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June 26, 2007
This weekly e-mail newsletter covers everything related to Telco-IP Television.
Verizon Crossing Fingers for FCC Waiver
Once the Federal Communications Commission signaled in January that it wouldn’t grant many exemptions to the July 1 ban on set-tops with integrated security, cable companies and their vendors scrambled to get ready to meet the deadline.
Verizon Communications does not appear to have done the same.
As it stands now, the set-top boxes Verizon is deploying as part of FiOS TV service -- Motorola’s QIP series -- are not capable of accepting removable CableCARDs to meet the requirements of the FCC ban, according to Motorola.
Motorola vice president of product management for digital-video solutions Larry Robinson confirmed that the QIP boxes are not CableCARD-ready. “The boxes that Verizon is shipping today have embedded security,” he said.
He added, “We’ve obviously talked with them about the implications” of the FCC’s ban. Robinson referred additional questions to Verizon.
Verizon in July 2006 filed a petition with the FCC for a waiver to the set-top ban. The telco said it needed an exemption from the rule “to facilitate the rapid deployment of innovative service offerings that will provide important new competition to the video market.” The fact that it is providing wireline competition to cable, the company said, “places Verizon squarely within both the language and fundamental purpose of the waiver provision.” But the agency has not yet ruled on the request. Nor has the FCC responded officially to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s industrywide waiver request or those filed by nearly two-dozen individual service providers.
Asked to comment on what Verizon will do if denied a waiver, director of media relations Sharon Cohen-Hagar said: “We are hopeful that the FCC will grant our petition for a waiver … We won't have any more to say about this until the FCC publishes its order.”
FCC chairman Kevin Martin has said that he would favorably consider waiver requests from new entrants in the video market, while at the same time opposing “blanket” waivers to large cable operators.
The FCC’s Media Bureau in January denied Comcast’s waiver request for three low-end set-tops; the agency has granted six requests, including one to Charter Communications on the basis of Charter’s “severe financial difficulties.” Still, giving Verizon an 11th-hour reprieve while requiring cable operators to meet the rule would be “patently unfair” at this late stage, NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow said, speaking at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers’ Cable-Tec Expo 2007 in
Orlando, Fla., this week.
“You might have thought [the FCC] would deny our waiver and grant Verizon’s,” McSlarrow said in a question-and-answer session following his keynote speech Wednesday. But with just days to go before July 1, “I think that would give them pause.” Verizon, then, may suddenly need to comply with the separable-security mandate come July 1.
Gartner analyst Patti Reali said the issue for Verizon is that the hybrid Motorola QIP set-top uses traditional cable quadrature-amplitude-modulation technology for linear TV channels, but uses Internet protocol to access video-on-demand and similar services. Therefore, she added, Verizon couldn’t use an ordinary cable set-top with a CableCARD in its network without disabling at least some of its features.
“Anything on the QIP box that’s interactive has to go over the IP connection,” she said.
Told that Verizon is “hopeful” that its waiver will be granted, Reali said, “That’s an awful lot of hoping for being nine days away from July 1.”
Meanwhile, cable operators are ready to flip the switch over to CableCARD-based boxes.
Comcast VP of engineering, standards and industry affairs Charlie Kennamer said the operator has already deployed CableCARD-enabled boxes in all its markets, at least for trials in employees’ homes.
“We’ve pretty much depleted our inventory of integrated boxes,” he said, speaking on a panel at the SCTE show Thursday. “If we don’t, we’ll have a bunch of bricks in inventory after July 1.”
Kennamer said it will probably be end of this year “before we’re back to ‘business as usual’”-- which, he explained, means “doing things that will actually benefit customers.”
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AT&T Complaint Aimed at Cablevision Content
AT&T filed a complaint last week against Cablevision Systems accusing the cable operator and its Rainbow Media Holdings affiliate of illegally withholding three regional sports networks that carry professional basketball and ice-hockey contests.
AT&T filed with the Federal Communications Commission, which has program-access rules that generally bar cable operators from withholding satellite-delivered programming from pay TV rivals.
