csi-cover-February2017-V2.indd 1

February 2017 www.csimagazine.com Mobile prepares to change upagear 09/02/2017 14:46:21

Open source in TV 2017 trends Level 3 Q&A Future of VoD csi-cover-june2016.indd 1 www.csimagazine.com digitalEditions-feb2017-204x271.indd 1 June 2016 Market trends • International coverage • insightandanalysis Independentnews, • industry decision-makers Targeting top-level • ofdigital TVandmedia Your window to theworld •

[email protected] [email protected] or opportunities please email For advertising CSI magazine is now available as a digital-edition across all tablet and smart-phone devices A look inside smartcities sign upto our free e-newsletters andCSIMagazine at Connected living: www.csimagazine.com/csi/signupcsi.php 23/05/2016 11:22:56

Multi-channel networks DVB-S2x Cable tech special NFV & SDN csi-cover-september2016.indd 1

September 2016 www.csimagazine.com Virtual Reality television As close asitgets: 13/02/2017 11:12:25 23/08/2016 11:45:24

IBC 2016 preview Live OTT Satellite broadband Millennial viewing Contents 20 COVER STORY: 5G We look at the business case for the upcoming Future of VoD Future www.csimagazine.com

Level 3 Q&A Level mobile standard and the impact it might have on

Mobile prepares to 2017 trends the media sector among others change up a gear Open source in TVOpen source Editor 24 Q&A: Level 3 Goran Nastic A chat with Jon Alexander, senior director, product management, about carrying more Commercial broadcast content over the company’s CDNs John Woods, Camilla Capece February 2017

csi-cover-February2017-V2.indd 1 09/02/2017 14:46:21 Design and production 27 The future of VoD Matt Mills (Manager) 05 News In the wake of some high profile service closures Jessica Harrington The latest industry news and analysis last year, what does the future hold for VoD Matleena Lilja-Pelling platforms? Regular contributors 10 Open source in TV 30 Artificial intelligence Adrian Pennington, Philip Hunter, How is the use and proliferation of open source David Adams, Stephen Cousins, A look at how AI is being applied in theory and software and ways of working affecting Anna Tobin, Chris Pickering innovation in the television industry? practice in today’s media Circulation 13 Analyst corner 33 Data corner Joel Whitefoot

Futuresource Consulting delves into the market Drilling into the numbers for EU quad-play Accounts opportunities for professional PTZ cameras bundles Marilou Tait, Lynta Kamaray Video optimisation 14 2017 trends 34 Editorial HDR, machine learning and live sports streaming OTT needs to implement further optimisation tel +44(0)20 7562 2401 are among the key trends we can expect to see methods to thrive [email protected] this year 36 CSI Awards 2017 Advertising Security and geo-location This year’s categories in full tel +44(0)20 7562 2421 18 [email protected] IP intelligence can restore the value of video-on- tel +44(0)20 7562 2438 demand content, says our guest columnist 38 Events diary [email protected] A list of some of the main industry shows Subscriptions tel +44 (0) 20 1635 588 861 Editor’s report: [email protected] Circulation manager: joel.whitefoot@ Shockwaves is perhaps too strong a word, but Sky certainly caused a stir with its perspectivepublishing.com announcement that it would deliver its full rostra of channels over fixed broadband (see page 5). SES, whose contract with Sky runs until mid-2022, subsequently played down the Subscription rates threat of OTT, and satellite delivery does indeed remain in rude health despite occasional Per year: Europe £88; UK £68; harbingers of doom claiming to the contrary. While Sky’s plans, due to start in 2018, will Rest of World £98. Cheques payable initially affect only a small percentage of its overall customer base, it can nonetheless be seen as to Perspective Publishing something of a watershed in the move to all-IP. The industry has talked about this shift for a while and Limited and addressed to the we are now seeing some very real and tangible action from operators. Of course, Sky is not just any old Circulation Department satellite TV company, but it is a big brand so as statements of intent go, it is certainly one to take note of moving forward. In the meantime, more and more people will keep streaming linear and on-demand TV Printed by Buxton Press across all platforms. Goran Nastic, editor Managing Director John Woods

Perspective Publishing Publishing Director 3 London Wall Buildings Mark Evans London 2017 EC2M 5PD www.perspectivepublishing.com ISSN 1467-5935

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 03

3-contentsfeb.indd 1 13/02/2017 11:16:14 Entry fees frozen from 2016

Entry costs frozen from 2016

OPEN FOR ENTRIES

Celebrating excellence and achievement in the broadcast, video, OTT and loT sectors

Deadline for entries: 12 May 2017

Save the date: The CSI Awards 2017 will take place on Friday 15 September in Amsterdam

For the latest news and updates follow us CSI_Magazine #CSIAwards

www.csimagazine.com/awards

CSIAWards2017_Ad.indd 1 08/02/2017 15:07:37 News

Sky, IP and the future of content news in brief

February was a busy month for compared to satellite. On the other Eutelsat closes on 1,000 HD Sky, with some big hand, even with current ambitious channels developments that point to the coverage plans by European telcos, Eutelsat broadcast 997 high future of TV from a delivery there will still remain 30/40% of definition channels at the end of and business perspective. Europe will not have access to last year, versus 757 a year earlier, The European pay-TV DTT solutions with enough an increase of 32%. The provider, which has 26m bandwidth to view TV.” penetration of HD channels subscribers across five Sky also caused a stir when a stood at 15.7% compared to countries, will for the first dispute over carriage fees between 12.6% a year earlier. HD time make its full lineup of delivery, which has provided the Sky and another big name, penetration at HOTBIRD stood 270 channels available over IP backbone for its business for 30 Discovery Communications, went at 24%, up from 18% a year ago. without the need for a satellite dish years, for some customers - those public. Both companies used As the satellite operator notes in 2018. with a new SkyQ box, which is in customer interests as their motives progress on ultra HD, it goes to CEO Jeremy Darroch said the some 600,000 homes. in the negotiations, which almost show how far UHD has to go to move would allow Sky to target up to In addition, although not specified saw the entire Discovery line-up match these rates. At 31 six million households across Europe by the press release, it is likely that pulled from the Sky platform on December 2016, the total number who cannot, or will not, have a Nokia’s Velocix CDN will act as the February 1. of channels broadcast by Eutelsat satellite dish. In the UK, where the main underlying architecture for the Eventually, a last-minute satellites stood at 6,339 up 5.6% all-IPTV service will be rolled out new broadband TV service. Sky has deal was reached that will see year-on-year. The number of first, it could open up about 2m been migrating its VoD and OTT Sky continue transmitting operational transponders rose by homes in the UK for Sky to target. customers onto Velocix over the Discovery’s portfolio of channels, 58 to 1,326 year-on-year, mainly “This is the first we have been able course of 2016, citing greater control including Eurosport, in the UK due to the entry into service of to offer the full Sky TV service from moving away from third-party and Germany. Eutelsat 36C, 9B and 65 West A without a satellite dish,” said global CDNs, and Nokia confirmed Sky claimed Discovery wanted satellites. The fill rate stood at Darroch. “It is a big moment for the it is in talks with the operator for its $1bn for channels that are losing 70.9% compared to 73.9% a year business, building on our position as plans in 2018. popularity, a figure that Discovery earlier, reflecting mainly the Europe’s leading OTT provider.” Sky is high profile enough to make subsequently denied. impact of this new capacity. The broadband-based service this noteworthy, even though it is Darroch told the media: “Their Highlights include contracts comes both as a response to very much a long-term game. As Eric main channel, Discovery, is down signed for in-flight Connectivity competitive pressures, but also Beaudet, a satellite equity analyst at by one-third over the last ten years. for SAS and Finnair on KA-SAT because of the benefits Sky stands Nataxis Securities, said in a research In a world of so much choice, in and for Saudi Arabian Airlines on to gain by going all-IP, such as note: “We do agree that, as fiber my view, this is where success is the HTS payload of Eutelsat 3B, flexibility, personalisation expands, more and more people will going to lie. Because re-runs of which is now fully leased. and interactivity. watch TV through a terrestrial Animal Planet just aren’t going to Sky is only dropping satellite solution as it has an advantage cut it any more, unfortunately.” EU content portability The European Parliament and European Union member states Nagra helps Altice USA open up, innovate have reached an agreement on the European Commission’s US cable operator Altice USA has together with the MediaLive platform avoiding duplication of bandwidth. proposal to allow consumers signed up Nagra as its main content multiscreen video platform, will allow Equally significantly, the deal will to use their subscriptions to security provider for advanced new Altice USA to deploy new IP- and also give Altice greater choice in films and music services when services, in the process also giving it QAM-based content including 4K selecting set-top vendors. travelling within the EU, under greater choice of set-top box suppliers. Ultra HD. The security solution “We have been impressed by the the same terms as at home. Nagra will provide Altice, the offers CAS/DRM, multi-DRM and flexibility NAGRA has shown in The agreed text, part of the country’s fourth largest cable forensic watermarking technologies adapting to US-specific Digital Single Market strategy, company, with the content protection as well as anti-piracy and requirements in a short amount of must now be formally confirmed and innovation platform to enable cybersecurity services. time, and this partnership will by the Council of the EU and encryption and content security for Through the use of advanced enable us to design integrated the European Parliament. its HD and 4K offerings. encryption technology, Nagra said its services to meet our customers’ Once adopted, the rules will Nagra Connect, the converged solution can efficiently coexist within expectations,” said Hakim apply by the beginning CAS/DRM protection solution, legacy US cable systems while Boubazine, COO, Altice USA. of 2018.

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 05

05news.indd 1 10/02/2017 15:42:25 News news in brief Benchmark for video encoding

BT offers mesh WiFi ‘Cinescore’ is claimed to be the first CPU-accelerated, graphic- UK telco BT has commercially industry relevant benchmark for the card equipped commodity started to offer its meshed meaningful measurement of video machines powered by Intel wireless solution to customers in encoding performance. processors are at the heart of order to enhance WiFi coverage Developed by Cinegy, Cinescore modern video and broadcast in the home. The telco claims it is said to accurately benchmark a systems. Yet it is still difficult is the first whole-home WiFi wide range of commonly used to quickly and accurately system of its kind in the country. formats and codecs by measuring measure any machine’s actual The system, which costs £299.99, the encoding speed and the load video processing performance. consists of three small 165mm that encoding places on a system Cinegy co-founder and chief repeater discs that are placed for different target resolutions, such technology officer Jan Weigner around the home, each with four as SD, HD and UHD. said, “The industry has been acquired the global patent portfolio dual-band antennas and a wired Cinescore uses a combination of waiting for a tool like Cinescore, of Faroudja Enterprises for an Ethernet port. The ‘Whole Home professional- quality codecs to which provides a simple way to undisclosed amount. The addition of Wi-Fi’ solution eliminates measure the encoding speed of a assess the video processing the Faroudja technology is expected so-called dead spots around the system and determines a system performance of any given machine. to further improve the efficiency of home that either have weak or no score. It provides a reliable Although there are many benchmark V-Nova’s own Perseus compression wireless signal, believed to be indication of how many channels tools that provide general ideas of technology after tighter integration. based on MediaTek’s adaptive of a particular video format a given system performance and comparison, According to the companies, network technology. BT joins a machine can capture; how suitable there have been none specifically Faroudja’s software has already been select group of payTV operators it is for HD or 4K editing; or what designed for the broadcast industry, demonstrated to provide a bitrate deploying mesh WiFi. transcode speed to expect from a until now.” reduction of 35-50% over an existing newly purchased server. • In related news, V-Nova has compression technique. 2017

30 May - 1 June 2017 EXHIBITION & CONGRESS NEW EXHIBITION HALLS BROADBAND EXHIBITION & CONGRESS FOR TELEVISION BROADBAND, CABLE & SATELLITE • 30 May - 1 June 2017 • Cologne / Germany ONLINE • www.angacom.de

OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES18,000 2,200 450 FRANCE BUSINESS CONGRESS EXHIBITORS VISITORS ATTENDEES FROM 37 COUNTRIES 52 % INTERNATIONAL 160+ SPEAKERS

2005–2016: 2005 2016 + 56 % 800 CA 2200 CA

GERMANY INTERNATIONAL

NETHERLANDS

ANGA Services GmbH Nibelungenweg 2 · 50996 Köln / Germany Kindly supported by www.angacom.de Tel. +49 (0)221 / 99 80 81-0 · [email protected] News

news in brief HbbTV issues streaming RFP

Grand Tour a hit for Amazon The HbbTV Association has The commissioned reference Furthermore, IS-04 automates that Independent figures reveal the announced a Request for Proposals application will work on as much of process, making discovery and show swept the board versus for the creation of a reference this installed base as possible, as well connection more fluid than in a other titles viewed on the SVoD application for online streaming of as on HbbTV 2 products entering the conventional SDI environment. service. It is also helping to DRM protected video to supported market in 2017, the group added. The membership agreed that a attract new subscribers to televisions and set-top boxes. Companies interested in common approach to managing Amazon’s UK video service. Through this initiative, HbbTV responding to the RfP can access it discovery and registration was According to GfK’s analysis, The aims to make it easier for at http://hbbtv.org/resource- important, as such an approach Grand Tour “drove spectacularly broadcasters and content providers library/#current-rfi provides a clearly defined way for into pole position” as the most to monetise content in the HbbTV • Meanwhile, a new specification SMPTE 2022-6- and SMPTE viewed title in both November ecosystem by providing a known from AIMS is designed to make it 2110-compliant devices to find and and December 2016, attracting working application with content easier to create and change connect to each other. This allows us the biggest audience reach for an that they can use as a model for connections between IP-enabled to leverage the benefits of IT and Amazon show in the UK since their own services. devices, providing a common networking technologies to create a GfK’s tracking service began in The Association said it has upgrade path from SDI. more flexible and scalable solution 2015. Despite launching halfway approached DRM suppliers for The Alliance for IP Media than conventional SDI routing through the month, TGT became support on this project, as it does Solutions has added the IS-04 systems will allow. the most streamed show on not include specific DRM systems specification to its roadmap. “IS-04 provides the next level of Amazon in November 2016, in its specifications. According to the group, IS-04 will interoperability beyond transporting accounting for 8% of all the HbbTV is a global initiative bring critical uniformity to the use of data. By adding it to our roadmap, streams watched. The following dedicated to providing an open video, audio, and ancillary data on a AIMS is not just advocating for month that increased to 17% of standard for the delivery of network of devices. protocols related to video, audio, and all streams, well ahead of the broadcast and broadband services The specification is important data transport, but for protocols that second placed title, The Man in through connected TVs and STBs. because it defines how IP-enabled determine how multivendor solutions the High Castle, which attracted The installed device base now devices can discover each other and can create seamless interoperable 9% of all streams viewed. reaches 46 million of which a large connect compatible IP streams as environments,” said Michael Cronk, Interestingly, 45% of all Amazon majority support DASH and DRM. part of a workflow, it said. AIMS board chair. users in December watched at least one episode of the programme: the highest Vizio fined for use of smart TV data proportion of unique viewers ever recorded by GfK - not just for Vizio, a manufacturer of smart TVs, viewing audiences or behaviours, the stored and collected, and to seek Amazon, but also across all other is found to have unlawfully tracked company noted. firmer, clearer consent beforehand. platforms captured by GfK’s viewing habits and sold it to The FTC said the data collection The company has been ordered to tracker in the UK, which includes other companies. began in February 2014 and affected delete the data it collected. Netflix and NowTV. If this were The US Federal Trade around 11 million televisions. It is not the first time smart TVs to be equated to actual viewer Commission said Vizio’s smart TV “Vizio collected unique data from have been involved in illicit use of numbers, GfK’s estimates would technology had captured data on each household with a Vizio smart data. Samsung and LG have raised put the total audience for TGT at what was being viewed on screen TV that included not only second-by- privacy concerns before with their around 2.3 million viewers, a and transmitted it to the company’s second viewing information, but also models, both in the US and Europe. figure slightly higher than the 2.1 servers. The FTC said data was then the household’s IP million online adults recorded by sold to third parties. address, nearby access BARB as watching Game of Vizio has now agreed to pay points, zip code, and Thrones on Sky Atlantic during out $2.2m in order to settle other information,” the the same time period. allegations, although it said the FTC said in a blog data sent could not be matched up post explaining Fell becomes WBU chair to individuals, such as name or the settlement. Simon Fell, director of the EBU contact information. As part of the Technology and Innovation The practices challenged by the settlement Vizio Department, has been elected government related only to the use agreed to more chair of the World Broadcasting of viewing data in the ‘aggregate’ to prominently tell its Union’s Technical Committee. create summary reports measuring customers how data is

