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Re: death of the net predicted by deloitte -- film at 11

  • From: Owen DeLong
  • Date: Sun Feb 11 22:31:01 2007


On Feb 11, 2007, at 4:22 PM, Geo. wrote:



do what google is presumably doing (lots of fiber), or would they put
some capital and preorder into IDMR?

IDMR is great if you're a broadcaster or a backbone, but how does it help the last 2 miles, the phoneco ATM network or the ISP network where you have 10k different users watching 10k different channels? I'm not sure if it would help with a multinode replication network like what google is probably up to either (which explains why they want dedicated bandwidth, internode replication solves the backup problems as well).

I terms of available HD content, you're far more likely to face 10,000 customers whatching 1,000 different channels, and,
there will likely be some clustering. In that case, IDMR will help a lot with the exception of the last 2 miles, where, the
amount of bandwidth available to the home will probably remain the limiting factor for some time in the US.

I places where MAE is a common household network delivery mechanism, this is less of a factor. I think it will
probably take the US a decade or so to get to where much of Europe and Japan is today.


Also forgetting that bandwidth issue for a moment, where is the draw that makes IPTV better than cable or satellite? I mean come on guys, if the world had started out with IPTV live broadcasts over the internet and then someone developed cable, satellite, or over the air broadcasting, any of those would have been considered an improvement. IPTV needs something the others don't have and a simple advantage is that of an archive instead of broadcast medium. The model has to be different from the broadcast model or it's never going to fly.

IPTV today isn't an improvement, much as VOIP 5 years ago had nothing to offer over POTS.
Today, VOIP is rapidly gaining popularity even though the differentiators for it are small because
it does provide some cost savings in some cases.

As IPTV and especially HD IPTV starts to mature, and, as users begin to reclaim fair use and
space/time/device shifting rights that are theirs under the copyright act and take back what
the MPAA and RIAA continue to try to block, the rapid and convenient sharing of content,
the reduced cost of delivery to the content providers, and, other factors will eventually cause
IPTV to present an improvement over today's existing unidirectional services.

Today IPTV is in its infancy and is strictly a novelty for early adopters. As the technology
matures and as the market develops an understanding of the possibilities creating pressure
on manufacturers and content providers to offer better, it will gradually become compelling.

TIVO type setup with a massive archive of every show so you can not only watch this weeks episode but you can tivo download any show from the last 6 years worth of your favorite series is one heck of a draw over cable or satellite and might be enough to motivate the public to move to a different service. A better tivo than tivo. As for making money, just stick a commercial on the front of every download. How many movies are claimed downloaded on the fileshare networks every week?

There are lots of ways to make money. Personally, I think the long- term winning model
will be something similar to Netflix with IP replacing the USPO at layers 1-4. Other
models will certainly be tested and probably some of them will succeed, too. However,
Netflix without the postal delays or logistics could be compelling, even if it were
1.5-2x the current Netflix pricing. Realistically, we should get to a point in the technology
relatively soon where a movie can be shipped across the net for about the same
cost as postage today.


Owen