AT&T adds more HD channels nationwide to its U-verse IPTV service

Subscribers to AT&T’s U-verse TV service got an additional 5 HD channels today, bringing the number of high-definition channels from the service to at least 115 in every U.S. market. New international channels were also added to U-verse, including Filipino and Cantonese programming.

The new HD channels include Cartoon Network HD, MSNBC HD, TV One HD, and TBN HD (Dec. 15). The fifth addition is available to HD Premium package customers who will now get WFN: World Fishing Network HD.

AT&T has also added VivaTV Plus as part of the Filipino Package — providing movies, concerts and TV shows in Filipino. For Cantonese viewers, TVBe provides news from Hong Kong, entertainment news, and additional Cantonese-focused programming for $17 a month. Both of those channels are available only in standard-definition.

AT&T added over 60 HD channels this year, keeping them up to speed with Verizon’s FiOS TV and surpassing cable TV HD channel counts in most markets they serve.

The company also reached a milestone 2 million U-verse TV subscribers as of last Wednesday, half of them added within 2009.

Credit to hdreport

AT&T Tops 1.8 Million IPTV Customers

AT&T added 240,000 more U-verse TV subscribers to its service in the third quarter, to stand at 1.816 million at the end of September. Although the telco continued to produce strong wireless gains it also shed 803,000 residential phone lines in the period.

Chief financial officer Rick Lindner, on AT&T's earnings call Thursday, said he expects revenue from U-verse services to exceed $2 billion this year. As the legacy services decline, he said, AT&T is taking cost out of those lines of business while increasing margins on new products.

For the IPTV service, AT&T's penetration of eligible living units was more than 12%. In areas marketed to for 24 months or more, overall penetration now exceeds 20%, according to the company.

AT&T's wireless segment continued to surge, with a 2.0 million net increase in total wireless subscribers - the highest third-quarter net gain in the company's history -- to reach 81.6 million. That included 3.2 million iPhone activations in the quarter, the highest to date.

Meanwhile, residential phone lines ended the quarter at 25.2 million, down 11.8% from a year ago, as revenue in the wireline segment fell 7.1% to $16.3 billion.

"The pattern is getting grindingly familiar. Wireless results were good... wireline results, not so much," Sanford Bernstein senior analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a research note. "And like so much of corporate America in this recession, solid earnings were the result of better-than-expected cost management against a deteriorating top line."

U-verse services are now available to more than 20 million living units. The telco said that U-verse TV's broadband attach rate continues to run "well above" 90% , and that its U-verse Voice attach rate continues to run above 60%. More than three-fourths of U-verse TV subscribers have a triple- or quad-play option from AT&T. The telco had 735,000 U-verse Voice subscribers at the end of the quarter, up from 104,000 in the year-ago period.

In the third quarter, AT&T's more advanced U-verse DSL broadband service had a net gain of 252,000 subscribers, which offset a decline in traditional DSL connections for a 90,000 net gain in wireline broadband connections. The telco had 13.55 million DSL subscribers as of the end of September,compared with 13.45 million three months prior.

AT&T lost 15,000 satellite subscribers in the period, ending the quarter with 2.195 million. The telco dropped its reseller deal with Dish Network as of January and now offers DirecTV service in areas where it has not deployed U-verse. AT&T's total video subscribers, which combine the company's U-verse and bundled satellite customers, were 4.0 million at the end of the third quarter, representing 14.9% of households served.

Overall, AT&T's third-quarter revenue was $30.86 billion, compared with $31.34 billion in the year-earlier quarter. Net income was $3.19 billion, down 1.2% year over year.

Credit to Multichannel.com

BitBand Technologies Forecasts IPTV Trends

The power of producing and distributing content no longer belongs solely to studios and technology vendors it has shifted to the consumer and consumer communities that produce, utilize and interact with the large volumes of content available today.

Analysts predict around 50 million IPTV subscribers worldwide by 2010. As viewing habits evolve from a passive consumption of TV to an interactive user experience, IPTV service providers need to quickly recognize and exploit the market opportunities that lie ahead.

BitBand’s IPTV technology serves more than 40 commercial IPTV deployments worldwide, including such pioneering IPTV deployments as Tele2 in Holland, ON Telecoms in Greece, FASTWEB in Italy and Connexion in the U.S., among others. BitBand partners with system integrators and suppliers of other components in the IPTV value chain to provide operators with a complete end-to-end solution.