08 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

08_news_3.indd 1 10/02/2017 11:14:09 2017

Vienna 13 - 15 March Conference + Exhibition Speaker sessions include an impressive line-up of influential figures in the broadcast industry to update and inform on current work taking place in DVB as it engages in the ongoing development of UHD TV with HDR, HFR and Next Generation Audio; future transmission systems; reports from Study Mission Groups including Virtual Reality; and much more... Lunches, coffee break sessions, a sightseeing tour of Vienna as well as a night out for dinner and celebration provide the opportunity to connect with other delegates, exchange ideas and explore new horizons. Further information including the Conference Program, Virtual Reality Masterclass and Hotel Reservations is available on the DVB World 2017 website. For Exhibition & Sponsorship opportunities please contact Désirée Gianetti: Tel: +41 22 717 2714 Email: [email protected]

www.dvbworld.org

CSI 204 x 271 DVB World 2017.indd 1 28/11/2016 17:31:23 Open source

Proponents argue that open source The march towards development brings potential for greater agility and faster innovation, because the resulting software is the product of collaboration among a open source large number of programmers. This same factor is also held to increase reliability and robustness, Open source can help boost TV innovation, but because the golden rule of software testing is that errors and bugs can only be eliminated through is not a panacea, says Philip Hunter large scale exposure. By contrast developers of proprietary software may be under commercial pen source software has been pressure to prioritise new features over reliability gaining momentum across pay because that helps sell the products. TV and broadcasting, driven “Operators should Critics contend that open source development partly by growing demand tends to favour technical innovation at the from consumers for the same be wary of jumping expense of ease of use, which has to an extent kinds of apps, services and onto the open been born out in the enterprise IT world. While experiences on TV they have Linux has had great impact on the server side for Ocome to expect online and especially on mobile source bandwagon corporate software such as finance and devices. This is leading operators and therefore manufacturing control with a move towards cloud their infrastructure providers towards the Android for the sake of it.” based open source components, there has been no TV OS in particular to gain access to the huge corresponding trend on the desktop front. This community of developers around that platform, reflects the challenge of getting to grips with which as a derivative of Linux is open source. Client and server-side considerations Linux and the inferiority of the associated user Indeed, a notable trend evident at IBC 2016 Like many recent developments in video interfaces, compared with the Windows or Apple last year was a profusion of open source infrastructure, such as cloud computing and Mac OS X operating environments. This holds developments, including software for set top software defined networks, open source has come also for applications, with the Microsoft Office boxes. Among notable developments was across from the enterprise IT world, where it has more polished and easier to use than open source integration of Ericsson’s MediaFirst platform, a long history dating back to the 1950s when all alternatives such as Apache OpenOffice. the multiscreen sequel of its Mediaroom, onto software was produced by academics. The modern This point is picked up by Andy Hooper, Vice the Android OS, as well as its alignment with era perhaps began with the release in 1991 by President, Software & Services, at Arris, who the “shared source” RDK. Shared source is a Linus Torvalds of the Linux operating system as argues that open source is unlikely to gain any hybrid where the software is owned by multiple freely modifiable source code. Most recently open foothold on the client side of pay TV. “The UI is entities, with some of the same benefits and issues source has proliferated in the era of the internet too important for most pay TV operators and as open source. in projects like Wikipedia as part of the broader hugely subjective in terms of design to the degree True open source software is available free with open collaboration movement. that it would be near impossible to run as an open access to the source code so that anyone can make changes and enhancements. As such it is a model for building, evolving and maintaining software at all levels, including the OS, components, tools and applications, as opposed to proprietary software, which is under the control of a single provider. Neither is inherently superior to the other and operators should be wary of jumping onto the open source bandwagon for the sake of it. At the same time the open source approach does bring some benefits, including robustness, agility and speed of innovation, in the right context. The main caveat is that it does require resources and commitment to work properly, which means that smaller operators will require a trusted partner to make it work, which could be a systems integrator or a turnkey platform provider.

10 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

10-12_Open_Source.indd 2 13/02/2017 12:36:24 Open source

source project,” says Hooper. that open source and standards are fundamental production and support robustness, security and On the server side the situation is more for payTV innovation,” he says. “Today’s fast- performance, DevOps models are important,” nuanced but even there some operators would paced and highly competitive market needs says Mestric. “This is true for pay-TV, where continue preferring proprietary software. Most solutions that can be implemented in record delivering functionality at the expense of larger operators at least regard their server-side time frames and updated easily. Using open robustness, security and performance is not an applications for payTV as highly important source and standards-based software provided by option. Modern software delivery methods should strategic assets to be kept in-house and run either expert third parties is the best way for operators be adopted, such as CI/CD (Continuous on a private cloud or internal data centre, Hooper to comply with demand for high quality, Integration/Continuous Development), where adds. “In this context, open source selection by consumer-friendly UI and services without having continuous, iterative development underpinned operators can still play a role for some set of to invest in support and maintenance teams.” by automated testing raises the confidence of server-side components. Equally, some server-side software quality. Closer interworking between platforms will continue to be serviced by Development teams and Operation teams proprietary software solutions from a variety of “There can be increases confidence further by supporting rapid software and systems vendors.” code delivery into production and rapid feedback When it comes to underlying software tension between from production.” components and tools that are not sources of differentiation and will be employed by many the desire for operators the open source approach is tending to “But for payTV, open win out, according to Fleming Lampi, Global differentiation Product Director at ACCESS, a German-based source is not the provider of software for TV services and the and the need connected home. beginning and end “Such open source software can be used as for innovation.” applications and also components of proprietary of building video solutions to complement their core features,” says Lampi. “Such software is under constant review Lampi does agree, though, that the innovation delivery products.” by the public, which allows the industry to rely on issue went deeper than the debate between open its quality. Operators tend to prefer this as it source and proprietary software. “The key is enables them to avoid long and costly to remain relevant and to continue to provide Mestric regards the open source question as development and testing cycles on these building high value software solutions that easily plug orthogonal to this more fundamental issue of blocks and to focus on their own developments into existing infrastructure and workflows, development methodology. However, he does to provide a ready to market solution to the including content protection, search and acknowledge that the open source movement general public.” discovery, and connectivity.” has become an important source of software Hooper agrees that open source toolkits and Others go further and argue that this debate is that has a big role to play, but alongside libraries were being used even on the UI and a complete red herring and what matters is the proprietary components and subject to the client side, because they provided broad functions overall approach taken to software and project same scrutiny. “Open source is important to embedded within the system, offering no development, not whether the components are Nokia products and we leverage it extensively,” competitive advantage. In those cases open source open source or proprietary. The key challenge is he says. brought economies of scale. to establish a software development pipeline that “We also contribute to various projects and enables the latest features to be delivered quickly leverage the wider benefits of being active DevOps and agility and at high quality, according to Roland Mestric, within the community. But for Pay TV, Open When it comes to front line software for Video Marketing Director at Nokia, which has Source is not the beginning and end of building functions such as the UI, personalisation and become one of the main players in TV video delivery products. Nokia brings open recommendation, there can be tension between infrastructure through its EUR15.6 billion source and our own software development the desire for differentiation and the need for acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent finally completed in together to the value required by pay TV innovation, both of which are driven by November 2016. operators to support robustness, security competitive pressures. Open source tends to This can only be delivered by adopting DevOps and performance.” favour agility and rapid innovation but at the methods bringing together development and Mestric’s key point here is that open source cost of opening up to third parties including operational teams, which enables software for new is not a panacea and all software needs to be potential competitors. features to be rolled out on a continuous basis integrated into wider video delivery platforms According to Lampi at ACCESS, the drive with much shorter lead times between that provide a consistent experience, for agility and rapid innovation is winning and specification, deployment and testing. incorporating a common platform for analytics, favouring open source increasingly. “We believe “In order to deliver quality software into monitoring, management, deployment, security,

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 11

10-12_Open_Source.indd 3 13/02/2017 12:40:34 Open source

performance modelling and device integration. The Netflix model benefits for Netflix, including some derived “These are all massively important factors The open source question can, however, be from improved community relations and peer which enable Pay TV operators to more shaded by the size of the operator, with the pressure. He reckons the quality of code and seamlessly integrate our products into very largest Tier 1s seeing it as a route to documentation has improved because of the their products and services, rather than having innovation and competitive advantage, not just latter, driving engineers almost as a matter of to integrate multiple solutions themselves for individual components or tools, but by pride to raise their game over these issues. He in a multitude of different ways,” establishing a culture that attracts the best also cited durability, which is perhaps one of said Mestric. people both internally and at a community the more widely agreed benefits, in the belief level for solving problems. that code will improve over time if it is actively Costs and savings Netflix is notable for taking this route at an developed by an open community and used Kaltura is an open source advocate and the early stage of its evolution and has singled out widely, rather than being maintained by a company’s VP of Platform, Ecosystem and its open source strategy as pivotal to its small number of software engineers for a Community, Zohar Babin, argues that it success. Netflix embarked on this path by single workload. brings benefits across the whole video lifecycle, becoming a major user of Apache licensed However, Meshenberg also made a point including the UI. He suggests that the inferiority open source software for a variety of that would chime with Nokia’s Mestric when of some client or desktop open source projects components. This included its data storage he conceded that open source projects would was a result of less commitment rather than solution based on the Apache Cassandra open only deliver high quality software when they an underlying deficiency in the culture. “As a source database. That gave Netflix were well managed and involved good counter example, look at WordPress, which is programmers access to the Apache Software engineers. Netflix has owned up to issues with the leading blogging platform by far,” notes Foundation, one of the world’s largest some of its own open source products, for Babin. “I’d argue that it is the leader because decentralized open source community of example, failure to make it clear when some of its UX.” WordPress is open source. developers and enabled them to exploit projects had been archived with active Babin does agree though that open source Amazon Web Services (AWS), which relies maintenance ceasing, and generally not being should not be adopted on the basis of expected heavily on this model. This led Netflix to open about internal assessment of quality. cost savings, which may come as a surprise to adopt AWS as its global cloud infrastructure At least these deficiencies are being those who believe that commonly touted headline provider because it was deemed to provide the remedied but this does highlight that open figure that it saves the world’s users $60 billion greatest scale, broadest features set and source as well as proprietary software can fall a year. Babin’s point, which most in the field adequate redundancy. At the same time, by the wayside of history and end up leaving would now agree with, is that when the ongoing Netflix started to contribute fixes and also users adrift. Netflix has also admitted that it costs of software such as maintenance, support, extensions to Apache Cassandra, which as has had to devote a lot of resources to its open updating, customising and integrating with other Ruslan Meshenberg, Director, Cloud Platform source programme to make it work, with the systems are taken into account, open source Engineering at Netflix, has explained in obvious implication that this would be beyond will not necessarily yield any savings. “This is various blogs, led to much deeper involvement many other Tier 1 operators and certainly not really the value that open source ever in the open source movement. smaller Tier 2s and Tier 3s. Those operators brought to the table. It’s more about trust, Since then Netflix has enjoyed the benefits are more likely to encounter open source ecosystem and not being locked into black of being a producer as well as consumer of either through systems integration partners or boxes,” he says. open source projects, according to complete solution providers. Kaltura is Meshenberg, although by the very nature of an example of the latter, offering a variety What about security? the movement the distinction between the two of turnkey and integrated video One final bone of contention relating to can be blurred. Meshenberg has cited various delivery platforms. open source is whether it improves or weakens overall content security, with arguments in the same time, these will be fixed faster and and weaknesses when compared to closed, both directions. The negative argument centres more frequently. Another point is your own proprietary software. Security is a much broader around the fact that since the code is generally ability to scan the software for these types of issue and closed versus open source is just one openly available, pirates or hackers can readily risks and holes, which you can’t do with of many dynamics.” scout for vulnerabilities. But the counter proprietary software.” The conclusion perhaps is that operators argument is that the weight of community Hooper from Arris espouses an increasingly should not be led towards open source in the exposure will identify vulnerabilities and develop common view when he suggests that security hope of enjoying immediate cost savings or fixes more quickly, shortening the window of considerations have little bearing on whether functional benefits. It should be just part of a opportunity for attacks. to adopt open source. “We would not cite longer-term commitment to modern agile software Babin is in the latter camp. “Yes, the security in the case against open source,” he development methods that enable continuous code is open, and thus security holes will says. “It is now very well established that in innovation but not at the expense of robustness be found faster and more frequently, but at this regard, open source has both strengths or security.

