a key component in the Ericsson IPTV solution for capturing and delivering consumer content on-demand. It personalizes the TV experience by putting the consumer in control of what content they watch and when they watch it regardless of TV program scheduling. CPD is an enabler, controlled by the IPTV Middleware, that allows service providers to launch key IPTV related services such as VOD and NPVR (Network Personal Video Recorder) that includes time-shifted TV. Professional services that help you get things done An IPTV offering is a systems integration business. Ericsson s professional services organization is a major asset when we assume a prime integrator role and deliver tailormade IPTV customer solutions. With 25,000 consultants working with network strategy consulting, IPTV solution analyses, network solution design with traffic modelling and systems integration, Ericsson provides a true end-to-end implementation of IPTV solutions. Strong companies choose strong partners Ericsson is already turning the future of TV into a commercial reality for customers all over the world. With Ericsson preintegrated ecosystem of partners, we re in the best position to help operators get their cut of the IPTV action. 07

8 Ericsson is shaping the future of Mobile and Broadband Internet communications through its continuous technology leadership. Providing innovative solutions in more than 140 countries, Ericsson is helping to create the most powerful communication companies in the world. Americas Ericsson Television Inc River Green Parkway Duluth, GA USA Tel: Fax: APAC Ericsson Television Limited 12/F Devon House Taikoo Place Quarry Bay Hong Kong Tel: Fax: EMEA Ericsson Television Limited Strategic Park Comines Way Hedge End Southampton Hampshire SO30 4DA United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) Fax: +44 (0) The content of this document is subject to revision without notice due to continued progress in methodology, design and manufacturing. Ericsson shall have no liability for any error or damage of any kind resulting from the use of this document EN/LZT R2A Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson 2010