Though IPTV has started to rear its wonderful head here in the US (see VIPTV, IP-Prime, Sky Angels, P2P, BT and all of the major Cable/Satellite-delivered networks, etc.) and many of us metropolitans are getting pretty fat pipes to the 'net, we are still literally 2-3 (or more) years behind Europe and Asia in terms of IPTV services, competing providers and of course, programming!
Q1) How do your companies/communities overcome the bandwidth bottle-necking due to such large bandwidth consumption by us consumers?
I can imagine if all my neighbors would watch as much streaming online HiDef programming (our favorite is ABC.com's Boston Legal) as my family does each day we would all be completely dissatisfied because of bandwidth bottle-necking! We've all seen it. Its when the video your were streaming starts to 'buffer' or pause, stick, skip or basically crap-out due to 'net congestion. We are just now starting to see/hear/read reports that ISP's, Telco's, Wi-Fi providers and Cable companies are beginning to throttle or slow down their subscriber's broadband access speeds due to high consumption.
Here in the states and abroad, satellite broadband providers have been doing this for years, from its inception in fact, seeing satellite bandwidth delivered via the Clarke Belt is 10X more expensive than terrestrial bandwidth.
HDTV downloads and especially streams all take a large pipe to feed the 100's or even 1,000's of people at any given moment, on demand programming. Recently, the move here in the U.S. is for Telco's (DSL/FTTX) to get into the IPTV act.
There are dozens of Telco's who have already secured OC192 (or higher) connections just to serve their customers IPTV. That's a lot of bandwidth by today's standards BUT it's going to keep getting worse for them (and better for us) and the more connections or concurrent 'streams' they serve, the more bandwidth they will need.
Q2: Can you tell us how things are progressing in your countries, cities and towns throughout the rest of the world?
I ask this so we can prepare ourselves better here is the U.S.
Q3: How are Internet providers coping with bottle-necking? How are they handling things? What are the new developments and technologies to help overcome bottle-necking?
Q4 Are you satisfied with your IPTV provider's service and price structure? Are any of them offering alla carte programming? I hope so! There are millions of Americans who only watch 10-20 channels that are paying for 100's of them because of cable and satellite television's 'tiered' price structures.
Q5: Are there any new trends or technologies springing from the IPTV revolution that we need to look out for or look forward to here?
Q5: Are there any programmers that stand out for you? Please list their web sites for us. Please link to any stories, reports and message board posts to help us make sense of all of this, OK?
Thanks in advance
