By: Tim Young
Consider, if you will, the way that the rate of cord-cutting has been covered over the last few years. Headline from 2009: “More American TV viewers are ditching cable to watch shows online.”
It’s a neat little window into the world of seven short years ago, with popular shows including 30 Rock and Mad Men name-dropped. In those days, as iPads and Rokus and the like were still in their
respective infancies, the main reason cited that people were opting to stick to cable instead of switching to streaming services was because no one wanted to watch low-quality TV on a PC…
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By: Paula Zimmerman
Main Street is dying. Think about magazines featuring quaint little towns with independent storefronts as nothing more than vacation destinations and retirement villages. Today, urban
patterns are shifting. Goods are introduced first to buyers online and not in stores. And the same goods are available from many different places. Markets are changing. We all know just who our
customer is, right? What customers want? How happy customers are with our service? Wouldn't it be great to answer that with a simple “yes?" Realistically, the answer is not that simple…
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By: Wedge Greene, Trevor Hayes
It is taking a long time for IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) to get uniformly delivered as part of all networks. After all, its original vision back in the late nineties was to provide one,
interoperable carrier grade approach for providing all IP services. For its first leg of the journey, it was adopted by the mobile community and became a mechanism for 3GPP. IMS is a bundle of
specifications and standards developed by the telecommunications community to provide a consistent way of delivering and managing IP real-time communication services: initially voice and video
calling, but always with digital convergence as the end goal…
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By: Daniel Howard
Minimizing the amount of energy used per consumed bit, or kilowatt-hours (kWh) required per terabyte (TB) of data, is key to competitiveness since network expansion will mean more electricity
will be needed. Broadband providers already spend three-quarters of their total energy bill on access networks and edge facilities, and the competitive war will push this higher. But it’s
possible to prevent that cost spike and become more energy efficient, even as the network capacity expands.The Need for Speed Cable operators are launching DOCSIS 3…
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By: Chris Piedmonte
IoT is quickly emerging as a very significant agent of transformation as it blends the physical and digital on-line worlds. As everyone has been told repeatedly by the consumer electronics
industry, the home is a key target for applying the benefits of IoT-enabled devices. Consumers are now expecting devices and related services that will make their lives easier and more
convenient. They expect their IoT-enabled home devices to evolve to new uses by working collaboratively as they become an integral part of managing their everyday home life…
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By: Chris Piedmonte
The set top box has been a fixture in our homes for almost half a century. With the broadcast television spectrum gasping its last breath, the delivery of traditional televised video content is
now the domain of the satellite, cable and telco providers, ensuring the presence of the set top box for many years to come. But will the set top box continue to be the exclusive domain of the
cable, satellite and telco companies that provide them, or is there the possibility of an open standard set top box? Can the set top box become an open platform for innovation and the
delivery of new applications? US FCC Votes to Unlock the Box Recent FCC rulings in the U…
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By: Bobby Srinivasan
Times are tough for traditional Communication Service Providers (CSPs). Competition has traditionally been between telcos of a similar ilk, but with so much of the competition diversifying
to exploit alternative revenue streams and the arrival of telecom virtualization, the level of competition has reached new heights. Digitization, in particular, has provided a catalyst for
monumental change and now the industry is being required to transform as a consequence. Telcos are turning to new tactics to compete in a vastly different landscape and quickly need to come to
terms with new strategies…
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By: Ian Meakin
The word "digital" evokes visions of binary, accurate, precise and fast. The digital world promises all this. In the Internet and computer world, (where the word digital is borrowed from), much
is happening. The Internet has, once again, taken the world by storm, as it did in the early 90s. But this time, the storm is being kicked up in the telecom world. With the advent of instant
communication, resulting from rapid advances made in voice and video quality over Internet resources, the importance and significance of the traditional telecom technologies have waned…
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By: Mark Cummings, Ph.D.
Network virtualization coupled with automated management is rapidly evolving into a game changer for next-generation communications service providers due to growing market demand for flexible,
agile and cost-efficient multi-service support. However, the possible gains are being eroded by existing management information silos, hampering flexibility and resulting in operational
inefficiency. One estimate by Wipro and Orchestral Networks derived from telcos' annual reports, outsourcing contracts and a financial model developed with a telco, shows that even small telcos
could be paying upwards of a $400 million operations and integration tax every year…
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By: Wedge Greene
Episode 5 of Pipeline’s ongoing science fiction serial, IoT Noir, starts some 15 years from now and immediately following the rescue of Kiko-Lyn Greg in a raid by the mercenary cyborg Ninan on
the Hong Kong lab of Jonathon Blake, the CEO of International Widget. If our readers recall, Jonathon had started this chain of events when he waged a cyber-attack on the IoT water control company
of Kiko-Lyn’s aunt, Rachael Greg. During this attack, Black Hat hackers sabotaged Rachael’s smart home and attempted to kill her…
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By: Stephen Randall
In their benchmark “Observatory” report on the state of MVNOs in early 2014, analysts …
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By: Tim Young
“Yes, I'm sad to see celluloid go, there's no doubt. But, you know, nitrate went, by the way, in 1971. If you ever saw a nitrate print of a silent film and then saw an acetate print, you'd see
a big difference, but nobody remembers anymore. The acetate print is what we have. Maybe. Now it's digital.” –Martin Scorsese Evolution is a natural thing. I know a few film purists who insist,
insist, that the trend of shooting on digital is killing the art of filmmaking. Film has soul that no arrangement of ones and zeroes can duplicate, they say…
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By: Jim Schakenbach
Although spring officially started at the end of March, the telecommunications industry was showing signs of growth all month long across all geographic regions, business areas, and
technological sectors. It’s not the medium, it’s the message As mobile technology and channels have matured, content delivery continues to be where a lot of the dynamic activity is. Mobile operator
EE, which was recently acquired by BT, announced it will be partnering with MTV to offer a prepaid music subscription service that will compete with over-the-top (OTT) services…
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