12 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

10-12_Open_Source.indd 4 13/02/2017 12:36:50 Analyst corner

terms of installation) while others such as Professional PTZ cameras education, stadiums and houses of worship use them because they can be mounted out of A market full of opportunities the way on ceilings or high on walls and controlled remotely. ne of the uniting aspects suited to static studio set-ups (interviews, news or The education market in particular is extremely of most of the pro video cooking shows for example) than fast moving interesting in its use of PTZ cameras and is a and AV industries is that sports. Because of this, reality TV is another key good example of the cultural encroachment of almost all end-users are application, for example the UK production of video. While PTZ cameras are used to record looking to cut costs reality staple ‘Big Brother’ uses 55 high-end PTZ lectures or lessons for students to catch up on whilst at the same time cameras controlled by just one operator. later or for teacher assessment, the cameras come aspiring to do more with Away from broadcast, the video conferencing into their own in this environment when distance the video format. This idea of doing more for less market is going from strength-to-strength, partly learning is considered. Massive Open Online Ohas driven down price points significantly in the due to the cost savings derived from people being Courses (MOOCS), typically fielded by pro camcorder market (a global figure of -28% able to communicate face-to-face without the technology companies rather than educational over the past five years) and has encouraged expense of traveling. establishments, are forcing some of the world’s people to consider alternative ways in which to Another way broadcast is starting to save leading universities to change their business capture video. money by using PTZ cameras is through remote models. The ability to distribute videos of Alternatives to pro camcorders include production. Where small, satellite studios are lectures, whether recorded or live, gives DSLRs and CSCs, a trend which has been well required, PTZ cameras (along with other universities valuable assets that can be monetised documented, but in the world of live video production equipment) can be operated remotely, without geographical boundaries. PTZ cameras production, the burgeoning professional (pan-tilt- requiring no on-site staff. This is perfect for are at the heart of this trend and are allowing zoom) PTZ camera market is fulfilling locations that often require people to be traditional higher-education establishments to this function. interviewed, but don’t warrant investment in a full compete in this new market. For instance, take broadcast, the origin of stand-alone studio - financial districts for example. Considering all of these factors, the PTZ professional video use. Traditional studio set-ups Aside from cost savings, another point key to camera market is growing in volume terms, with require at least two or three cameras and their the growth of the PTZ camera market has simply 49% growth expected between 2016 and 2021. camera operators as well as a camera controller in been the emergence of video as a central part of Although much of the 103,000 units shipped in the studio’s gallery. Use of comparatively modern life. The dominance of the internet in our 2016* were accounted for by comparatively inexpensive PTZ cameras does away with the lives and increasing broadband speeds has meant inexpensive products used extensively in video need for camera operators, reducing the required that video is now everywhere. Smart phones and conferencing, most volume growth over the next headcount for a three camera set up from four to tablets mean that video content is always at arm’s five years will be found in the $2,000-$3,500 one. In a world where budgets are being squeezed, reach, websites are now almost expected to feature segment as more quality conscious markets grow this is a significant reduction in both CAPEX and video in some way and video-based display in importance. This means that despite significant OPEX that is very appealing to some. signage is ubiquitous, we can rarely escape video. price erosion, the shift in product mix will allow There are caveats to this of course: PTZ It follows therefore that the use of video is for a 27% growth in value over the same time cameras can’t yet match the image quality of 2/3” growing fast outside of the world of broadcast. period, up from $220 million in 2016 (note that sensor studio cameras and they can only be used Video hasn’t been the exclusive preserve of as the report was completed before the end of in non-dynamic environments where the action is broadcast for at least 10 years now, but its use 2016, full 2016 data was forecasted based on pedestrian. PTZ cameras are therefore better in a whole variety of applications is now being vendor feedback). Futuresource’s 2016 accelerated by this wider Professional PTZ Camera Market Overview cultural phenomenon. Report was published in December 2016 and is In addition to video available at the Futuresource website. conferencing, other markets for PTZ cameras include internal corporate communications, education, houses of worship, government and military as well as medical, event venues and stadiums. Adam Cox is senior analyst, Some of these applications use PTZ broadcast & professional video cameras due to their low cost and equipment, futuresource comparative simplicity (they are often seen as “fire and forget” in

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 13

13_Analyst_Column.indd 2 10/02/2017 11:59:15 2017 trends

he Guardian newspaper hailed 2016 as the year that TV Future imperfect streaming finally came of age, pointing to the number of popular ‘must-see’ shows that From VR to micro-services, CSI looks at what lies in made the move from terrestrial store for the industry this year onto SVoD platforms. TMost notably these were The Crown, Stranger Things and The Grand Tour on Netflix and Amazon. The BBC, meanwhile, experimented with showing some programmes on its online-only BBC3 channel, as well as iPlayer exclusives. Sky is similarly pushing to original content – and not just expensive sports either. In terms of multi-device viewing and self- scheduling, the paper said “2016 was the year the revolution finally happened. We will never look at television the same way again.” This sets the backdrop to our predictions for 2017. Of course, OTT will continue its march but there is a lot more innovation to look forward to in other areas.

1. Ultra HD with HDR Harmonic’s Ian Trow is more cautious. He consumers, argues Ian Finch of Simplestream. In the fast paced world of technology, neither thinks that UHD HDR is going to be limited to UHD nor HDR are that new anymore, but we proof of concept, with a few operators delivering 2. From big data to machine learning/ should start to see some concrete deployments HDR to a limited set of screens. This is due to artificial intelligence from broadcasters and payTV operators limiting factors including screen availability and Big data analysis is now big business, which throughout this year, following approval of the lack of an end-to-end production workflow. operators are trying to get to better grips with. HDR specs by leading standards organisations. In “Once there is an established solution for Netflix has set something of a data analytics parallel, wider 4k delivery will also happen while delivering UHD to SDR legacy screen sets and a benchmark in the digital entertainment space, in some cases a combination of 1080p with HDR complete production and distribution workflow, acquiring and presenting content to individuals can deliver a better viewing experience. UHD HDR will really take off. Expect to see profiles based on sophisticated algorithms. “The majority of activity we’ve seen so far has UHD HDR deployed to the masses toward the But making use of and deriving true business been in the growth of devices supporting UHD, end of 2017 and early 2018,” says Throw. value from all the massive data collecting rather than UHD content,” notes Matthew As Ravi Kumar Palepu of VirtusaPolaris notes, capabilities that today’s digital entertainment Huntington, CTO, Freesat. “In 2017 I believe we though the network technologies to deliver 4k networks have at their disposal still remains “quite will see rapid growth in UHD content production, UHD are already present, the bandwidth to a tough nut to crack”, acknowledges Kai-Christian including HDR as the format of choice for high- deliver 4k is not available in every household. Borchers at 3 Screen Solutions (3SS). “We end production. What is clear is that content “In 2017, we’ll witness the real test for content foresee that in 2017 and beyond the secret recipe production and new UHD broadcast services will delivery, as providers try to adapt to the 4k will begin to become clearer. The mystery behind move directly to UHD with HDR.” boom and start delivering far richer content on big data alchemy will begin to dissipate.” Huntington similarly thinks 2017 will become a massive scale.” Good news, then, for solutions with advanced the year that standard definition becomes While much of this will still be of the analytics capabilities. Viaccess-Orca believes that unacceptable for the majority of consumers with on-demand variety, John Bishop, CTO for Media data analytics will be a game-changer in the access to a HD service, requiring vendors, at Akamai Technologies, anticipates seeing more payTV environment from this year, especially for broadcasters and operators to provide services in live events being streamed in 4k over the public OTT. Utilising data related to the television HD at the very least, if not UHD. Internet as well. subscriber profile, operators can provide “HDR will become a growing consideration As the costs incurred to create and deliver this contextually relevant content and ads, increase in the market, with 4k/HDR probably the new pixel-rich content are higher, however, the satisfaction with the service, boost content high-end standard for people to aspire to and availability of cost-effective solutions is paramount efficiency, and prevent piracy. broadcasters to aim at,” agrees Jonathan to the success of UHD content creation for “Regardless of whether you’re an advertiser, Berman at MX1. content players, and its concurrent adoption by broadcaster or platform operator, everyone will be

14 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

14-16_trends.indd 2 06/02/2017 16:05:34 2017 trends

looking for ways to better understand their the focus is on gaming, there have been some engaging them and making sport content more audiences and viewers. By bringing together rich successful examples of VR VoD content being relevant to them. and broad datasets the industry will be able to streamed to PlayStation, so others may follow. One sports body trying to combat this change gather greater insight into TV viewing behaviour. If nothing else, we can safely assume that in behaviour is the NBA, points out Tom Williams We will see organisations begin to capture and broadcasters will experiment more with delivering at Ostmodern, who says last year saw the use data that will enable them to do so,” virtual reality content, particularly around live basketball association move to a new content adds Freesat’s Huntington. events. Whereas Akamai helped deliver roughly distribution model, as they look to social media Slightly longer term, he sees census-level two or three VR events per month during 2016, and other channels to give millennials short, audience data emerging in years to come become the CDN company expects to do around ten a ‘snackable’ content in places that already capture a staple ingredient in delivering compelling TV to month during 2017. viewers for all parties in the TV value chain. As Accedo points out, VR is just in the Beyond big data, there is a lot of excitement beginning of the hype curve and we will see many “Broadcasters/ about the potential for machine intelligence and failed attempts in this market. It may take another machine learning to transform networks into five or six years before technology has matured. content creators smart and proactive ones that offer better service Again, as with UHD, VR may suffer from delivery and personalised customer experiences. bandwidth constraints. “As more people look to will have to “When algorithms become more sophisticated adopt it – or even just try it out – the challenge of and become AI assisted, we will start to get distributing content that essentially requires 16 fiercely adapt to dynamic scheduling where content in segment 34 times more bandwidth is more evident,” says is determined by the combination of the choice of Edgeware CEO Joachim Roos. accommodate how content in segments 23 and 25, for example,” says In parallel, we will likely see more 360 content Craig Moehl, Groovy Gecko. “So the scheduler emerging, which can be viewed on a standard young people has a rough idea of the program stream and the device, but giving consumers some of the benefits view sports.” users pull the active and passive content via of VR, meaning they can move the view around to replacement in real-time. The short term gains get a different camera angle. will be massive surges in CPMs but the longer According to Kaltura’s Iddo Shai, this may be their attention (see also Facebook Live, below). term there will be increased value in brand loyalty, the year in which we finally get to judge for “Broadcasters/content creators will have to helping to build small niche communities ourselves if the mixed reality headset that Magic fiercely adapt to accommodate how young people (gaming, amateur architects and small space / Leap has been working on is as great as all the view sports. They will be much more creative shed lovers for example).” initial reviews by the tech geeks who have had about how they deliver first and second screen Guavus sees service providers leveraging an early look. He also thinks the iPhone 8 will experiences, and combine these with social, for machine intelligence for smarter networks and need to deliver something really spectacular and young people,” says Willaims. automation to improve customer experience. that thing may be a new Mixed Reality and Another is the rise of eSports video content, “This will manifest itself with CSPs adopting Virtual Reality technology. “Those technologies, which has, to date, been dominant on free analytics solutions that can embed machine along with Google’s DayDream and Samsung’s platforms like YouTube and Twitch. As e-sports intelligence into operations fabric, automating GearVR, will make video in VR even more continue to surge in popularity, premium services decision cycles and preventing customer affecting exciting and valuable in ways that we are only with advanced UX will become increasingly viable issues,” reckons Chris Menier. now starting to realise.” options to reach those hungry fans 24/7, notes For organisations looking to provide rich Ultimately, Viaccess-Orca believes that the true Simplestream’s Dan Finch. Moreorver, he thinks experiences to their customers while still potential of VR technology will be unlocked when OTT TV offerings present the most promise for maintaining profitability, automation is the only it’s combined with UHD. effectively hosting 24/7 eSports channels. answer, agrees Brite:Bill’s Alan Coleman. “The future lies in adding eSports channels to Machine learning enables the system to 4. Live sports streaming alternative TV packages that live stream over-the- understand that an interaction is needed to avoid Live sports streaming is on the rise, as the top and offer a growing range of niche sports the next step and artificial intellignece can be 2016 European Championship saw record views content from around the world – think applied to determine the right response given the over OTT platforms, as did other big events skateboarding, surfing and darts. These packages previously learnt preferences of the customer. like the Olympics. could enable eSports fans to justify the cost of While live sport has always been considered by premium, 24/7 gaming content that includes 3. VR/AR & 360 video broadcasting companies to be the lynchpin of live access to a selection of other channels without It will be interesting to see how Virtual Reality TV, new studies have suggested that they don’t the burden of locking into a fixed-term contract.” evolves and whether it will bridge the gap to the have the same appeal to the younger generation. Harrie Tholen of NexGuard sees premium live mass market or instead become simply more As young people seem to be watching less live sports remaining the top driver of subscriber established with the gaming community. While sport, broadcasters need to find better ways of attraction and retention for pay TV operators.

