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

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 4 May 2015 01:30:56 +0000

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

Most carriers are either racing or walking away from the subsidy model,

If they do move away from it, then there's hope. But as of this past December,
Craig, that model is still in place, and the phones we got, even though we went
through Amazon and not Verizon, still had to be specific to Verizon. So as of
today, maybe not in the future, the carriers still have a say.

So, as long as broadcasters BROADCAST, they need to make that extra
choice available. If they move to LTE broadcast, nothing changes in
this regard.

They need more viewers, not more choice.

Catch 22. Can't get more viewers without the adequately large amount of choice,
Craig. Consumers want choice, that's why cable got a foothold to begin with.
Choice. If you remain with broadcasting, instead of using an on demand model
with unicast and distributed servers in the system, and you need to make your
system attractive to real-world consumers, then you need to send all those
streams out all the time.

And even then, no matter how you try to restate this, Craig, or what other
factors you try to wedge in, the plain fact is that "live" broadcast to
handheld devices is only used, by actual consumers, for very, very limited
occasions. Some sports, breaking news, and breaking weather alerts.

So, what makes most sense to me is to not invest a huge sum to duplicate the
big stick model with LTE, but to change the model into something more
on-demand-oriented, which automatically moves you to IP unicast delivery,
distributed servers, and the occasional broadcast. This is the main point. *If*
you assert that broadcasters need to move to LTE, *then* I'll reply that what
they really have to move to is on demand, primarily, over LTE. Not broadcast,
at least not most of the time by any means.

And this would only work if cellco phone subsidies are out of the picture.

Bert



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