In the complaint, AT&T accused Cablevision of program-access recidivism by refusing once again to license “must have” sports-programming networks in an effort to raise entry barriers to new pay TV competitors.
“Cablevision and Rainbow are infamous repeat offenders of the program-access rules, which deserve quickly to receive every available sanction,” AT&T’s complaint said.
Rainbow spokesman Whit Clay said his company had concerns about AT&T's ability to honor contract terms and conditions.
“We have reached programming agreements with a broad range of distributors including DirecTV, EchoStar [Communications], Verizon [Communications], RCN and even AT&T itself, but have outstanding questions regarding AT&T's violation of prior distribution agreements and about certain aspects of AT&T's technology and the protection of our programming,” Clay said.
AT&T told the FCC it had been unable to obtain access to FSN New York, Madison Square Garden Network and FSN New England, hindering its ability to roll out its U-verse TV IPTV service in portions of Hartford, New Haven and Stamford, Conn.
The Rainbow networks, according to AT&T, have the rights to televise New York Knicks and Boston Celtics National Basketball Association games and New York Islanders, New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils National Hockey League games.
AT&T said Cablevision wouldn’t license the sports programming because AT&T did not have a cable franchise in Connecticut. AT&T said that under Connecticut law, it didn’t need a franchise to offer U-verse TV.
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Verizon CEO Seidenberg Rips Cable Competition
Chicago -- Verizon Communications is nearing the 500,000-subscriber mark for its FiOS TV service, chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg said last week.
The company, which markets both FiOS Internet and FiOS TV services, also recently signed up its 1 millionth customer for FiOS Internet, Seidenberg said during a keynote address here at the NXTcomm convention.
Seidenberg showed several-hundred convention attendees a video featuring the 1 millionth FiOS customer -- the Bayer family of Massapequa, N.Y. The former Cablevision Systems customers gushed over the quality of FiOS, saying that the Internet and video service is superior to cable.
“We had the [Cablevision] triple play -- we found that the quality wasn’t up to the service we expected,” Rich Bayer said. “We decided to change and have been happy ever since.”
Bayer’s wife, Marjorie, and their kids also raved about FiOS in the video. “I am paying less than I was before and I’m getting a lot more also,” Marjorie Bayer said.
While cable operators are beginning to boast of future Internet services that will offer download speeds of 100 megabits per second, Seidenberg said Verizon expects to quickly blow past 100-mbps speeds. FiOS Internet already offers download speeds of 50 mbps and is capable of delivering speeds of 100 mbps, he said, adding, “Today, 100 mbps is just the beginning.”
Verizon plans to deploy GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) technology that will allow it to quadruple its Internet downstream speeds, Seidenberg said.
“By the end of the decade, our cable competitors say they’ll be transitioning to DOCSIS [Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification] 3.0. We’ll be transitioning to … speeds that rival what we deliver today to our most advanced business customers,” he added.
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SES Americom Rolls Out IP-PRIME Throughout North America
Satellite-service provider SES Americom announced that its IP-PRIME IPTV product is now available to telecommunications companies throughout North America.
“We invested tens of millions of dollars and over two years developing IP-PRIME and put the solution through extensive testing so that we can be sure we're offering our customers the most complete, easiest-to-deploy and most cost-effective path for them to offer their subscribers television service,” said Bill Squadron, senior vice president of media partnerships at SES Americom. “The result of our efforts is that SES Americom is the first company to bring an end-to-end, satellite-based television service to market built completely on the new MPEG-4 video standard.”
IP-PRIME comes with existing transport agreements for more than 275 television channels and more than 100 digital-music channels, as well as HD, pay-per-view and video-on-demand programming options, according to the company.
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SCTE to Certify IP Pros
The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers introduced a certification program for cable professionals who maintain Internet-protocol networks.
The Internet Protocol Engineering Professional credential certifies a candidate’s knowledge of the engineering aspects of IP networks as deployed in cable environments. The certification includes theory, design, testing, deployment and operation of IP networks. Specific topics include standards and protocols, multimedia over IP and network-topology design.