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 15

14-16_trends.indd 3 06/02/2017 16:05:41 2017 trends

number of broadcasters began to experiment with based, more personalised model, says KA streaming content or teasers live to the platform Srinivasan of Amagi. Adoption of personalised, to attract viewers to broadcast programming. multi-screen viewing will also have an impact on Commentators expect Facebook Live to keep advertising and monetisation, he adds. With the growing in the coming years. There is a lot of rise in ad-blockers, we could see major interest in using it as an avenue to build broadcasters and content owners moving to a awareness, driven by Facebook’s established native app-based subscription model for market position and ability to help content owners monetisation, or shifting to a server side ad reach niche audiences through its rich data on insertion platform. user needs and wants. Collaborative models of broadcast management There is an OTT opportunity to effectively and delivery. Srinivasan also predicts a rise in harness this platform, but it has to be part of a cloud-based, dynamic collaboration for broadcast larger strategy to deliver in ways that provide management as broadcasters and content owners better direct monetisation, according to Finch at try to tackle the demand for personalisation. And demand for online access through fixed and Simplestream. He sees Facebook Live as a prime For example, a live broadcast could be produced mobile devices will only continue to encourage example of simplified content delivery: “All with multiple contributors who may or may not operators to make live content available across content players need is a good-quality smartphone be co-located. The live feed could be from an multiple platforms. with an Internet connection and suddenly event in Germany, the commentary from thousands can tune in.” Norway, and the on-screen graphics could be 5. More Live OTT: part II Monetisation, however, remains a crucial piece processed in India. Much of online viewing has been on-demand but of the puzzle. With platforms like Facebook Live Early window movie releases. People expect Per Lindgren at Net Insight believes that live will generating and delivering live content to a films sooner after their initial cinema release be a strong focus in OTT in 2017. plethora of socially-syndicated devices, the need window. With Netflix releasing blockbuster films According to Lindgren, there will be an to ensure effective delivery to drive monetisation straight onto its service, 2017 could see the increased focus on low delay in live streaming and efforts is important, especially to mobile. cinema business model challenged even more screen synchronisation. For the first time live Craig Moehl of Groovy Gecko shares the strongly. “We’re likely to see a growing sub-section television will be harmonised across all screens, opinion that over the coming months, we are of VoD services in 2017 that cater to home- enabling new features to be applied to a likely to see a growing role for Facebook for release models, including exclusive partnerships complementary second screen and provide broadcasters and other content providers between VOD providers, studios and production unprecedented viewing experiences that will including brands. “This year sees the launch of companies,” says Williams at Ostmodern. induce new business models to accommodate the Facebook Live 360, giving broadcasters the NexGuard’s Tholen is confident shortening changes in the media landscape and consumer opportunity to stream live 360 content direct into release window for home consumption will viewing habits the news feed and we are likely to see some benefit forensic watermarking technology, which This coincides with OTT’s general move into innovative uses for that.” constitutes “a crucial step” in an early release mass market. In some markets, OTT distributed VoD environment. video is already more than 20% of total amount of 7. And some others Mico-services. More and more (micro-) services video minutes consumed. Addressable TV is here. The notion of being able will move the beating heart of their operations “Healthy business case analysis will drive new to serve personalised ads in TV pods has existed to the cloud. And a diverse range of services launches rather than what we’ve seen in the for a long time, but the infrastructure was never will start to be made available to consumers via earlier stages of the market. We will also see some there. To date, addressable TV was only present in APIs. Nobody will need to build everything less well run services decide to pull out or adapt about 3% of the US market, but this year AT&T is in-house from scratch any more, or even continue their strategies to reality,” says Accedo CEO planning to sell targeted ads via Direct TV Now. to rely on standard software components that are Michael Lantz. In addition, Facebook’s Audience Network is hosted and operated in-house. “Complete In parallel, as Harmonic’s Throw observes, testing ad delivery in TV apps running on Roku ecosystems will be made available in the cloud as software-defined networking and cloud technology and AppleTV. If Facebook can do as good of a ‘plug-and-play’ solutions,” predicts Borchers will be used more and more by video content and job on the big screen as it does on mobile and at 3SS. service providers to speed up time to market for web it will have a bright 2017, reckons Shai. “Generally our industry will be seeing less of these new services. Continued shift to personalised video what we conventionally consider ‘development’, in experiences. The movement towards customised favour of more digital engineering in the purest 6. The role and impact of Facebook Live video experiences will continue as the audience sense of the word, combining and configuring In 2016, Facebook launched its Facebook Live moves to new-age content platforms like Facebook services that are readily available in the ‘cloud- feature and as a result it has seen 88% growth in live and Periscope. Content will continue to shift sphere’ with real creativity and flexibility as video posts. Since the launch of Facebook Live, a from destination-oriented models to social-feed fundamental requirements of progress.”

16 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

14-16_trends.indd 4 06/02/2017 16:06:01 SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED MARCH 2017

The inaugural National Technology Awards - celebrating the pioneers of technology and encouraging excellence

The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony and gala dinner on: 17 May 2017 Millennium Hotel London Mayfair

Sponsored by FStech FStech Supporters

Organised by

BOOK YOUR TABLE NOW www.nationaltechnologyawards.co.uk

@NTechAwards #NationalTechAwards

NationalTechnologyAwards2017-v2.indd 1 10/02/2017 09:55:23 Security

into their distribution platforms Where in the world are you? for this very reason. But how are viewers hiding their locations and Charlie Johnson outlines how IP intelligence can how can VoD providers utilise IP restore the value of VoD content intelligence to block these users, without having a negative impact hile the increased helping drive a growth in the illegal viewing of on those watching content legitimately? popularity of Video geographically restricted content, posing a on Demand (VoD) significant challenge to the media industry. And Where they’re hiding has given with the threat of “spoofing” – in which an By using proxy servers such as VPNs, users can broadcasters a illegitimate viewer uses technology to impersonate hide their physical locations in an attempt to view wealth of new a trusted IP address and appear to have a content, which may be restricted in their country. and exciting legitimate connection – having directly affected And as more and more viewers use proxy services, Wopportunities to engage consumers, it also brings the value placed on content in recent months, the production companies are seeing their profits with it a host of challenges as viewers expect pressure is on to provide and implement robust diminish, as they no longer have the ability to access to a full range of video content wherever measures to combat the issue. control content distribution effectively. As and whenever suits them. It is vital that video distribution companies a result, broadcasters are facing increasing More than ever, consumers are trying to utilise effective technology to understand where pressure to keep abreast of their audience’s circumvent geographic restrictions and access their viewers are accessing content from and viewing habits and ensure they deliver the right video content from all over the world, whether identify those who are falsifying their locations, content to the right users, adhering to geographic content owners consent to it or not. Tools such as to ensure content suppliers’ regulations are rights restrictions. Achieving all of this can Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), Domain Name adhered to – in fact, some studios mandate that prove a juggling act, even for the savviest of Systems (DNS), Tor, and proxy servers are providers incorporate IP geolocation technology content operators.

18 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

18-19_Geotagging.indd 2 07/02/2017 12:41:46 Security

It is no longer acceptable to turn a blind eye to home address is a big concern for many VoD the authentication of user rights and integration users who appear to be bypassing restrictions for channels. This level of “bleed” used to be deemed into the order process. According to accessing online content, and some of the major acceptable within the streaming space, but with VUBIQUITY, the risks are significant without VoD providers – including US-based Hulu – have tighter margins this is no longer the case. this type of digital protection and the company already started to tackle the issue of geofencing Layering on proxy knowledge to understand those takes comfort in knowing that it is using reliable, circumvention by blocking viewers who use a who may knowingly (or not) be changing their quality data to meet the studios’ licensing VPN, DNS or other hosting designation to view physical locations can keep broadcasters on the requirements, protecting not only the studios, content from another country. right side of their geofencing commitments. This but also the company and its operators. It seems the industry is starting to come ability to holistically evaluate user location along together in the fight against illegal access, but with proxy data is invaluable in enabling Restoring value for content producers how will the new measures affect legitimate, broadcasters to remain compliant with geographic and distributors subscription-paying customers? rights, while at the same time delivering the best To optimise revenues, the media industry must It is important to recognise that not all possible viewing experience to genuine customers. constantly adapt to changing consumer habits users who connect to the internet with tools that IP intelligence technology is continually and the growth of digital platforms, which hide their location are intending to view content evolving and now has the capability to combine present wider opportunities to connect. Analysing illegally. There are several reasons for connecting accurate location analysis and proxy data to IP addresses is a complex business, with new via a proxy, for example to protect user privacy, assess user connections in real time. So how does attempts to overcome restrictions occurring on a or to take advantage of a faster internet it actually work? daily basis. Winning this game of “whack-a-mole” connection, and ultimately, enjoy an enhanced requires expert engineering knowledge and regular viewing experience. VPN usage also tends to IP intelligence and geolocation at work updates 365 days a year. Meanwhile, isolating rise dramatically in countries where certain One company that has successfully incorporated suspect connections means the rest of the user websites are unavailable. For instance, internet IP intelligence and geolocation data into its digital base (i.e. legitimate customers) remains users in China are progressively turning to rights management (DRM) initiatives is unaffected, and media companies are able to VPNs to access social networking sites such VUBIQUITY. The organisation connects content protect the value and revenue derived from as Twitter. Increasingly, users are accessing owners and video providers to deliver premium content, which would otherwise be lost the internet via mobile connections, even entertainment to viewers on any screen, and to opportunistic proxy users taking advantage of to watch content. However some telcos and works with nearly 650 leading film studios, modern-day technology. mobile providers are sending through centralised television networks, independent producers and The fact that broadcasters are increasingly proxy servers, unwittingly changing the multi-channel networks (MCNs) to bring taking more steps to combat these circumventions customer’s location. premium content to over 1,000 global video represents a positive and significant milestone for distributors spanning 109 million households the media industry. However, there is a long way How to find them across 121 territories. to go before digital piracy is eliminated Until now, content operators have understandably VUBIQUITY needed to find an IP geolocation completely. Content producers and distributors found the prospect of detecting which users provider that would offer accurate and reliable need to work together to invest time and resources are illegally viewing content a daunting data, specifically for African and Latin American into their DRM strategies, and identify the prospect, as unlike terrestrial channels – which regions, to gain access to high quality, all- patterns and behaviours of their users, which broadly speaking do not function outside their encompassing datasets that were continually includes generations of “always on” consumers. country of origin – digital channels require a updated. Using IP intelligence technology, the In an age when maintaining data privacy is so different approach and a clear strategy for company was able to uncover actionable important, using IP intelligence also enables handling geofencing. information about online users such as geographic broadcasters to verify each of their customers IP geolocation technology, however, enables location and proxies (including VPNs) – all while without any Personally Identifiable Information broadcasters to pinpoint where in the world a user respecting the user’s right to privacy. (PII) ever being exchanged, which means they can is viewing content, right down to their postcode. VUBIQUITY has incorporated this technology rest in the knowledge that they are remaining Once the viewer’s location has been established, into its Content as a Service (CaaS) platform, compliant with data-protection laws. the broadcaster can decide whether to allow or which consists of a cloud-based centralised Focusing on high-quality data – powered by revoke access to that user depending on the repository of pre-licensed, pre-configured content accurate IP intelligence and geolocation country they are in. In many cases, geo detection that is stored, hosted, and distributed across a information – will enable media companies to down to a postcode level may be overkill but in global delivery network. strike that all-important balance between reality, with geographic borders being just a line The use of these datasets within the CaaS compliance with geographical rights and provision on the map, country-level accuracy has become platform assists VUBIQUITY in processing of a first-class streaming service, which keeps increasingly important. Recognising when a incoming requests and delivering content to any their customers coming back for more. Norwegian subscriber drives into Sweden and point on the network on demand, while managing Charlie Johnson is Vice President, UK and Ireland, may only be a few miles away from his or her entitlements and access to video assets based on Digital Element

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 19

18-19_Geotagging.indd 3 07/02/2017 12:41:51 5G

mobile technology; it will do for The long and winding road to 5G industries something like what mobility Transformative or overly grandiose? Goran Nastic weighs up has done for consumers and the big fi fth-generation mobile debate smartphones. It will bring the benefits of he mobile industry has never we designed networks with more of a specific scale, affordability, ubiquity, mobility and been one to shy away from purpose in mind,” notes Jason Elliott, 5G market performance to industries beyond smartphones,” big targets so it’s only development manager at Nokia. says Aniruddho Basu, head of technology natural that its ambitions The industry is trying to put technology in advisory and portfolio at Group Function scale up with every new ‘G’. place that can handle exponential traffic growth Technology, Ericsson. The latest pushes up the dial that will only increase with the Internet of Things “5G is about enabling new ‘use cases’ and a significant level up from (IoT) and other applications, such as AR/VR. creating new business models. It is more than a previous mobile communications generations, Cisco’s latest Mobile Visual Networking Index new radio technology and will fundamentally Twhich were focused on a narrower set of services: forecasts that by 2021, 5G will account for 0.2% change the way we build and operate networks,” 2G was designed for voice, to which was added of connections (25 million), but 1.5% of total adds Elliott. packet data; 3G was voice, circuit-switched and traffic. Cisco estimates that by 2021 a 5G 5G use cases have been grouped into three then low-data rate packet data; and 4G was for connection will generate nearly 30 GB per month, high-level categories: mobile broadband, now being extended to support which is (a very specific) 4.7 times more traffic • Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB); narrow-band machine-type traffic. than the average 4G connection and 10.7 times • Massive Machine Type Communications To be sure, 5G’s scope is wide ranging to say more traffic than the average 3G connection. (MMTC); and the least. Digitalisation, business transformation, At the same time, industrial, healthcare and • Ultra Reliable and Low Latency ubiquitous connectivity (both machine and transportation sectors are especially on 5G’s Communications (URLLC). human) and automation (highly automated opportunity radar. To achieve these goals, 5G is asking for very systems and processes) are terms that are used According to Ericsson’s research, 94% of high bandwidth (up to 10Gbps), together with almost synonymously with 5G. executives from eight major industries rate next- very low end-to-end latency (under a millisecond). “Arguably 5G is the first network to be generation mobile networks as a top strategic This makes 5G something of a “requirement designed to support all types of traffic. Previously priority. “We believe 5G is not only a facet of paradox”, as Dr Sameh Yamany, CTO at Viavi

