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Quick Jump Menu to this Issue’s ArticlesSeptember 29th, 2004 OverviewGoing for the Gold Ring:Rolling on the River with the Tut n’ Commons:Capture This – An Easier Way to Record Live Presentations?

THE VIODI VIEW

by Ken Pyle ([email protected]), Viodi, LLC

In this Issue: Gold Ring, Telco/Cable Part 2, FCC & More……

About Viodi, LLC

September 29, 2004 Issue

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Going for the Gold Ring
Rolling on the River with the Tut n’ Commons
Capture This – An Easier Way to Record Live Presentations?
Open Paragraph to the FCC Regarding Funding USF
Telcos/Cable Unite – Part 2?
Digital Hollywood – :Checking the Pulse of Hollywood
Seren Innovations on Market – IOC Opportunity?
The Korner: Acronym Alert – CRS-1

Mush – my brain feels like mush. I have heard so many interesting tidbits over the past few weeks that have, unfortunately, been squashed together in my cranial cavity to such a degree that I do not who said what. So, I cannot give credit to whoever suggested that the next battle of high-speed access will be about bandwidth. Many people have been lamenting the fact that the U.S. is not number one in terms of per capita broadband access.

The argument that America is broadband deficiency will be shifting from availability and penetration of broadband to the very definition of broadband. In a nutshell, the FCC’s current definition for high-speed is 200 kilobits/second. I guess I should feel pretty good about the whopping 310 kb/s per second that I just measured on my DSL connection. But, can 200 or 300 kb/s really be called broadband when compared to 10 Mb/s, which many of the independent telcos are already delivering?

IP Video @ Telecom 04 – A Great Value

I am thrilled to announce Jonathan Hurd of Adventis as the latest addition to the speaking line-up at the IP Video @ Telecom 04. Aventis provides management consulting services to U.S. and international telcos, as well as entertainment companies. His presentation will be very thought-provoking as he has some interesting ideas as to how telcos should approach the video business. With 30 confirmed speakers, the IP Video @ Telecom 04 will provide a comprehensive look at what is required to succeed in the content game. Click here to learn more.

Going for the Gold Ring

An independent telco that is delivering the high-speed bandwidth that I covet is Ringgold Telephone of Ringgold, GA. Phil Erli, General Manager of Ringgold, was the featured speaker at the kick-off of Calix’s Fall, 2004 Simplified Services Tour. Erli is one of the true pioneers of IPTV, having lived through the challenges of integrating different vendors’ equipment into a working system with paying customers. Click here to read some of his insight, the interesting demonstration which included an HDTV-capable set-top, as well as some of the comments from Geoff Burke and Scott Keagy regarding implementation of new money making services, most of which involve content and cable programming.

Rolling on the River with the Tut n’ Commons

Will telcos be able to get cable programming in two years? This was just one of the many thought provoking questions addressed by Robert Primosch at the Tut User’s Group a few weeks back. I was honored to moderate a panel at the Tut User’s Group in Portland that included both Robert and Allison Dollar of the Interactive Television Alliance. Tut, the leading supplier of digital headends for the Independent Telco market, had a great mix of speakers that addressed questions and subjects of interest to telcos. What made this audience unique is that all of them have already deployed video services. Click here to read some of my observations.

Sunny Times Ahead?

Something that is often pondered by telco marketing executives is the idea of ala-carte programming, where customers pick the channels they want to watch and only pay for those channels. In this scenario, a custom channel line-up could conceivably be required for every customer. It sounds great, but operationally, this could be a nightmare. Taking a step back to today’s current offerings, I have heard from telcos that just getting a good grasp on content contract restrictions is a challenge.

For instance, there might be a marketing reason to move a particular channel to a certain spot in the channel line-up. There may be contractual restrictions, however, that may not allow this channel move. Further, operations would need to be involved to re-map the channel within the headend equipment and middleware. The point is one simple change can trigger many potential errors.

So, when Sun Up contacted me about a month ago, I was interested, as they claim to have an operational support solution for video systems. They are relatively new to the independent telco market, but honed their systems expertise building Operational Support for companies like Americast, Bell Express Vu and many other large satellite networks. Their solution is the glue that ties together the hardware, as well as middleware and billing elements into a coherent whole. What they are doing is going to become more and more critical with the ever increasing number of content options and associated marketing possibilities available to telcos. I will be exploring this topic in future issues, so any feedback as to the importance of this sort of topic would be greatly appreciated.

Capture This – An Easier Way to Record Live Presentations?

