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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]
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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