20 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

20-23_5G.indd 1 13/02/2017 11:53:50 5G

Solutions, puts it. VR and IoT can be done with 4G advances commercial deployment in 2022 onwards. Independent analyst Dean Bubley likens 5G to such as LTE-Advanced Pro, while 4G in “It’s important to try to cut through some of something of a philosophical debate. “As usual, combination with NB-IoT can address most needs the hype,” warns Mann. “Given what’s happened the biggest risk to the mobile industry is strategic of M2M type connections, adds Mann. in the industry and efforts of some operators and over-reach,” he says. “If it persists in trying to Nevertheless, he is not entirely dismissive. manufacturers have made early on in the 5G define 5G as an all-encompassing monolithic “Low latency is probably the headline feature of roadmap this could almost create confusion, architecture, with the hope of replacing all fixed 5G, more so than simply greater speed. That where some claim they have launched 5G before and private networks, it will fail. The risk is that if could be become a key marketing tool of standards have even been ratified.” it tries to create a jack-of-all-trades, it will likely promoting 5G.” Perhaps with this in mind, 3GPP in February end up as master-of-none. 5G has huge potential - Mann also highlights the need to involve 2017 unveiled a logo for 5G, which can be used but also needs a dose of pragmatism, given that it other industries such as health, energy and for both Rel-15 and Rel-16 specifications. is running alongside a variety of adjacent utilities in developing a 5G vision and inputting In a way, 5G will entail revolution, but it will technologies that look like potential disruptors.” into standards. “For operators, such engagement also be about evolution. For instance, 5G will not Anand Gonuguntla, co-founder and CEO of is vital to establish early business models and replace 4G. It is designed to co-exist and many of Centina Systems, agrees that, historically, the could create opportunities to establish the fundamental building blocks for 5G will come mobile industry has perhaps tried to get too far competitive advantage.” from the evolution of today’s 4G LTE networks. ahead of market realities. “But, the other thing Nicolas Ott at Arqiva, admits that 5G will “Operators will need to identify optimal that’s historically accurate is that with the struggle to live up to the hype - at least early on. investment timing for 5G networks to support migration to previous generations, the use cases “It’s being heralded as the mother of all solutions, services that can operate on 4G+ networks,” says weren’t always spelled out. So, with 5G the same but it’s unlikely that all of these promises will be Chris Cave, director, R&D, InterDigital, which is questions are coming around, and maybe ‘killer delivered, or at least in 5G initial phases. However involved in the system design, prototyping and app’ is kind of an antiquated term.” of those promises you can be almost certain that standardisation of 5G systems. ultrafast mobile broadband and probably 4G LTE networks continue to evolve and will Build it and they will come? improved latency will be fulfilled. It will be be capable, in the 3GPP Release 15-16 timeframe, Within all these stated opportunities, mobile transformational and you’ll see a wider divide of addressing a large number of use cases and network operators (MNOs) will need to identify between winners and losers after it’s happened.” requirements that have been defined for 5G. new and profitable business models for deploying “5G is indeed very ambitious in its objective to new services. Standards timeline support such a broad set of use cases. In our view, Dr Yamany sees 5G as the next industrial There is no official definition yet of what makes this will work itself out through the ‘phasing’ of revolution in terms of automation. “Automation 5G, but it is taking shape. The ITU will ratify the 5G, for both standardisation and commercial will be the business model that drives 5G,” he standard in 2020, with a lot of pre-standard trials deployment,” reckons Cave. argues, noting that CTOs of Tier 1 MNOs like and momentum in place as MNOs and vendors Vodafone and Orange have solid business plans jostle for positioning. Nokia and Ericsson count 5G technologies on how they will use 5G technology. As a result, more than 75 5G projects between them alone, A number of key changes are expected on the he points out we won’t see a wide range but a very and that’s without mentioning other equipment mobile infrastructure side for 5G, taking in specific, very individually business-model heavyweights like Huawei. Different companies constituent technology parts like beamforming, orientated deployment of 5G. In this sense, he and regions have different priorities in terms of massive MIMO, small cells and dense networks suggests, MNOs have learned from their which features should be standardised when. with intelligence moved to the edge. experience with 4G/LTE, which failed to generate “Our target is to commercialise 5G during next All the vendors CSI spoke to see virtualised incremental ARPUs. year and we are on track regarding that target,” NFV and SDN as key building blocks for 5G Others aren’t so convinced. “The business case notes Nokia’s Elliott. networks. Both 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) is unproven and the user-case situation is quite A key activity that is taking place now is the and Core Network (CN) architecture and frankly a bit of a mess. At the moment, there standardisation of 5G radio access and core protocols are being designed in 3GPP under the simply aren’t the applications that require a 5G network technologies. With the aim of submitting assumption that they could be deployed using network,” reckons Kester Mann at analyst firm a candidate radio technology to the IMT-2020 NFV/SDN concepts in order to enable more CCS Insight. process that was established by the ITU-R, 3GPP flexible deployment options for operators. “There’s an awful lot of potential applications has started the standardisation of a new access In theory at least, NFV/SDN together with touted by 5G that actually the evolution of 4G technology named 5G New Radio (NR). The first network slicing, will handle these diversity of networks is perfectly capable of dealing with,” he phase of 5G NR specifications - 3GPP Release 15 requirements that comes with 5G, with networks continues. “Ideas like autonomous cars, drone - is expected to complete in 2018, allowing for themselves becoming more flexible and fluid. deliveries and remote surgery are all well and early commercial deployment in the 2020 The point of slicing is especially important in good but that’s very much in the long run and do timeframe. The second part - Phase 2 Rel 16 - is 5G, as it allows for multiple virtual networks each they create a genuine business case?” expected to complete in late 2019, allowing for with a specific level of service running on the

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 21

20-23_5G.indd 2 13/02/2017 11:40:44 5G

and public-private partnerships, chief among them the EU-formed 5G Public-Private Partnership Association. Within 5GPP, there are some 20 projects taking place focusing on all different types of applications and approaches, albeit with M2M and automation firmly in mind. Europe is very keen to leverage the 5G system to a higher degree than was done with 4G, argues Ericsson’s Basu. “Europe’s ambition is to on-board industries very early. We see initiatives such as METIS, Horizon 2020 and 5G for Europe which include industries, universities and operators. The ambition is bigger than just a consumer perspective.” But Bubley at Disruptive Analysis does not mince his words in his own assessment of the practical challenges involved. “The European 5G community seems to be seduced by academia and the promise of lots of complex network-slicery same hardware infrastructure, which in turn will that are capable of tracking the health and and equally-dubious edge-computing visions. It’s allow 5G networks to satisfy Dr Yamany’s performance of this dynamic network,” believes much more interested in the (late, uncertain- paradox of high broadband and low latency. Gonuguntla at Centina. revenue) IoT use-cases rather than fixed-access “Network slicing will fundamentally change the and mobile broadband. way we look at provisioning services,” points Will Europe lag behind? “Fixed-access 5G won’t need complex network- out Elliott. Each region is looking at 5G in a different way, slicing & NFV cores to be useful, as it can be Additionally, a 5G architecture is designed to depending on their needs. Trial activities are functionally similar to other forms of broadband accommodate different types of access currently more intense and timelines are more access. It’s a lot simpler, and a lot faster-to-market. technologies, which includes non-3GPP ones like aggressive in markets such as Japan, Korea, China “In other words, it’s missing the boat. By the WiFi. Fixed access will also be included in and the US than in the rest of the world. time the EU, the European operators and delivering the increased capacity to meet demand. Asia has taken an early lead, with a strong European research institutions get their 5G act “After all, the application experience is always push to showcase 5G technology at key together, we’ll have had a repeat of 4G, with the more important that the access it is delivered on,” international events. The winter and summer US, Korea and Japan leading the way.” notes Ericsson’s Basu. Olympics in South Korea and Japan in 2018 and Nokia’s Elliott is, naturally, somewhat more “The line between what is wireline and wireless 2020 are driving pre-commercial trials and early optimistic. “At the end of the day, it is not only will very soon literally disappear,” adds Dr deployments in late 2017 and into 2018. about who is first but mainly who is able to Yamany. “We are seeing Ethernet, transport and The US market is looking at a very specific generate most business out of 5G and who can backhaul fundamentally change.” segment of 5G, which is fixed wireless in order to generate most impact of the entire economy. And These elements together are expected to create stave off competition from cable. The first this phase has not even begun.” an architecture that looks and behaves much deployments there are also expected by the end of differently than previous generations. this year, with AT&T planning to launch pre-5G Spectrum fragmentation “We have a system view on 5G where radio services in Austin and Indianapolis offering Whatever happens gloablly, spectrum allocation and core assets will evolve at the same time. It is theoretical speeds of up to 400Mbps initially and and harmonisation are widely perceived as key, a merger of the building practices of telecom, IT 1Gbps thereafter through the use of carrier including the need for unlicensed frequencies. 5G and media industries, embracing both mobile and aggregation. The telco (which aims to explore 5G will require significantly more spectrum than is fixed access, data centre and cloud base core signal coverage for the 28GHz, 39GHz, and sub- currently available. The three ranges are Sub-1 networks, micro service architectures from the 6GHz bands) is involved in a strategic game of GHz, 1-6 GHz and above 6 GHz depending on media world, and more horizontal and 5G chess with rival Verizon. the use case. programmable platforms than ever before,” In Europe, meanwhile, MNOs appear a lot Although there has been significant progress explains Basu. He belives that with a 5G system more conservative and will likely deploy new 5G towards 5G spectrum identification approach the industry can address a bulk of technology in phases in line with commercial internationally (namely in ITU-R), it is still not critical and mass scale use cases. demand for new services. There is nonetheless a entirely clear which spectrum bands will be used “Strategically, you’ve got to think differently lot of engagement in trials, pilots and projects, above 6 GHz in various regions around the globe, about managing that, and getting systems in place with a big focus on cross-industry participation notes InterDigital’s Cave.

22 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

20-23_5G.indd 3 13/02/2017 11:41:10 5G

The US operators have freed up around the community tracking progress and actively 28Ghz band to trial and use. So have their South contributing to 3GPP activities in 5G. 5G in the UK Korean counterparts like SK Telecom, including The EBU, which has been critical of mobile’s As part of the UK government’s 5G research above 30Ghz for high bandwidth purposes. spectrum demands in the past, ran a consultation initiatives, the country’s Ordnance Survey As 28Ghz is taken up by the satellite industry process with its members in 2016 and in (OS) is to lead a consortium developing in Europe, operators are looking at 3-6Ghz for November published a report identifying the what is being labelled a groundbreaking low latency applications, using different access opportunities 5G presents for A/V distribution, as planning and mapping tool that will be technologies including microwave. media consumption on mobile devices continues instrumental for the national rollout of 5G European MNOs may have access to 25Ghz to increase year on year, both in terms of viewing technology. It will determine the prime and 32GHz frequencies, which are in the process hours and bandwidth consumed. locations to place the radio antennae or of being identified, as well as harmonised 700Mhz “More than any previous generation of mobile access points necessary to enable a 5G spectrum used by incumbent broadcasters. technology, 5G is drawing in a broad constituency network. The intelligent modelling tool will “5G is really an open vessel into which of industry interest and media is very well be trialled first in the city of Bournemouth, everyone pours their hopes and dreams. The only represented,” says Ericsson’s Plunkett and if successful it could be shared with realistic way to make this spectrum available is Ericsson reckons 5G will enable “live TV at other countries as they develop their own 5G through aggressive sharing, through the use of a scale”, while in a recent report Strategy Analytics networks. The aim is to deploy 5G quickly collection sensing, location monitoring and similarly recommends it is time to include TV and efficiently and turn the UK into a 5G database technologies,” argues out Kalpak Gude, delivery as an ‘anchor’ use case for 5G. and digital leader. president of Dynamic Spectrum Alliance. “The emergence of 5G TV would represent a While the 3.4-3.8 GHz band is identified “The standard is catching up but there are so further stage in the convergence of media and as a ‘primary’ band to provide capacity for many flavours of 5G I don’t know how we will communications. It would also raise important 5G services in the UK, the 24.25-27.5 GHz standardise that and have ubiquitous 5G services questions relating to the roles of different band is described by Ofcom as a ‘pioneer’ across the entire planet,” agrees Dr Yamani. ecosystem players and the future structure of the millimetre-wave spectrum for higher capacity “With spectrum not yet completely defined, you media value chain,” says Strategy’s David Mercer. services. “The choice of 700 MHz, 3.4 to 3.8 can imagine the headaches all of these handset “For 5G to become a viable TV platform, other GHz and 26 GHz will create the best and chip manufacturers are thinking about.” emerging network technologies need to be opportunity for the UK to benefit from the That’s where potential fragmentation could deployed, improving the overall capacity and first wave of 5G equipment,” said Ofcom. arise. Equally important, the higher bands will get suitability of the network for TV-like services. Arqiva, the UK communications the support from the major handset Realistically it is likely to be beyond the next infrastructure company, also sees huge manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung. decade (2030+) before 5G TV becomes as opportunities in outdoor small cells With regards to these handsets, as 5G will important as existing platforms in terms of proliferation, in macro sites densification, support a broader range of radio spectrum and market penetration, but we could see regional and in the possible emergence of 5G fixed new coding schemes, devices will need be success stories over the course of the next wireless access to complement fibre where it designed to take advantage of these improvements, decade which will help to demonstrate its will become uneconomical. according to Steve Plunkett, CTO, Broadcast and commercial viability.” “We’re very excited about it. We’re Media Services, Ericsson. “From a media In the meantime, the satellite industry is keen working with Ofcom to explain the positive perspective, increased support for multicast to push the message that satellite has a big role to implications of 5G as the government needs modes within devices will offer more flexibility play in 5G and IoT. Satellite body ESOA to take bold decisions now to allow 5G to and capacity for live events.” published a position paper arguing that a win-win flourish in future,” says Nicolas Ott, MD solution can be found that allows terrestrial and telecoms & M2M at Arqiva. 5G TV: what about satellite, cable? satellite 5G services to cooperate. Indeed, satellite According to Ott, the radius of a small With regards to media, is 5G a threat or an already delivers many services promised by 5G cell is typically around 250 metres and may opportunity to broadcast, and what role will it and the growth in High Throughput (HTS) decrease with use of higher frequencies. “So play? A somewhat unsatisfying answer is that it is systems delivering terabits of connectivity when you look at a major city, London being too early to tell, but probably a little of both. worldwide, so it would almost be rude to ignore. an example, you might need as many as 5G NR is being designed with the requirement Ericsson’s Basu further notes that the HAPS 500,000 small cells”. to natively efficiently support existing 4G (high-altitude platform station) is showing a Arqiva is, in fact, currently rolling out Multicast/Broadcast services, notes Cave. strong interest to start using 4G and 5G in small cells in London, and the amount of The broadcast industry has enjoyed a somewhat their ecosystems. small cells that would need to be added chequered relationship with mobile, but has These are still early days on the road to 5G and would be a significant jump from current identified 5G as an important enabler for future developments will almost certainly occasionally figures. “So there is a very interesting media services, with standards bodies, trade stall on the way. But, whatever form it eventually opportunity there,” says Ott. associations, media organisations and the vendor takes, get ready for a 5G future.

