Digital video drives network changes
Martin Rowe, Senior Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 4/1/2007 2:00:00 AM
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TV is driving the wireline communications business. An ever-increasing demand for bandwidth to the home is forcing more fiber into the ground and is leading to network upgrades not seen since the dot-com bust. The impact of digital video is only expected to grow and take test equipment along with it.
“Broadband video is one driving force behind deployment of the state-of-the-art fiber needed to carry the high-capacity signal,” stated the Telecommunications Industry Association in January (Ref. 1).
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North American homes with potential telco-TV service (homes served) will grow dramatically by 2010, with a proportionate increase in actual subscribers. Source: In-Stat, www.instat.com. |
Market studies back up the TIA comment. According to In-Stat, the number of subscribers who received their TV from telcos was 700,000 in 2006 and will jump to 6.5 million in 2010 (see chart). In-Stat also predicts that the number of homes served (potential subscribers) will increase from 4.4 million in 2006 to 33.5 million in 2010.
The Information Gatekeepers Group has also published a survey that predicts that the number of IPTV subscribers will increase from less than 2 million in 2006 to nearly 13 million in 2010 and that about 44 million homes will be potential IPTV subscribers, up from about 13 million in 2006 (Ref. 2).
Don’t, though, assume that all telco-delivered video is IPTV. The IGI Group report may give realistic numbers, but it carries on the common misconception that all telcos use IP to deliver broadcast TV.
“IPTV means any video delivered over Internet Protocol,” said Michelle Abraham, telecom-market analyst for In-Stat. “When you watch a video on a Web site, you’re watching IPTV.” Abraham prefers the term “telco TV,” referring to subscription TV delivered by telcos.
| ALSO SEE: Testing brings home telco TV OFC technical sessions feature test and measurement |
Unlike AT&T and other providers, Verizon, for example, doesn’t use IP as the transport protocol for broadcast TV programs. Verizon uses IP for video-on-demand only. The company uses quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) to deliver broadcast TV over fiber, much as cable operators use QAM over copper. Verizon, for the most part, isn’t an IPTV provider.
Regardless of the delivery technology, digital video requires test equipment. Manufacturers with products from routers to set-top boxes need tools to analyze their video. The three product announcements in the box on this page reflect the growing demand for test equipment. Field testers for optical access networks are introduced on a regular basis. Video analyzers that measure picture quality are also on the rise. Protocol analyzers, once used only for transport protocols, now include MPEG stream analysis and video-quality measurements.
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