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Quick Jump Menu to this Issue’s Articles April 14th, 2004 Overview The Scoop on IP Video from USTA Beyond Movies: TV on Demand – More Notes from Digital Hollywood Content Protection …..The Rest of the Story..
The Scoop on IP Video from USTA
by Ken Pyle ([email protected]), Viodi, LLC
April 14th, 2004 Issue
While I was in Kansas City, I had the honor of speaking as a panelist on USTA’s webinar regarding IP video. My topic was titled, “Why marketing has to drive the Triple Play.” Fabrice Beer-Gabel of BigBand Networks explained why it was important to have the ability to build flexibility into the network through advanced switching capability. Bigband Networks’ product has been a mainstay in cable deployments, but they are just starting to get traction in the telco market with their SureWest deployment. Suzanne Rainey of Accord Media followed with a great presentation on content acquisition. It was fun to be on a panel with her as her 20 years in the content business gives her experience that cannot be gained overnight.
David Large, a cable industry icon, first brought BigBand Networks to my attention several years ago and I have been loosely tracking them ever since. What he liked about their concept is that their product could allow him to offer virtually any channel to any subscriber. Beer-Gabel did a great job of articulating this concept when he stated that, “the channel capacity at the edge of a switched network is infinite.”
The BigBand product line is essentially a broadband multimedia router that supports bit routing, while providing a number of different outputs (e.g. QAM, IP, etc.). He pointed out that one of the advantages of putting switching at the edge is the ability to tap into the local advertising insertion market. He made an important statement regarding how telcos should treat their network build when he said, “Treat video as a lifeline service.”
Lifeline video service is a great way for a telco to be able to differentiate themselves from their competition. This is the kind of “soft” product attribute that has to be defined by product management ahead of time, so that Engineering can design it into the system from day one.
Along the lines of Product Management, Suzanne Rainey suggested that acquiring content is really a big part of product definition. That is, she suggested that when a telco is going into a competitive video market, they should understand what the competition is doing with regards to content and pricing. She pointed out that an operator really has to look at the return they will get for each piece of bandwidth, when they are deciding what sort of programming to put on their system. This reminded me of a term, “bandwidth portfolio”, I used to use, but could not get anyone else to adopt.
One of the other things about her presentation I thought was really good is that she pointed out that a telco has to look at all competitors, not just cable operators. For instance, she pointed out some lessons learned from competitors from the physical world, such as Blockbuster. Lastly, she warned operators that they need to give the acquisition process an adequate amount of time, because it takes awhile. This last comment was the perfect segue-way into the theme of my talk, which focused on the need for marketing/product management to be involved at the beginning of any new telco service offering.
That is, telcos need to become market-driven organizations if they are going to be competitive in the long-term. Based on my travels this spring, I am concerned that there are still too many telcos that have not adopted this philosophy. We are still seeing the participants in the technical seminars out numbering the participants in the marketing track by four or five to one. Plus, I still don’t see too many telcos that have dedicated Product Management groups.
Product Management, which works closely (maybe sometimes even part of) with marketing should be driving the process of determining the feature set for new products. I provided a chart that provided an example of how a telco might define their core product, along with the must-have, nice-to-have and future features of that product. The approach that was discussed was “holistic” in that it considers the core product to essentially be “interactive bandwidth”, with the various telephony, Internet and video being the features that make the “whole product”.
I also discussed some of the marketing support provided by networks, as well tactics that telcos are deploying to successfully compete against both upstarts, as well as established cable providers. To view and listen to the archived presentation, please go to:
http://www.usta.org/events.php?urh=home.events.web2004_0408
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