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 23

20-23_5G.indd 4 13/02/2017 11:41:51 Q&A Q&A Taking CDNs to the next level We spoke to Jon Alexander from Level 3 about the company’s plans for growth and how it aims to carry more broadcast content over its network

with our customers, it made a lot of sense for us of the network, we are in a strong positon of to go down the same path as well. owning many of the underlying elements that help facilitate the CDN business. Given the three CSI: How would you say the CDN landscape largest cost components of a CDN – the servers, has changed since the start of the century? network and data centres – we really have an Is it a case of evolution or revolution? advantage with the last two. So some of our JA: That’s a good question. There have been competitors may be feeling the pressure where we step changes but the pace of growth in that have more advantage in ownership economics. market is pretty phenomenal, even if there hasn’t been acceleration. We have grown our CSI: I guess then you would distance network between 60-80% year-on-year. It’s yourself from the ‘spray-and-pray’ approach been almost ten years now that we’ve been given to your competitors. Jon Alexander growing at that pace and there’s no sign of JA: We wouldn’t call it spray-and-pray, there’s a that slowing down. lot of science that goes into it. Within Level 3, Key drivers behind that are not just OTT we have a robust planning organisation that looks CSI: Give us a quick company update to video, but also increasingly we’ve been at all the layers of our network. We plan from start with. seeing gaming driving peak traffic levels that fibre in the ground, the IP equipment that sits on Jon Alexander: I run the media business for are even bigger than large video events. When top of that, the CDN servers on top of that, all Level 3. This includes the CDN network as well a new patch or game is released, it can drive of the interconnections with last-mile network, as a separate product called Vyvx, our broadcast terabits of traffic pushed out to millions of data centre connectivity power and cooling video transmission service. Those services are users pretty quickly. In terms of eSports or infrastructure… if we’re looking into expanding bringing the two worlds together – with the rise of online gaming, companies like Twitch were into a new market, we’re really looking from the OTT, we see those products are getting closer regularly delivering to audiences of a million ground up. We have to be very rigorous and we together and we see we are well placed to help our concurrent users even five years ago. have developed good prediction models based customers take the traditional broadcast content Broadcasters have now overtaken that. All on demands placed on the internet. and move it online. It made a lot of sense to the connected devices are driving those put those groups together and we’ve aligned trends as well. CSI: How have broadcasters’ demands our engineering, operations and development changed over the years in terms of CDN teams together as well; sharing the expertise CSI: How much of a concern is and data centre requirements? between those worlds. commoditisation in the CDN market? JA: It’s a little different for every broadcaster. Satellite used to be the only way of moving JA: As with any network service or hardware, It comes down to their specific culture, if you broadcast quality video around. The 1990 Super there is price compression. It runs typically will. For instance, some have a strong internal Bowl was our first major event, and we’ve carried around 10% y-o-y. We see the same thing in the IP technology team and like to do things in-house. it every year on the Vyvx network – that’s our transit business, voice and other markets we Others want more of a managed service with a marquee event we launched with and have operate. It is something we are constantly looking usage-based model. This influences their decision. supported ever since. at working out how to bring our cost down in line It’s not a one-size-fits-all.What I would say is that We acquired the CDN business in 2007 from with that. Fortunately, so are silicon, networking the online media part of broadcast was an Savvis but that business goes back to 1996. So a equipment and other components built into underfunded side project 10 years ago, whereas long history with separate development paths and our costs structure. That point around now it’s a central part and has seen as a huge we only really brought them together commoditisation of bandwidth keeps coming up growth driver for broadcasters. in 2012 inside Level 3. in relation to CDNs, and this is one of the As we started to see more OTT and convergence advantages that Level 3 has. With our ownership CSI: Can providers such as Level 3 play

24 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

24-25_Level_3_Q&A.indd 1 06/02/2017 14:05:41 Q&A

more of a role in terms of tacking DRM maybe or other access controls put in Apple also won’t allow any apps to be published growing online piracy threats such as place, and as it comes onto the CDN, we get that don’t deliver encrypted video. live OTT sports? involved in protecting those when delivering JA: We definitely have a role to play. It’s not to consumers. CSI: On a general level, what technologies a problem we can solve alone; there’s an or techniques are you looking to help deliver ecosystem we fit into. Within our products, we CSI: Are you seeing a rise in encrypted high bandwidth services like 4K UKD have security controls, access and authorisation content as Netflix and others move more and VR? mechanisms to make sure content goes to the toward this type of traffic? JA: Again, it’s more incremental rather than right people. We make sure we protect the JA: We have seen a huge increase in requests revolutionary. The way we deliver video today content on our network and that it’s not from our customers to deliver the video over an is primarily over TCP, using HTP as the leaking out. For premium events like the Super encrypted transport, so using SSL or TSL transmission protocol. On top of that, the Bowl with huge global audiences, protecting encryption. Over the last six months, there’s majority of video we deliver is formatted as HSL that content is obviously key. There’s very been a 10x increase in the amount of encrypted and encoded as MPEG-4/H.264. New codecs much a layered approach to that, from content that we are delivering. A lot of that is such as HEVC and new formats like MPEG- acquisition, contribution in mezzanine format, driven by browser vendors like Google, Apple DASH are coming along to make delivery more and as that moves through the processing chain and Mozilla, who are now preferring encrypted efficient. More fundamentally, there are new and gets encoded for broadcast and online content. If video delivered to Chrome for instance versions of HTTP like HTTP/2, which make distribution, it then gets encrypted, wrapped with is not encrypted, it will generate warnings. transmission more efficient, reduce some of

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 25

24-25_Level_3_Q&A.indd 2 06/02/2017 14:05:57 Q&A

get so close to the end user devices. The lowest common denominator affects our service and “Over the last six the challenge can be in that final piece we months, there’s been a don’t control. So new technologies that make networks perform better are helpful for us. 5G 10x increase in the is not a silver bullet, but that kind of investment will keep us on our path and stay ahead amount of encrypted of demand. content that we are CSI: Finally, what’s on the horizon for the overheads and help us support higher bitrate Level 3? streams at a high level of resiliency. UDP is delivering. A lot of JA: We announced a service last year called also an alternative protocol to TCP that has ‘Linear Channel Distribution,’ which is a some advantages in delivering very high that is driven by Vyvx service. The idea there is around facilitating bit-rate video. the distribution of broadcast television, and None of these are a silver bullet for jumping to browser vendors.” we’ve actually launched the service with Fox a 4K or 8K stream, but in aggregate, all these in the U.S. Traditionally, Fox has distributed changes - in conjunction with faster network CSI: Away from technology, how do you see all of its programming via satellite to MVPD, infrastructure and inter-connections with last-mile the CDN market evolving over the next five MSO and cable customers. Fox wanted to deliver ISPs in more locations to bring the content closer to 10 years? a high quality mezzanine feed and richer – all of that together is how we are enabling JA: As a CDN provider, we are very bullish on metadata to describe the video and allow more those higher quality experiences. We did testing the market. There are two fundamental trends advanced ad replacement, supporting things like with VR streams in 2016 and customers were driving the industry: growth in OTT consumption local blackouts, which wasn’t possible over their typically looking at a 15-25 Mbps stream, which and OTT replacing broadcast; and IoT. We will traditional broadcast means. With the LCD is at the top end of what most networks can see more devices connected to the internet that service we launched, we are providing a fibre- sustain. The issue we are seeing is not the will require software and security updates and based transmission; Fox publishes all of that backbone, but more from the last mile perspective content pushed to them. Both will need programming onto our network and we provide and inside the home; the last 10 feet is often more CDN services. the ability for those MVPD platforms to subscribe the bottleneck. We feel good about our position in the market to that content and pull that content over fibre- That’s the path we are on now. Twenty years and our opportunity to scale up. We have seen base connections into headends or ago, none of the things we are talking about now the overall market growing at roughly 18-20 processing centres. was possible. In five years time, we will deliver percent over the last several years, and that A lot of the early growth we’ve seen in that even more. We will continue to see incremental rate will continue going forward. service is from the OTT services, primarily in improvement, as a lot of technologies exist the U.S. and Europe. We launched with Fox and already that will get us where we need to be in CSI: What impact do you see 5G having on added several other broadcasters to that platform. five or even 10 years. We just need to continue your business? Our goal is to make that the default location to investing to keep up with demand. JA: Part of our challenge is that we can only get access to broadcast content.

26 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

24-25_Level_3_Q&A.indd 3 06/02/2017 14:06:27 VoD

What next for VoD?

With some high profi le SVoD closures in 2016, David Adams asks what the future holds for video-on-demand services

he era of VHS owners, from broadcasters to video popularity sports organisations, are in the 1980s developing direct to consumer seems a very long (D2C) SVoD propositions. time ago now, Recent launches include but the pleasure BritBox, an ad-free SVoD of being able to service being launched in the Tget hold of the content you want US by BBC Worldwide and ITV to watch quickly and easily has to showcase the best content a universal, timeless appeal. This produced by both broadcasters. is part of the reason why online Nor does the emergence subscription video-on-demand 44 per cent will be in the US, which will provide of OTT SVoD seem (SVoD) services appear to have such a bright 52 per cent of its predicted $13.14 billion to have been a purely negative development for future. Or – to be precise – some revenue. This is despite the fact that its impact in all payTV providers. For example, research of them do. Asia, which may by then be the fastest growing released by Decipher in December 2016 suggests The number of homes with a subscription to SVoD region, is expected to be limited. that SVoD usage in pay TV households in the some kind of SVoD service should reach 428 Meanwhile, since December 2016, Amazon’s UK increased from 10 per cent to 45 per cent million, across 200 countries, by 2021, compared SVoD services have also been available almost over the past four years, while the whole pay to about 248 million at the end of 2016, everywhere; and Amazon is also investing heavily TV base increased from 61 per cent to 69 per according to Digital TV Research. Global SVoD in original content. Further global competition for cent of the UK population. Top tier pay TV revenues grew from $12.2 billion in 2015 to Netflix may soon come from other technology subscribers seemed to be buying SVoD services $17.46 billion in 2016; and may reach $32.18 giants: in January 2017 it was reported that Apple at a faster rate than subscribers to cheaper billion in 2021. is planning to produce original TV and movie pay TV packages. Any SVoD strategy is shaped by and depends content to offer subscribers to its music services The same research suggested that households upon the interaction of factors including country- by the end of 2017, while Google is also expected without pay TV subscriptions were less willing specific consumer preferences, regulatory to continue to invest in original programming to to subscribe to SVoD: take up of such services conditions and the existing TV landscape within a add to Google Play services and catalogues. had increased only from nine per cent to 28 country. But the emergence of global SVoD “I think what Netflix and Amazon have done per cent. The study suggests that households services has had a significant impact in some means that the market changed dramatically in favouring free TV but also using OTT apps markets. In November 2016, Canadian SVoD 2016,” says Mihai Crasneanu, CEO at VoD and SVoD were not a large enough group service Shomi, a joint venture run by cable content service provider Grey Juice Lab. to affect the pay TV segment to a providers Rogers Communications and Shaw In addition, a growing number of content significant degree. Communications, ended operations. It had around 700,000 subscribers, compared to the Understanding local audiences 5.2 million households in Canada with a “What Netflix and Local knowledge can also play an important role Netflix subscription. in helping broadcasters and other players develop It is now ten years since Netflix launched its Amazon have done viable SVoD services that can prosper alongside streaming service. With a business model now Netflix and other global players, says Tom based in large part on original content, since means that the Williams, chief executive of content delivery January 2016 its services have been available in market changed specialist Ostmodern. almost every country on earth (exceptions include “Established broadcasters know they can’t China, Syria, North Korea and the territory of dramatically in compete with these content giants with their Crimea). Digital TV Research suggests Netflix endless budgets, and must instead coexist with will have 118 million subscribers worldwide by 2016.” them,” says Williams. “Localisation, 2021, 27.5 per cent of the global total, although personalisation and content discovery are

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 27

27-29_VoD.indd 1 10/02/2017 15:44:56 VoD Source: ArthurStock / Shutterstock, Inc. / Shutterstock, ArthurStock Source:

personalisation and content discovery are programming, content in a specific language, with OTT services going direct to the consumer, all concepts these players can and should use non-mainstream sports, or telenovelas. A you’ve got Netflix and Amazon, you’ve got to adapt and thrive. number of technology companies offer solutions “It’s important for VoD services to understand enabling delivery of D2C services via multiple the changing behaviours of these local audiences. platforms and devices. In January 2017 Turner’s “Many consumers In Brazil, for example, evening TV has in the Cartoon Network App was adapted as a cross- past been dominated by telenovelas but in platform app using the You.i Engine One solution, now have multiple recent years, a new trend has emerged in which which is pre-integrated with widely-used younger people increasingly turn away from online video platform backends. OTT subscriptions. linear broadcast towards OTT content like US Iddo Shai, director of product marketing sitcoms or dramas and short-form content on for OTT at online video management firm That’s a technical YouTube or Facebook. Pay TV operators Kaltura, suggests that many smaller companies need to respond to this change by providing now have more options in terms of template challenge for the SVoD services tailored to these preferences applications and end to end solutions provided that does not replicate the operator’s cable by his company and others. “This really industry, but also a offering.” With the right strategy, he suggests, lowers the barrier to entry for the smaller incumbent operators and broadcasters companies,” he says. big commercial may be ideally placed to capture SVoD Overall then, the picture is complex for market share. consumers and for industry strategists alike. opportunity.” “There are a lot of OTT platforms,” says Peter Niche and not-so-niche D2C services Docherty, founder and chief technology officer VoD broadcasters, pay TV operators with an Other service providers are focusing on a at content recommendation technology provider OTT VoD arm and other OTT VoD services on particular niche of content, such as children’s Think Analytics. “You’ve got content owners top of that. “Many consumers now have multiple

28 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

27-29_VoD.indd 2 13/02/2017 11:00:39 VoD

remember where everything is. That’s a technical form of business model,” says Munford. “SVoD challenge for the industry, but also a big is seen as a premium service, so if you introduce commercial opportunity. But it all comes back a quality impact you reduce the engagement to the content. You’ve really got to make sure an individual has with the service. The you have the right kind of content; and that responses suggested many people would stop means you’ve got to understand your customers.” using the service or cancel subscriptions if [QoS “There is a battle underway,” says Kai-Christian problems] persisted.” Borchers, founder and managing director at This underlines the need for a strong multiscreen service software provider 3 Screen infrastructure. One option that successful Solutions (3SS). “The key will be to use analytics SVoD providers may consider taking in future in the smartest way, adapting the user interface is – to some extent – to emulate Netflix, which and content display for users, with all of the has effectively created its own CDN capability cloud and big data abilities in the background; by placing video servers within operators’ to constantly adapt SVoD services to become premises rather than relying on CDN more efficient and attractive to end users.” service providers. However, it is still generally the case that Nivedita Nouvel, vice-president, marketing, at the best way for a service to be found by a video delivery technology specialist Broadpeak, potential viewer is through some form of EPG. notes that it is among the technology specialists “When these services are available as part that can offer equivalent capabilities and of a TV service, usage is much higher,” says efficiencies to smaller content owners and Jeff Miller, president and CEO at cloud- service providers. technology content delivery provider ActiveVideo. Cloud technologies are also likely to play a “The real challenge for those services is how more important role within SVoD infrastructures, to be discovered.” particularly for smaller service providers, suggests Ultimately, the niche service providers will says Sam Orton-Jay, sales and marketing director depend on different forms of aggregation at video delivery specialist Simplestream. mechanism, whether this comes in the form “Cloud makes it easier for a niche broadcaster, of a specific consumer technology platform or or content owner to launch SVoD,” he says. device, or the EPGs of larger service operators. “We’re able to deploy services for some of these Source: ArthurStock / Shutterstock, Inc. / Shutterstock, ArthurStock Source: small content owners very rapidly and at low Redefining service quality cost. We have services running with less But just capturing eyeballs and good than 2,000 subscribers, very profitably.” content may still not be enough: the last piece of the strategy must be ensuring a Getting a slice of the SVoD pie very high quality of service (QoS). Ian Munford, But even with strong technology, a very good director of product marketing, media solutions, service and great content, there is still no at Content Delivery Network (CDN) and guarantee of success. “In the next couple of cloud services provider Akamai offers a few years there will be attrition of smaller SVoD details about research commissioned by the players,” says Chris Alner, business development For consumers, even in markets where company that will be published shortly, in director, satellite and media, at Arqiva. “It will service providers fail to develop genuinely which the company sought to quantify the be increasingly hard for them to make meaningful effective, personalised content discovery/ impact of good and poor quality TV experiences returns in terms of the cost of content and recommendation capabilities, competition on specific business models. It measured of running the platforms, and the number in the SVoD market should continue to consumer responses to a range of VoD of customers they can get.” encourage the development of ever-improving experiences, created for the purposes of the Yet this is no reason for any content owner SVoD services, with a growing range of content. research to avoid any brand bias. The to give up on the idea of getting a piece of the Interactivity features may well continue to be researchers tested the responses to free ad-based SVoD pie, says Matt Nelson, director of strategic developed, but service providers must never VoD and SVoD services in standard definition alliances at You.i TV. “This market is so huge forget that, ultimately, it is the quality of content form; and in HDR/4K with very high and is only going to keep growing,” he says. that decides the fate of any video service, says quality audio. “By 2020, 95 per cent of all traffic on the Docherty at Think Analytics. “It all comes “We found that the SVoD services actually internet is going to be video. Higher bandwidth back to the content in the end,” he says. “It had a much higher propensity to be impacted services for consumers is only going to drive doesn’t matter how cheap your service is if in terms of viewer engagement than any other more video.” there’s nothing interesting to watch.”

