[opendtv] Re: NAB: FCC's Wheeler Piles on Praise for Broadcasting | Broadcasting & Cable

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2015 11:15:17 -0400

On Apr 23, 2015, at 9:08 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Oh, so I guess CBS All Access is also an MVPD. It provides live and on demand
too, and service to mobile devices. I guess Craig considers CBS All Access to
be just like TVE.

No.

From Wiki:

"a person such as, but not limited to, a cable operator, a multichannel
multipoint distribution service, a direct broadcast satellite service, or a
television receive-only satellite program distributor, who makes available for
purchase, by subscribers or customers, multiple channels of video programming.

CBS All Access provide access to ONE channel of video programming. There is
nothing MULTICHANNEL about this service.

Aside from the live stream, CBS All Access operates as a SVOD service, not
unlike Hulu. But the content library is from just one network.


The MVPDs are moving aggressively into high speed broadband, but
this is about building out the last mile infrastructure

Focusing in on this, if the MVPD allocates more frequencies to broadband, in
their existing last mile infrastructure, they can offer more and faster
broadband service **without** having to reduce the number of homes served by
a single PON head-end.

Really?

That depends on bandwidth to the PON as well. Obviously, if they turn off
linear channels they can dedicate that bandwidth to broadband. But they must be
able to support all of the unicast streams to that PON. And ultimately, it
comes down to how many IP unicast and multicast streams you can push through
each PON when the entire pipe is used for ISP service. Many homes may need
25-50 Mbps to support multiple streams for the TV in the family room and the
second screens for other family members. So ultimately it is a question of home
many homes per PON when all of the linear channels go away.

So it's their own business decision. Continuing to dedicate the majority of
spectrum to MPEG-2 TS broadcast streams makes it that much more expensive,
for the network provider, to improve their broadband service.

Trade offs.

Those MPEG-2 TS streams pay the bills. It could be many years before people
give up on the MVPD bundles. arris just bought Pace - the cable/DBS STB
business is still booming and is expected to be viable for at least another
decade. Outside the U.S. even longer.

The expense of adding PONs is inevitable (see above). The good news for the
MVPDs is that it can be spread out over many years as demand shifts to IP
delivery of TV.

It even depends what sport. Not all sports programming is consumed live, or
consumed by huge audiences at the same time. Some sports, such as the Olympic
type events broadcast by Universal Sports, would not merit a broadcast
signal, when distributed over the Internet. Only a small minority of TV
content actually begs for, i.e. benefits from, broadcast distribution, once
you have available a broadband two-way network.

Yes, it depends on demand. In the U.S. It is football, basketball and baseball.
In other countries Soccer is the big audience.

The Olympics, and all manner of lesser sports are more friendly to delayed
viewing. Most sports networks are filled with pre-produced shows and replays of
sporting events, as there is not enough live sports to fill out a network
schedule. But the money comes from the live event audience. In addition to live
events, ESPN does VERY well with sports news. Sports Center is right up there
with the 24/7 news channels in terms of ratings.

No, that is understanding the subject matter vs repeatedly uttering vague
generalities, Craig. If someone has built a cell network, i.e. wireless
optimized primarily for unicast, using that network for broadcast service
only makes economic sense "as necessary." Not always.

To the extent that broadcasting is still a viable business, your contention is
absurd. If the big sticks are still viable, moving to little sticks only helps,
by reading hundreds of millions of new second screens.

Cell towers are generally a shared asset today, run by third party companies.
They lease space to anyone. The tower inventory has both more dense lower
towers, and taller towers in areas with lower population density. Broadcasters
can operate at higher power levels, so they can just use the towers they need.

But if broadcasting is truly dying, then the telcos will satisfy the limited
demand you say will exist.

So let's say broadcasters could piggy-back on cellco networks, without having
to do even so much as supply their own transmitters. The cellco network is
most certainly NOT going to allow, say, 80 MHz of spectrum to be gobbled up
by broadcast 24/7, throughout their wireless network, to meet the
broadcasters' demands, without charging the broadcasters an arm and a leg.
That's a huge chunk of bandwidth, Craig, that the cellco won't be able to use
for their own revenue-making service.

The broadcasters do not need to piggyback on the telco cellular networks. They
need to piggyback on the tower infrastructure, with their own transmitters
using their own frequencies.

If broadcasters decide to go it alone, and build their own LTE system, first
of all, the cellcos are unlikely to allow their phones to tune to the
broadcasters' frequencies.

That is absurd. The telcos no longer control what the handsets can do. If there
is a viable service there, adding support for additional frequencies is
trivial. And with software controlled radios this situation can only improve.

And aside from that, Craig still has not told us how many towers such a
broadcaster-owned network would require, in a market area, say, 40 miles in
radius. So that's hardly free. Once Craig does the simple arithmetic, and I
know he has the information necessary now, perhaps he'll see why.

Big sticks are not free. And in some low density population areas they may
still be the best way to reach viewers, even with LTE broadcast. It is in the
densely populated areas that the distributed transmission networks make the
most sense, and in these markets the station profits are typically much higher.



It doesn't matter how you slice it, Craig. Supporting good wireless mobility
costs more to build and more to operate the network. You either need many
more towers and/or you have to reduce the channels offered, compared with a
system designed for fixed service. Doesn't make any difference whether such a
network "already exists."

We disagree.

Correct. The cell systems have already installed this towers

Even that's a simplistic notion. Cells aren't a fixed number of assets that
just stays as is forever. Something as simple as a new neighborhood, or a new
building, create a need to modify the configuration. With big sticks, this is
far less of a problem.

The cellular networks keep up with these changes. TV translators are often
needed to expand a broadcasters footprint. Just trade offs.

Broadcast used to be the only game in town, to distribute wide bandwidth
content to huge numbers of households. Whether that content was best consumed
on demand or not, broadcasting it was still the only game in town. Now it's
not. So the future is one where how much bandwidth is used up for broadcast,
compared with how much bandwidth is taken up by unicast, will depend much
more on dynamic business decisions. You can't offer the huge amount of
interactive (unicast) service people now expect, competetitively, if you
continue to reserve large amounts network assets to broadcast, in your
two-way network.

This is why there will be a spectrum auction next year to recover broadcast
spectrum.

It was not that long ago that the paper manufacturing industry prospered
supplying the newspaper industry. Now most cities have only one "slim newspaper
bundle."

Times have changed.

Yup. And they will keep changing.

Regards
Craig

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