The idea of getting unlimited streaming movies for something that might be around $10/month is pretty appealing. And with more and more TV & compatible devices (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, etc) with Netflix support, I think this kind of service will have genuine mainstream appeal. No longer will folks have to mess with wires to connect their PC to their TV!

I do have a few concerns about these types of services. I can’t be watching a movie in the living room with my wife and have the movie break-up and begin buffering because there is congestion on the network. In order for services like these to satisfy mainstream customer expectations, the quality of experience should be consistently excellent. High-quality large format TVs are very good at highlighting the difference between high quality and low quality video.

The reality is that streaming video is perhaps the most demanding consumer application in terms of broadband network resources. As such, it demands intelligent and efficient network management; network management that is sensitive to and aware of the specific requirements of various applications. A consumer’s sensitivity to a video buffering mid way through an action scene is very high. Their sensitivity towards a bulk file transfer taking 10 seconds longer is very low. Network operators with visibility to and understanding of the broad range of applications that traverse their network are in the best position to satisfy the growing demands for high quality real-time broadband entertainment.

Alongside the very Hollywood-esque show is CableNet. This always well-attended “product demo-focused” pavilion of the show, organized by CableLabs, provides insight into timely key themes such as interactive TV, video on demand, and broadband over cable. It gives operators the chance to see a broad range of product demonstrations within a very focused area.

Sandvine took the opportunity to demonstrate its latest product in our Network Business Intelligence Portfolio.  Network Data Analytics is focused on providing an executive level dashboard view of how subscribers are using their broadband service. It aims to answer questions like “How do my DOCSIS 3 subscribers use their service compared to the DOCSIS 2 subscribers?” or “Where will I get the best return on my CAPEX budget?”. It was great to see the many cable operators who  dropped by to explore. They were quite intrigued by the flexibility of the product and how it could potentially help them to enhance their businesses and their customers quality of experience. After all, providing better broadband is the end goal.

In addition to a wide range of operators, we were pleased to host FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, when he dropped by to see some of the trends that Sandvine is currently reporting on.

Were you at the show? Please share your better broadband observations and experiences.

In our business, one key metric is ‘throughput per rack unit’. This is calculated as aggregate throughput in bits per second, divided by the number of rack units or RU (a rack unit is a standard unit of height equal to 4.5cm).  For example, Sandvine’s PTS 24000 has 80 gigabits per second per RU so (80 Gbps)/4RU = 20 Gbps/RU. In comparison, a platform that claimed 80 gigabits per second in 9RU or (80 Gbps)/9RU would be delivering just 8 gigabits per second per RU. 

Other meaningful metrics to explore, depending on your objective, might include the port-density angle with ‘ports per rack unit’ or a comparison of the ‘number of subscribers supported per rack unit’. Any way you slice the density question, making sense of the numbers can require cutting through some confusion as well as analysis beyond face value.

Early talk about IPTV positioned the technology as the telco’s secret weapon for entry into a space cable operators have forever dominated.   Now, cable operators themselves are looking towards Internet based television as an avenue for lucrative service offerings with many analysts and industry experts touting it as the next big thing in cable.  Helping cultivate this push, equipment vendor Cisco Systems announced in late 2009 Cisco Blue, an interactive guide for cable-based IPTV set top boxes based on a Web-browser where widgets pull data from various sources such as Yahoo News or Twitter allowing subscribers to easily use their television to interact with the Internet.  In addition, Arris demonstrated how IPTV- over-DOCSIS 3.0 can deliver more than 50 percent in bandwidth savings over traditional RF QAM channels.

Now that video and audio streaming already constitute 27 percent of all global Internet traffic (based on Sandvine’s 2009 report analyzing over 20 million broadband subscribers) the need for a much smarter and efficient Web will become even more critical as potentially millions of new Internet- enabled sets plug in. Internet-based TV has a great potential to not only modify the way the Web is managed, but to turn market sectors such as advertising on its head just by the very nature that people will watch their shows and interact with others online.

Much like how IP voice communications was slow to take off, and at one time even scoffed at due to quality of experience issues as a result of jitter and latency, Internet-based TV has experienced the same slow start.  We are however at a tipping point where it is no longer a matter of “if” but “when” IPTV will surpass traditional television services – and that’s a story much more worthy of media buzz than the latest smart phone.

Engadget, a popular consumer electronic blog, reported that without a doubt the next big thing in HDTV’s is Internet capabilities with LG Electronics unveiling a new TV with built-in Netflix streaming support and Toshiba shipping its own line of web-enabled sets as well. The electronic and gadget manufacturers are not the only ones with broadband on the brain; cable TV providers themselves have begun exploring new on-demand web-based movie and television services to compete with popular portals like Hulu as consumers head straight to the Internet to watch favorite shows at their leisure.  Just recently, Comcast rolled out the beta version of their new Fancast XFINITY TV service which opens all of their television/movie content to their subscriber base as well as providing a platform for future offerings such as programming your DVR through the Web.

We look towards 2010 like a kid waiting for Santa on what new technologies are around the corner that will make our lives more productive, more connected or just more fun. 2009 however will always be remembered with an air of significance as the year consumer electronics enabled with Internet capabilities truly came together with the pervasive nature of broadband as the glue.

Even though you can hazard a guess when you’ve walked a mile or poured a pint, there’s definitely something abstract about downloading a gig for most people. Take the case of a man who was billed $66,000 dollars by his service provider for downloading what amounted to three movies?  “I would leave my PC on all night, believing that all traffic was included,” he noted. Clearly this guy thought he was on an “all you can eat” bandwidth plan when it actually included 600 megabytes per month and every additional kilobyte cost another 2 cents. Sure this is an extremely rare and sensationalized case but brings up a valid question – where do we draw the line on assuming we are dealing with informed consumers when it comes to broadband?  Should the average consumer need to understand the difference between a kilobyte and a gigabyte?

The fact is that most folks understand the quality of their broadband experience in a very application specific way.  Quality is not about bits and bytes, it’s about clear phone calls, lively online gaming, sharp video and yes, speedy downloads.  There’s an excellent opportunity for broadband providers to communicate the value of their monthly package tiers by breaking them down into easily digestible measurements in language everyone can understand. For example: a 100-gigabyte data tier would be suitable for subscribers that send out 20 million e-mails, or upload 10,000 photos or download 50 movies or 25,000 songs. Amazing what 100-gigabytes offers!

In the end, most consumers will be most satisfied when their service provider sends them a monthly bill that helps them understand their individual online usage patterns and gives them the opportunity to move to the plan that best meets their needs.   Most of us can look to the voice plans we have for our mobile phone to know that its not all that far fetched of a dream.