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 29

27-29_VoD.indd 3 10/02/2017 15:45:15 Artificial Intelligence

the same data (see www.image-net. Advanced neural org/challenges/LSVRC/). Such extraordinary advances have been possible mostly thanks networks take shape to technical and intellectual advances that have allowed the Machine learning and AI systems are set to become a development of very large Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) coupled with dominant feature across the media ecosystem. How is the availability of a huge quantity of data AI being applied to media in practice today and in to train the networks.

planning for tomorrow, asks Adrian Pennington Following the money An unprecedented amount of money rtificial Intelligence Although alive in concept since the 1940s, subsequently poured into machine was arguably the hottest AI began its renaissance around 2010 by learning research, led by the largest internet topic at the CES with being applied to a number of problems companies - Google, Facebook, Apple, IBM, products from Amazon that had been extremely hard to solve: Twitter - to develop the software and hardware Alexa voice controlled object recognition, voice recognition and tools to support the design and deployment speakers to toothbrushes text translation to name but a few. To illustrate of ANNs. boasting the new capability. the scale of the progress, the performance Equity funding of AI-focused startups reached AIn media, such systems are already being used of object recognition algorithms on the an all-time high in the second quarter of 2016 to develop new compression schemes and benchmark ImageNet database went from an of more than $1 billion, according to researcher better analyse big data for services like error rate of 28% in 2010 to less than 3% in CB Insights. There were 121 funding rounds for content recommendation. 2016, lower than the human error rate on such startups, representing more than $7.5bn of investment. Among the investments, Facebook acquired FacioMetrics in November. This spin-off from Carnegie Mellon University developed IntraFace, a technology that can detect seven different emotions on peoples’ faces. Speculation is that the acquisition will feed into Facebook’s work on life-like avatars that convey emotions via ‘VR emoji’. In August, Intel bought machine learning start-up Nervana Systems and in October Samsung acquired AI software developer Viv Labs [http://viv.ai], with plans to equip its next Galaxy S smartphones with a Siri-like digital assistant. In September, Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft formed the nonprofit Partnership on AI to advance public understanding of the subject and conduct research on ethics and best practices. “The reality [is] that every person, business and nation must deal with the emergence of AI as a competitive advantage,” says James Canton, CEO at the Institute for Global Futures. “Those that have it will gain a vital global strategic advantage over others.” If that sounds like overkill, here’s Google chief

30 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

30-31_AI.indd 2 10/02/2017 15:49:03 Artificial Intelligence

exec Sundar Pichai; “We are at a seminal moment explicitly programmed”. in computing. We are evolving from a mobile-first You need robust ML built on ANNs to an AI-first world.” Speaking at the launch of before you get to AI but currently there are Google’s Pixel phone in October, Pichai said that few true mainstream AI applications outside the company’s shift to AI is as fundamental “as of autonomous cars and, to a lesser extent, the invention of the Web or the smartphone.” virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri and the “When I look at where computing is heading, I Google Assistant. see how machine learning and artificial “More complex types of cognitive technology — intelligence are unlocking capabilities that were neural or deep learning networks, natural unthinkable only a few years ago. This means that language processing, and algorithms — can the power of the software — the ‘smarts’ — really seem like black boxes even to the data scientists matter for hardware more than ever before.” who create them,” says Thomas Davenport, a professor in IT at Massachusetts’ Babson Augmented Intelligence College, co-founder of the International Institute Machine learning and AI are used for Analytics and a senior advisor to interchangeably, but in reality most so-called AI Deloitte Analytics. apps are productised machine learning (ML) “AI used to be relegated to only the fastest applications for which AI is a catch-all but supercomputers, but recent advances in software misleading phrase. ML is best understood as and the use of GPUs to process the algorithms learning machines and should be distinguished mean that the cost of AI assistance is no longer a from AI, or machines that think. AI is a branch of barrier to entry,” says Paul Turner VP, enterprise computer science attempting to build machines product management, Telestream. capable of intelligent behaviour, while Stanford “You can certainly imagine that AI systems University defines machine learning as “the will be able to analyse the actual content for science of getting computers to act without being metadata gathering. Given that metadata is key to automated workflows, this could vastly Most Active VC Investors In AI Startups expand our capability to ‘mine’ content for Q1’11 - Q2’16 other purposes.” Rank Investor IBM prefers to talk about augmented 1 Khosla Ventures intelligence. “It’s an approach which asks how AI supports decision making and demands a societal 2 Data Collective change in how we look at technology,” says Carrie 2 Intel Capital Lomas, IBM’s cognitive solutions and IoT It is targeting delivery of super fast “inferences 4 New Enterprise Associates executive. “Through personal devices like tablets and significantly reduced latency”, as demanded to all manner of items with sensors, the (industry by real-time services such as streaming video 4 Google Ventures as a whole) is taking in lots of data and categorisation in the cloud. 6 Plug and Play Ventures combining it with different types of information AI technologies will undoubtedly broadly 6 Horizons Ventures to enable a genuinely new understanding of impact the media sector at all stages, from media the world.” production to delivery. 6 Formation 8 IBM’s cognitive computer system Watson, The biggest corporations on the planet are 6 Andreessen Horowitz for example, has combined its Alchemy Language embedding predictive intelligence into everyday 6 Accel Partners APIs with a speech to text platform, to create apps to make all our lives easier. The most 11 Norwest Venture Partners a tool for video owners to analyse video – forming obvious examples are digital agents or chatbots IBM Cloud Video. It is able to scan social media like Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant, 11 GE Ventures in real time to monitor reactions to live Facebook M, and Microsoft Cortana. Siri, for 13 Samsung Ventures streaming events. example, acts as a personal assistant, using 13 Two Sigma Ventures Much of the ML and AI applications a CES voice processing. are built on Nvidia chipsets. Nvidia describes 13 Bloomerg Beta its TensorRT product as a “high performance Promising applications 13 Frost Data Capital neural network inference engine for production The bulk of AI’s potential, however, has still to 13 500 Startups deployment of deep learning applications”. reach the mainstream. Here are a few examples of

Source: CB Insights www.csimagazine.com February 2017 31

30-31_AI.indd 3 10/02/2017 15:50:16 Artificial Intelligence

the most promising applications that are being developed:

Accessibility. Automatic description of photos and movie scenes for the blind. Facebook delivered a first cut of this technology for static photos. Microsoft and Google have similar functionality in the works.

Subtitling. Automatic subtitles for hearing- impaired people, both from speech recognition and lip reading.

Content production. AI should not be confused with intelligent creation, yet even here the edges are being blurred. Editing software such as Magisto, with 80 million users, takes in raw GoPro or smartphone shot video and Source: CB Insights automates the process of editing and packaging it with a narrative timeline, tonal grade and movie scenes depending on target audience, The need for a human touch background music for consumers and even location, context, etc. While some AI critics imagine catastrophic marketeers facing huge demands on their scenarios, others like to imagine a future in time and too much video to process and Content creation. In the near future, AI which AI helps us all to be more productive publish online. methods will be used to create new content. The and constructive. A number of recent developments in ML first pioneering applications are already available. “Overall, end-users will benefit from the research will allow picture and movie content A documentary assembled by the Lumberjack AI increasing role of AI, in particular in interacting editing with Photoshop-like tools that edit system is hoped to be presented before the with the media,” says Berkes. “Virtual assistants conceptual elements of an image instead of SMPTE-backed Hollywood Professional will understand their preferences and respond individual pixels. It will soon be possible to Association (HPA) by 2018 and has already to vocal command, facilitating content discovery directly edit facial expressions. helped create Danish channel STV ‘s 69 x10’ from multiple sources. As traditional media episodes of semi-scripted kids series Klassen. becomes increasingly connected, AI will enable Ad insertion in movies. Mirriad, a London- In the more distant future, AI will be able content providers to interact with end-users. AI based startup, has developed an application for to generate new written and video content assistants will help consumers select personalised product placement (replacement or insertion) in on the fly, based on the interaction with camera angles for sport events and they will the user. deliver automatic summaries of the latest news and missed TV shows. “New ANN Content distribution. According to Berkes, He also predicts that AI will make creative new ANN techniques are being developed to tools accessible to everyone, assisting users in techniques are beat traditional encoding and decoding algorithms editing pictures and movies and creating musical for pictures and movies. “They will allow the compositions. being developed to transmission of high quality media content One fear is that AI will inevitably force humans beat traditional even in regions with low internet and mobile out of work. This was realised in Japan last month bandwidth,” he says. “ANNs are being used not when Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance replaced encoding and only to build better compression methods but 34 employees with IBM’s Watson. also to artificially clean up and increase the “You still need people to train Watson,” decoding algorithms resolution of transmitted images (known as emphasises Lomas. “That’s where the magic ‘super-resolution’; one example is from and specialism of creatives is of huge value. AI for pictures and London startup Magic Pony Technologies, has a huge opportunity in the creative space. It acquired by Twitter last June for $150m to doesn’t mean we don’t need creatives, it means movies.” reconstruct a HD video from a low-definition, they can move to higher level jobs and focus on compressed stream). being even more creative.”

32 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

30-31_AI.indd 4 10/02/2017 15:50:23 Data corner

Three sides to four-plays By Guy Bisson, Research Director, Source: Ampere Analysis Ampere Analysis

he cable business has subscription contacts, not far long been about service off satellite’s 23% and IPTV’s contracts and multi-play. 21%. Cable remains the biggest It was the cable industry paid TV platform at 33% of that first championed the contracts. Within the paid space, counting of contracts—or at least, terrestrial sits at just revenue generating units three per cent. (RGUs)—as a measure of its own success. Now OTT’s disproportionate Tthat the industry has embraced wireless in the impact within the TV sector form of mobile, four services make up the becomes crystal clear by this top-end bundle. measure, but being platform Bundles have been the bread and butter of the agnostic, it’s far more common infrastructure-led cable business for years. These for homes to take multiple days though it seems that all anyone talks about is OTT services than multiple Over-the-Top (OTT), a distribution freed from the paid services from more reins of infrastructure altogether. But, as more traditional providers. In that and more homes bundle multiple OTT services respect the figure can still be into their entertainment mix, the benchmarking of a little misleading. OTT subscriptions on a contract share basis Nonetheless, while there becomes more applicable. remains a strong ARPU disparity So, as operators outside the cable sector — the EU average for OTT increasingly launch triple or quad-play offerings, television monthly revenue per and with OTT ascending in the overall subscriber stands at €7.50 communications and entertainment mix, what’s against traditional pay TV’s €21 the reality of contract market share and is the — it becomes crystal clear how fuss over OTT justified? important multi-play as Taking three cuts of pan-European Union a core strategy could become. multi-play contract share is revealing. OTT Infrastructure-led operators barely makes a dent when measuring contracts launched multi-play services by service type (TV, broadband, telephony, to compete with one another, mobile) accounting for just three per cent of not with OTT. Historically, the market in the EU. This compares to 12% it is the pay TV business for traditional pay TV; 14% for fixed broadband that has not been subject to and a whopping 55% for mobile. commoditisation while bundled Looking instead at technology, mobile again communications services have dominates. Cable, DSL and PSTN are all roughly come under increasing equal in market share of contracts. at between price pressure. nine and 12%. Satellite’s share of EU multi-play But now that those TV contracts is just five per cent (5%) services face an increasing and OTT and IPTV are even at three per competitive threat — and if (and cent a piece. it’s a big if) OTT services cause So why all the fuss about OTT? For that a price adjustment in the wider we need to look at contract counts a third way… market for TV — those good old splitting paid TV subscription contracts and commoditising communications recalculating market share of subscriptions shows bundles might just come to that OTT accounts for one-fifth of all EU paid TV the rescue.

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 33

33_DataCorner.indd 3 10/02/2017 15:52:18 Mobile Video

essentially leading to faster Better streaming experience- streams. Moreover, to reduce the bandwidth for VR and 360 degree video, app at what cost? developers can implement tiling solutions aimed to Further video optimisation methods are needed improve immersive video quality, like the recently announced integrated for OTT to strive, says Ravid Hadar platform from Viaccess-Orca, Tiledmedia, Harmonic and Digital Immersion. he growing popularity of is led by the streaming services, their delivery High Dynamic Range (HDR) coding on lower streaming media turned impacts the entire ecosystem, further challenging resolution video can also contribute to smaller OTT video, that only a short the current video delivery infrastructure video files and lead to bandwidth reduction. Since while ago was considered capabilities. Although 4K streaming may seem HDR delivers wider range of color shades and a complimentary service, less challenging compared to broadcast, the greater luminance, HDR-enhanced content will into a multi-billion market. viewing experience is still very much constrained provide more vivid viewing experience, instead Nowadays, in addition to by users’ available bandwidth, due to large file of pushing enormous 4K files over congested OTT-only players like Netflix and Amazon, many sizes of such content. In addition, the networks, in many cases the combination of Tcarriers offer a streaming experience not only as a proliferation of live streaming and the Virtual 1080p with HDR can deliver better viewing complimentary “on-the-go” service to their primary Reality (VR) hype, made the networks even more experience than unstable 4K. cable/satellite TV subscription, but also as a congested, affecting end-users’ viewing experience, Of course there is an option to increase the stand-alone option. The entire industry looking to even in case of a low-res short clip. available bandwidth. Expending and building next- attract new audiences, while promising greater generation networks takes considerable amount variety of content and subscription packages, Balancing the cost vs quality tradeoff of financial resources and will take time. 5G higher resolution video and broadcast-like Network operators now find themselves in a networks are not expected to become mainstream streaming experience. conflict between delivering greater viewing in the next 5 to 7 years. experience to their subscribers and optimising the Increasing the capacity of existing fixed What’s choking our networks? costs of their operation, such as network networks, as well as using virtualisation With great promises, come even greater infrastructure upgrade. technologies to dynamically adapt the capacity expectations - today’s consumers expect their Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) streaming protocols for major events when needed (like the Olympics streaming experience to be great, regardless their were introduced also as a way to mitigate or Super Bowl live stream), can provide a timely location, time of day or devices they are using. As buffering at the tradeoff of video quality. Aimed and cost-effective response to the growing a result streaming video content providers, to eliminate buffering pauses, the implementation demand for OTT video. connected device manufacturers and the rest of of ABR eventually created a user experience More efficient CDN implementation will also the ecosystem, are looking into ways to perfect paradox in form of constant bitrate switches, that save costs and deliver better viewing experience. the viewing experience, by offering consumers tend to be more visible to the human eye with As ABR video files consist of multiple fragments higher resolution content, enhancing devices’ HDR and UHD 4K and in particular with VR. of different bitrates, using techniques that streaming capabilities and improving the delivery The viewers no longer always get the content minimize the number of files will lead to reduced techniques. But with more users streaming quality they have subscribed to, especially in case storage and smaller manifest files, leading to a content - the more challenging it is to deliver on premium UHD content plans. They expect more efficient CDN distribution. the promise of flawless and stable streams. flawless true 4K resolution but eventually receive There are measures, too, that can be taken While UHD 4K and HDR formats’ adoption HD, SD and on occasion even buffering. on the client side to increase bandwidth In order for the streaming to really thrive, the efficiency. Improving media players’ streaming OTT ecosystem will have to implement further logic will significant increase the QoE, as well optimisation methods and match the increasing as the integration of network congestion consumers’ expectations. management solutions. Bandwidth demand reduction can be achieved Streaming video, 4K, VR and ABR will only through more efficient encoding and compression continue to grow, but they need to work together technologies. Innovations in HEVC and other for OTT and connected devices purchasers to compression technologies that will continue receive the highest quality experience - both in the reduction in file sizes and at the same time content delivery and perceived value. will reduce the required computing power, Ravid Hadar, VP Product, Giraffic

