[opendtv] Re: IEEE Ericsson article on use of LTE for TV

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 07:43:14 -0400

At 4:48 AM -0400 6/20/12, Albert Manfredi wrote:
When you use Vcast, you're buying bandwidth AND a service. When you use the voice telephone, unless you're using Skype, you're buying bandwidth AND a service. If the cellco has a service that competes with something not part of that cellco, they will certainly resist you bypassing them.
There is no restriction on telcos offering the services you describe. Clearly they still have a near monopoly on voice services, although this is likely to go away as everyone migrates to LTE and voice becomes just another app.
i do not contest the fact that the telcos have tried to control everything on their networks. But this is changing rapidly and soon they will just be bandwidth providers. It is likely the MVPD monopoly will hang on longer, because of the collusion between the congloms, the MVPDs and the politicians. 




You are correct that almost all of the songs, apps, movies and TV shows I
downloaded from the iTunes store traveled across a 2-way network. But
not a telco wireless broadband network.
Don't get lost in the weeds, Craig. We're talking about your sloppy use of the term "return channel." Anything you ever did with iTunes always involved a 2-way network. It's as simple as that. Not a broadcast channel with some separate "return channel."
Are you talking about the iTunes application or the iTunes store? Very different.
The fact remains that a broadcaster can leverage the telco 2-way network for any service that requires signalling back to the station or its web site.
The same happens with broadcast TV. *If* broadcasters implement a purely one-way broadcast LTE network, then it's flat wrong to pretend "all they need is a return channel." Instead, for interactivity of any sort, that broadcaster will have to use someone else's 2-way network. The one-way broadcast being physically isolated from the 2-way channel. 

Exactly. What's the problem?
When you call into a call-in show, your telephone call in no way uses the radio station's broadcast channel. This is exactly the same thing. Your telephone call to the station requires a proper, 2-way phone link. Not some one-way "return channel" that somehow uses the broadcast signal as "downlink." Sloppy lingo, Craig, unless you really know what you're talking about, and are merely using shorthand. 

Again, what's the problem? You are proving my point.




So now we are lumping together the entire Internet infrastructure, both
wired and wireless...
How convenient.
Of course. 4G, or even the broadband Internet service you can get on 3G, are nothing but a wireless links to the Internet. That's all. What applies to the wired Internet holds exactly the same on wireless broadband. 

Exactly. The telco is providing the bandwidth, like a wired ISP.
Telcos can compete in the services market, but they can no longer control the services enabled by that broadband link. 


Lost packets? I'm talking about on-demand service.


Fine. You can use the telco 2-way service.
Clearly the broadcasters do not have the bandwidth to deliver unicasts to the masses. But they CAN push content to the cache in mobile devices, creating services that are competitive with VOD unicasts.
There are all kinds of push notification services for smart phones today, and many cloud service push content to mobile devices. This stuff can be pushed through a broadcast LTE service as well - all you need to do is program the phone to look for what you want.
I'm talking about sessions on the web. Anything that allows me to go to any server of my choosing, at any time of my choosing, find something specific, perhaps download it. It's not about lost packets at all. Anything on demand requires the 2-way network, HTTP requires a two-way network. Even IP multicast, the real IP multicast, where individual users join a group, and the network only carries that traffic if there are group members listening, even that requires a two-way network. 

No argument here.
I've never said that broadcasters can do this. But they can offer service that compete with this. All you need to do is "subscribe" your device to a specific broadcast service such as a continuously updated news, weather or sports app.
Broadcast is very efficient when everyone wants the same content. But you can't fit all the content available on the Internet in a couple of broadcast links. Not credibly. Not in a way that I can get to the one page I want whenever I want, perhaps content that no one else in the entire city or country ever heard of or cared about.
Apple and oranges Bert. There is plenty of room for both, and the broadcast model is clearly more efficient when a large number of people want to watch a live event. And, as we discussed recently, there are still millions of people who watch pre-produced TV content when it is broadcast - it is just difficult to do this today on a mobile device since these devices do not support the ATSC standards. 

Regards
Craig


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