IPEP is the second in a new line of SCTE engineering-level certification programs. The first, launched last year, was the Digital Video Engineering Professional program.
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AT&T’s U-Verse TV, Verizon’s FiOS TV Continue Expanding
AT&T’s U-verse TV and Verizon Communications’ FiOS TV continued adding markets where the respective video services are available.
AT&T said Monday that U-verse TV is now available to residents in the Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, areas.
Areas of the Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor metropolitan statistical area that can now subscribe to U-verse TV include Bay Village, Berea, Broadview Heights, Brooklyn, Euclid, Fairview Park, Lakewood, Lyndhurst, Mayfield Heights, Mentor, North Royalton, Orange, Solon, South Euclid, Warrensville Heights, Westlake, Willoughby Hills and Willowick. As for the Akron MSA, the IPTV service is now available in areas including Cuyahoga Falls, Fairlawn, Kent, Munroe Falls, Silver Lake and Stow.
Verizon, meanwhile, announced the availability of FiOS TV in parts of Bayville, the Town of North Hempstead, New Hyde Park, Sands Point, the Town of Haverstraw, West Haverstraw, Chestnut Ridge and the Town of North Castle, including the unincorporated hamlets within each of the eight towns. FiOS TV is now available in more than 70 New York communities.
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Enea, Kontron: Are You Experienced?
Network-software and services provider Enea and Kontron, a developer of standard-based, custom embedded and mobile rugged solutions, teamed up to create the IPTV Experience. The two vendors described the IPTV Experience as “a global, broad-based industry initiative created to address the major design, technology and business challenges impeding widespread adoption of IPTV.”
Enea and Kontron teamed up with Intel and Radvision to host a panel discussion, moderated by Steven Hawley from Multimedia Research Group, at NXTcomm last week.
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EGT Blends Up an IPTV Encoder
Orlando, Fla. -- EGT developed an IP-video encoder capable of handling up to 36 MPEG-2 channels, 18 MPEG-4 channels or a combination of each.
The VIPr-IPx video processor, packaged in a 12-rack-unit-high chassis, includes hot-swappable processing cards and fan trays, redundant and hot-swappable power supplies and redundant IP media ports.
The system provides preprocessing, embedded multiplexing, transcoding, IP-media aggregation, DTMF and cue-trigger detection features. The VIPr-IPx also includes options for digital program insertion, variable-bit-rate encoding and Pro-MPEG forward error correction, according to EGT.
The VIPr-IPx is built on EGT’s VIPr platform for modular, software-programmable video processors built on a digital-signal-processor engine. Atlanta-based EGT introduced the VIPr line in January.
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Narrowstep Enters IPTV Frontier
Narrowstep announced the beta launch of Internet-TV channel Frontier TV.
The company said Frontier TV “brings audiences programs from the cutting edge of ethics, economics and social responsibility. The channel will focus on business, sustainable living and human potential with inspiring and entertaining shows.”
Frontier TV is powered by Narrowstep’s telvOS encoding system. The site includes an integrated directory of ethical companies.
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mPhase Forms New-Media Unit
mPhase Technologies formed a new-media subsidiary, Granita Media, to provide targeted-advertising services for IPTV providers.
The company said Granita will offer ads matched to the demographics of the viewers.
“IPTV creates an unprecedented opportunity for network providers to drive additional revenues," mPhase CEO Ron Durando said in a prepared statement. "Advanced services and advertising revenues make the difference in telephone companies' IPTV business cases.”
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• Sumitomo Electric Industries will use Intellon's HomePlug-based INT6000 integrated circuit to enable in-home distribution of KDDI's IPTV services in Japan.
• Portugal-based multimedia-service provider TvTel will deploy UTStarcom’s Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network solution, with fellow Portuguese company Unitelco serving as the integrator.
• The European Advanced Networking Test Center selected Spirent testing solutions to analyze Cisco Systems' IPTV infrastructure in a test commissioned by Light Reading.
• Ixia rolled out its PEVQ full-reference video-quality metric for its video-testing solutions.
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