34 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

34_Video_Optimisation.indd 2 10/02/2017 10:45:31 DTG

we look forward to TV going from strength to 2017 – a pivotal year strength. While OTT viewing will grow it doesn’t mean it will be to the detriment of traditional linear broadcast viewing. Internationally, we are DTG’s Peter Sellar looks forward to what we can interested to see how ATSC 3.0 takes off. With expect this year, including VRIF and HbbTV LG announcing the launch of an ATSC TV for Korea is this likely to prompt other countries (such as the USA) to look at a switchover? Some predict this points to a move away from the transport stream with a new IP based hybrid broadcast world. Probably not something for 2017 but ATSC aren’t the only ones looking seriously at this. What we are looking forward to this year is that HbbTV looks set to be the standard for hybrid and interactive services in horizontal platforms. This will place the UK not only in-line with a growing number of European countries, but also at the forefront with regards to functionality such as UHD support for IP services. This is all due to the DTG working with our Members and Partners in the form of DUK and Freeview in capturing the Freeview Play HbbTV requirements for 2018 products in 016 was definitely a year of great experiences simple and interoperable for both D-Book 9, and then also these being adopted for change in which we saw 4K/ content producers and consumers. This came to Freeview HD in the future too. UHD launches, Freeview Play fruition at CES 2017 when the Virtual Reality and Freesat celebrating their Industry Forum (VRIF) was launched with the Mobile and wireless success and Virgin simplifying goal of encouraging the adoption of common, Our Future Wireless Technologies programme, TV, as well as dynamic growth in interoperable technical standards for end-to-end which incorporates 5G, brings together all VOD, Catch-Up and Hybrid TV. VR systems and plans to create voluntary best aspects of wirelessly delivered TV and video. 2The widespread adoption of HbbTV and practice guidelines and promote VR services One element of this programme is the Mobile mandating HEVC for IP HD services (as outlined and applications. These will certainly be needed Video Alliance (MVA) which is a DTG Working in the DTG’s D-Book 9 which was published in if it is to be widely adopted within the Group. We have looked at methods of optimising November 2016) provides a real opportunity for broadcast industry. unicast delivery, as well as quantifying and UHD content to be more widely distributed and Despite the fears of Brexit impact, the DTG describing the ‘quality of experience’ of the hopefully paves the way for broadcast to follow believes that 2017 will be a pivotal year from a mobile video viewer. Our experts have also looked in the very near future. The publication by Policy perspective and undoubtedly a year of extensively at LTE broadcast, which although DVB of the latest specification of Ultra HD major opportunity for our industry. The UK has unlikely to replace DTT, is a crucial optimisation (UHD-1 Phase 2) options for object and scene historically led innovation in TV, although some in the way live content is delivered to mobile based immersive audio profiles, also offers European states have recently made bold moves handsets. Consumers have shown that they have exciting potential. in the adoption of DVB-T2. Still many of our US an appetite for live events on mobile – and LTE However, what we didn’t see was 2016 and European digital, creative and television broadcast looks to be leading the way to do becoming the Year of Virtual Reality. After partners are currently looking to the UK to this at scale. discussion about whether VR was the next 3D innovate and lead. Where 2016 was a rollercoaster, all in all early in the year and stories about significant VR To expedite this the we are focusing on some 2017 is shaping up to be an exciting year investment in March, IBC 2016 really set the key initiatives for 2017 which have been designed for our industry. scene with much VR excitement and then to address the future of content delivery. These October 2016 became ‘VR Month’ with launches include: Advances in Broadcast & Hybrid; from Google Daydream, Oculus Touch and Advanced AV – UHD, VR & AR; The IP Future; Peter Sellar is Associate Director, Programme Delivery, Playstation VR. Wireless & Mobile Innovation; Spectrum the DTG The DTG has been heavily involved in an Changes; Content Innovation; and Data. industry initiative to help make new VR Our work on D-Book 10 is well underway and

www.csimagazine.com February 2017 35

35-DTG.indd 1 13/02/2017 13:58:05 AWARDS CEREMONY 15 September 2017 Amsterdam

The CSI Awards 2017 – Call for entries Deadline for entries: 12 May 2017

Established in 2003 the awards are among the most prestigious and competitive technology awards in the industry, designed to recognise and reward innovation and excellence in the cable, satellite, broadcast, IPTV, telco, broadband/OTT video, mobile TV and associated sectors.

NEW CATEGORY ANNOUNCED! Best 5G project or innovation

The mobile industry is on the cusp of a major transformation as fifth generation cellular technologies begin to appear over the next few years ahead of a widespread commercial rollout globally around the 2020 timeframe. These are expected to impact a range of other industry verticals, with trials ranging from smart parking to massive MIMO. This award category is open to companies and organisations that are involved in pre-standard 5G projects, solutions and strategies.

For the latest news and updates follow us @CSI_Magazine #CSIAwards

The CSI Categories

1. Best digital video processing technology 10. Best internet TV technology or service 2. Best cable IP solution 11. Best ultra HD TV technology or project 3. Best satellite IP solution 12. Best TV everywhere/multi-screen video 4. Best customer premise technology 13. Best social TV technology, service or application 5. Best monitoring or network management solution 14. Best data & analytics innovation 6. Best content protection technology 15. Best cloud/virtualisation innovation 7. Best content-on-demand solution 16. Best IoT product, technology or application 8. Best interactive TV technology or application 17. Best virtual reality innovation 9. Best mobile TV technology or service 18. Best 5G project or innovation - NEW CATEGORY

page thirty six CSI magazine • Awards www.csimagazine.com Awards 2017

36-37_Awards.indd 2 06/02/2017 12:40:09 AWARDS CEREMONY ENTER NOW

The CSI Awards 2017 will be taking place on Friday 15 September in Amsterdam. Join us at the 15th annual CSI awards to see this year's winners exclusively announced. The Awards ceremony will include drinks and canapés and will as always be a wonderful evening.

Date: Friday,15 September 2017

Timings: Why enter the CSI Awards? 6:00pm: Drinks Reception • Stand out against the competition 6:30pm: Awards Ceremony • Attract talent 7:15pm: Post Networking and Drinks • An opportunity to celebrate • Reward employees and motivate your team • Leverage your marketing - through PR and increased brand awareness • If you are shortlisted your company logo will feature at the awards ceremony attended by hundreds of the leading names in the industry.

Host of the CSI Awards 2017 The 2016 awards were hosted by specialist business presenter Nadine Dereza, and we are delighted that she will be back to host the 2017 CSI Awards.

ENTER NOW: www.csimagazine.com/awards

For awards or entry enquiries: For sponsorship enquiries: Danielle Devine John Woods Camilla Capece +44 (0)20 7562 2424 +44 (0)207 562 2421 +44 (0)207 7562 2438 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

page thirty seven CSI magazine • Awards Awards 2017 www.cable-satellite.com

36-37_Awards.indd 3 06/02/2017 12:40:37 Events diary 2017

Date Name Location Website

14-16 February FTTH Conference Marseille www.ftthconference.eu 27 February - 2 March Mobile World Congress Barcelona mobileworldcongress.com 28 February -2 March BVE London bvexpo.com

6-9 March Satellite 2017 Washington DC satshow.com 8-9 March Cable Congress Brussels cablecongress.com 13-15 March DVB World Vienna dvbworld.org 21-23 March CabSat Dubai cabsat.com 21-22 March HbbTV seminar Munich irt.de/en 23-25 March CCBN Beijing ccbn.tv/en 28-30 March TV Connect London tvconnectevent.com

3-6 April MIPTV Cannes miptv.com 22-27 April NAB Las Vegas nabshow.com 27-28 April M2M World Congress London m2mconference.com

16--18 May Internet of Things World Santa Clara iotworldevent.com/ 17-18 May Connected TV Summit London connectedtvsummit.com 10 May DTG Summit London dtg.org.uk/dtg/summit.html 23-25 May Broadcast Asia Singapore broadcast-asia.com 25-26 May FTTH Council Asia-Pacifi c New Delhi ftthcouncilap.org 30 May-1 June ANGA Com Cologne angacom.de/en

13-15 June Apps World London tmt.knect365.com/apps-world

14-18 September IBC Amsterdam ibc.org 20-23 September Smart Summit London iotsmartsummitlondon.com 26-28 September SD-WAN Summit Paris CDG

16-19 October MipCom Cannes mipcom.com 17-20 October SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo Denver expo.scte.org

November 2017 OTT TV World Summit London ottworldsummit.com November 2017 CDN World Summit London cdnworldsummit.com December 2017 Connections Europe Amsterdam parksassociates.com/events TBC December Future TV Advertising London futuretvads.com

For a full list of events taking place in 2017 please go to http://www.csimagazine.com/csi/events.php

38 February 2017 www.csimagazine.com

EventsDiary2017.indd 2 10/02/2017 15:43:10 Business To advertise contact John Woods +44 (0)20 7562 2421 DirecTory [email protected]

ATX Networks designs, manufactures, markets & delivers a broad range of OTT, IPTV & CATV digital video solutions to the global cable television industry, & PVNs (Private Video Networks). Sectors served include cable operators, broadcast, education, enterprise, government, healthcare, hospitality, sports & entertainment, retail, worship, & telcos.

ATX’s solutions include mini headends, multichannel encoding, transcoding, middleware, Corneliusstrasse 22, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany content streaming solutions, RF management (1.2 GHz), RF filters, transmitters/receivers, Tel: +49 171 998 3676 headend & MDU amplifiers, node segmentation, node/amp upgrades, monitor/control Email: [email protected] equipment, pads/EQs, digital voice switches, & connectors. Web: www.atxnetworks.com

There’s never been a better time #neverbetter for Cisco to partner with Service Providers to transform Entertainment. As the longstanding, market-leading supplier of video entertainment solutions and cloud services, the company empowers Service Providers and Media companies to connect consumers and businesses to a world of new experiences. With more than 7000 video professionals, Cisco has the scale, resource, and vision to deliver differentiated solutions..

Cisco, One London Road, Staines, Middlesex TW18 4EX Tel +44 (0)178 484 8500 Fax +44 (0)178 484 8600 Web: cisco.com/go/videoscape

EchoStar Europe is dedicated to enabling digital entertainment providers to optimise revenues by delivering added-value connected device solutions, services and applications. Through a comprehensive product range, including STBs, DVRs, home networking and TV anywhere technology, our solutions enable the provision of state-of-the-art and cost effective entertainment services.

Headquartered in the UK, EchoStar Europe comprises a number of business units and is Beckside Design Centre, Millennium Business Park, Station Road, affiliated with EchoStar Technologies, a subsidiary of the publicly traded EchoStar Corporation Steeton, Keighley BD20 6QW, United Kingdom (NASDAQ: SATS). Tel: +44 1535 659000 Fax: +44 1535 659100 Web: www.echostar.com

Intelsat is the leading provider of fixed satellite services worldwide. Intelsat supplies video, data and voice connectivity for leading media and communications companies, Internet Service Providers and government organizations. Intelsat’s valuable regional video neighborhoods deliver more television channels than any other system. Intelsat’s terrestrial network of eight strategically-located teleports and over 36,000 miles of leased fiber complements a global satellite fleet of more than 50 satellites, covering 99% of the world’s population. Intelsat utilizes a fully integrated satellite operations model, enabling global delivery from a single platform. 3400 International Drive, NW, Washington D.C. 20008 USA With Intelsat, communications with your customers are closer, by far. Tel: +1 202 944 6800 Fax: +1 202 944 7898 Web: www.intelsat.com

Verimatrix specializes in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-screen digital TV services for more than 500 operators around the globe. The award-winning and independently audited Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS™) and ViewRight® solutions offer an innovative approach for cable, satellite, terrestrial and IPTV operators to cost-effectively extend their networks and enable new business models. As the recognized leader in software-based security solutions for premier service providers, Verimatrix has pioneered the 3-Dimensional Security approach that offers flexible layers of protection techniques to address evolving business needs and revenue threats. Maintaining close relationships with major studios, 6059 Cornerstone Court West, San Diego, CA 92121-3713, US broadcasters, industry organizations, and its unmatched partner ecosystem enables Verimatrix Tel: +1-858-677-7800 Fax: +1-858-677-7804 to provide a unique perspective on digital TV business issues beyond content security as Web: www.verimatrix.com operators seek to deliver compelling new services. www.verimatrix.com

38 May-June 2014 www.csimagazine.com www.csimagazine.com February 2017 39

39_Directory.indd 1 08/02/2017 16:02:21 SECURING THE CONNECTED FUTURE

The world of video is becoming more connected. And next- generation video service providers are delivering new connected services based on software and IP technologies.

Now imagine a globally interconnected revenue security platform. A cloud- based engine that can optimize system performance, proactively detect threats and decrease operational costs.

Discover how Verimatrix is defining the future of pay-TV revenue security.

Download the follow-up Frost & Sullivan Paper: Build or License: The Multi-DRM Quandry for Online Video Publishers www.verimatrix.com/build-or-license-drm