Friday, October 06, 2006
Retail Digital Infrastructures
How will the digital infrastructures to the homes look like?
Recently, the consultancy group Arthur D. Little produced a report about next generation infrastructures. The report is primarily aimed at telcos and regulators, so for infrastructure architects the conclusions may be a bit obvious.
According to ADL, digital services including telephony, Internet and TV will be delivered to the homes over an all-IP network (Read: TV and phone are just an Internet application, some operators are already doing this). The interesting bit in the analysis is what the underlying technologies will be.
The nice thing about the next generation infrastructure is that the underlying technology can change separately from the services: No new cables for new services. In itself, this is bad news for the telcos and cable companies etc, because the user can now more easily switch. In the analysis of ADL, there is no foreseeable residential need for a bandwidth greater than 40 Mbit/sec downstream. This would carry at least two simultaneous high-definition TV streams. Most technologies on the radar can handle this: VDSL2 for the telcos, Docsis 3.0 for cable modems, fiber to the home and Wimax.
Having said this, none of these technologies has an economic advantage over all the others in all spaces. Fiber is best for new apartment buildings, VDSL2 for urban areas and Wimax for more rural areas.
Yet the overlap is large, and this means the competition will be on other fronts: services and content. The number one content is football, and the fight for its rights will be titanic, but beware. For the distribution of this content network neutrality will pop op as an issue. Finally new services will actually help the people who now have a hard time installing all this. See my rant about that here.
Recently, the consultancy group Arthur D. Little produced a report about next generation infrastructures. The report is primarily aimed at telcos and regulators, so for infrastructure architects the conclusions may be a bit obvious.
According to ADL, digital services including telephony, Internet and TV will be delivered to the homes over an all-IP network (Read: TV and phone are just an Internet application, some operators are already doing this). The interesting bit in the analysis is what the underlying technologies will be.
The nice thing about the next generation infrastructure is that the underlying technology can change separately from the services: No new cables for new services. In itself, this is bad news for the telcos and cable companies etc, because the user can now more easily switch. In the analysis of ADL, there is no foreseeable residential need for a bandwidth greater than 40 Mbit/sec downstream. This would carry at least two simultaneous high-definition TV streams. Most technologies on the radar can handle this: VDSL2 for the telcos, Docsis 3.0 for cable modems, fiber to the home and Wimax.
Having said this, none of these technologies has an economic advantage over all the others in all spaces. Fiber is best for new apartment buildings, VDSL2 for urban areas and Wimax for more rural areas.
Yet the overlap is large, and this means the competition will be on other fronts: services and content. The number one content is football, and the fight for its rights will be titanic, but beware. For the distribution of this content network neutrality will pop op as an issue. Finally new services will actually help the people who now have a hard time installing all this. See my rant about that here.