Too many conferences, too little time and too few resources to send everyone in the company; this seems to be a universal problem. Viodi’s solution has been the creation of CD-ROMs and online presentations that synchronize conference audio to presentation overheads. Unfortunately, for everyone involved, this has not been much of a moneymaking process, even though the end product seems to be pretty well received. So, we keep honing the process and looking for better ways.

A friend of mine works for a Silicon Valley company called Ncast. Ncast has sold devices that encode and transmit video over the Internet for a number of years. Their latest version of this box has a hard-drive, such that content can be stored locally and then streamed at a later time. The nifty about this approach is that it supports video and animation, as well as static overheads. I am currently evaluating their technology as a more efficient way of documenting conferences. To see and hear this solution in action, please click here for my presentation on Content Protection (club viodi members only).

Open Paragraph to the FCC Regarding Funding USF:

A couple of issues ago I suggested an alternative mechanism for funding USF. The basic idea was to place a fee on any new electronic device, regardless of the application of this device. The premise was that, in the near-future, almost any piece of electronics could be upgraded to serve Voice over Internet Protocol services. The reason for the proposed approach was that, by attaching a fee to the electronics, the playing field would be leveled in terms of ensuring that all services foot the bill for ensuring a robust broadband infrastructure in the rural areas of the U.S.

This idea was refined a bit more in a conversation I had with Sam Curtis of ACRS, an Oklahoma Engineering firm. Sam suggested that the fee could be applied to all devices with a MAC address, as opposed to all electronic devices. Interesting approach, as it is potentially provides a much more precise way of collecting fees for services that impact the network infrastructure, than does the current methodology……Anyone have any more thoughts on the idea?

Telcos/Cable Unite – Part 2?

Did someone actually act on my suggestion? Last week’s announcement by BellSouth, SBC Communications and Verizon Communications that they were joining the Department of Justice efforts to overturn the 9th circuit court of appeals ruling regarding open access is very timely and reflects an article in the April issue of the Viodi View. We will be discussing this topic in the panel, Equal Access for All at the IP Video @ Telecom 04 conference.

P.S. I don’t think anyone really acted on my suggestion, but, if any kind reader does want to act on one of my suggestions, then please send $100 in crisply folded dollar bills to the address listed below.

Digital Hollywood – Checking the Pulse of Hollywood

When I told a group of telcos that I was going to Digital Hollywood, they joked that this must be the famous PCM Hollywood conference (Pulse Code Modulation). Well, the pulse of the conference was definitely rapid, as like other Digital Hollywood conferences, the future of content in the digital world was addressed by hundreds of experts from Hollywood, Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley.

Unfortunately, I missed day one of this confab, but my colleague Brian Stevenson picked up some gems. He said that the panel, “The Telco-Entertainment Partnership – From TV to Broadband Services” provided a view of how MGMs feels about the telco market in the United States. In a nutshell, Angela Bradley, Vice President International Pay Per View and Video on Demand for MGM, characterized international telcos as aggressive in their deployments and, as such, have been actively working with these entities on VOD deals. Their view of the U.S. telcos is that they are not doing anything with regards to VOD deployment. Arggh, I wish I would have been there to rebut some of these comments and, at least point out some of the many Independent Telco Video deployments.

Lots more to report on this three day conference, but it will have to wait for the next issue.

Seren Innovations on Market – IOC Opportunity?

I had to fit this late-breaking story about Seren Innovations in the Viodi View. I was once employed by a sister company of Seren Innovations, so I have a bit of history with these trail-blazers. Seren is on the block by their owner Xcel Energy. They spent approximately $5,000 per subscriber to build up their current base of 45,500 subscribers in their St. Cloud, MN and Concord, CA markets. I suspect that Xcel is a motivated seller, so this could be an interesting opportunity for an independent telco that desires to jumpstart their video program. Who knows, this could be a real coup for some telco, the way the purchase of the WinFirst assets was a coup for SureWest a few years ago.

The Korner: Acronym Alert – CRS-1

By now, many of you have probably read of Cisco Systems’ latest generation router, the CRS-1. Cisco is quite proud of this big iron box as it represents the culmination of years of work by their smartest minds and sharpest visionaries. According to the San Jose Mercury News, this he-man router is known internally as HFR (Huge, Fast Router) while Cicso’s official acronym CRS stands for Carrier Routing System.

Now, it seems like my friend and colleague, Peter Lowten, told me that the acronym CRS describes a syndrome that affects people as they get older. He said it stands for:…..

Can’t Remember, um, um, er, er, well, I forget.

The point is for the $500 million investment, one would think that Cisco would have someone on staff to check and see whether their acronyms might also be the punch lines to bad jokes.

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