BitBand expects to see the following key trends in IPTV in 2008:

• Eastern Europe as an emerging market. With quad and triple-play heavily embraced by new players implementing technology and business lessons learned in Western Europe, carriers and service providers in the region will take advantage of the industry’s accumulated expertise and skip efforts to modernize legacy equipment or infrastructures suitable for IPTV delivery.
• HDTV is on the rise and shifting from early adopters to mainstream viewers, creating strong demand for the highest level of subscriber quality of experience. Technology has to be developed to ensure the QOE levels that now become mandatory.
• Networking in the home. Technology advancements in consumer premises equipment and the IPTV supply chain in general will enable increased connectivity between the various components in the home, targeting the enhanced digital lifestyle with such services as instant messaging and progressive download. Through a combination of the service provider and home networks, a small server residing in the house will provide content services to a variety of devices within or around the premises, over a variety of wired and wireless networks.
• Niche content is king and long-tail content is becoming a reality. Service providers will be required to make accessible huge volumes of content, while employing intuitive and simple access methods. The full content life cycle will need to be managed in a flexible way, making room for innovative CDN platforms -- a key factor in the success of IPTV services.
• Support for multiple viewing platforms. Consumer mobility drives the need to support a variety of end devices (terminals) to which the content is fed. Users’ viewing experiences should be automatically adapted for the different devices and networks so that the best experience on each device is guaranteed. Remaining issues to be resolved include the size of video data and content rights.
• New entrants create segmented markets. More alternative service providers are offering IPTV services, opening up the market and driving growth and competition. Traditional communications players will be forced to present a differentiated offer, either through the introduction of new value-added services or competitively priced entertainment packages.
• User-generated content. TV “of the people, for the people” will continue to grow in popularity. Users are driving content and will want to incorporate that content as part of their traditional TV experience.
• TV and Internet will continue to merge. The drive to turn the TV into an Internet-capable device is likely to continue, despite the failure of many prior attempts. The key drivers to success are simplicity of access and emphasis on the group experience of TV consumption.
• Advertising will drive revenue. Targeted advertising is another phenomenon making its way from the Internet to the IPTV experience, providing another tool for revenue generation and subscriber retention.
• The shift to On-Demand. The trend of increased migration of TV consumption from linear to non-linear TV (TV On-Demand) will pick up pace, driven by innovative new ways of serving TV in a time-shifted manner and excess bandwidth available in the Next Generation networks. We expect significant increase in concurrent viewers of such services.
• Beijing 2008. The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will be the dominant driver for IPTV expansion and adoption across China. Beijing’s efforts to leverage this event for the world stage, coupled with the desire of service providers across the globe to deliver Olympic events to subscribers in all forms and on all devices will prompt service innovation, technology development and regulation flexibility, speeding up the pace of change and stimulating even more progress in the IPTV space.

Source : TVOver.net

WiMAX Gains Serious Momentum as Trials Lead to Deployments

The global telecommunications industry is on the cusp of major change, and operators are approaching critical decisions about their 4G strategies, as mobile WiMAX (802.16e) starts to move from trials and pilots to the first real-world WiMAX network deployments.

As described in a new study from ABI Research, mobile operators and other service providers are planning mobile WiMAX networks all over the world, mainly in the 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands. “The mobile wireless industry is in a state of major change as mobile operators decide which IP-OFDMA path they will take for their 4G networks,” says principal mobile broadband analyst Philip Solis. “The new and unproven (on a large commercial scale) mobile WiMAX has positioned itself against the potential Goliath that LTE (Long Term Evolution) is expected to become.”

The research forecasts substantial numbers of WiMAX subscribers worldwide: more than 95 million using CPE devices by 2012, and almost 200 million using mobile devices, with some overlap between the two groups.

Solis points out that while WiMAX equipment interoperability certification timelines have slipped somewhat, and LTE benefits from having evolved out of the widely-deployed GSM technology, WiMAX has at least a two year head start in reaching the market.

The major semiconductor and equipment makers, with the exception of Qualcomm and Ericsson, are staking out their positions for this emerging sector, while operators’ enthusiasm, led by Sprint’s and Clearwire’s firm commitments in the United States, is rising sharply. Vodafone is looking to WiMAX for some of its newer markets such as the Middle East and Eastern Europe; BT and Telecom Italia Mobile are also showing interest. And ABI Research understands that another as yet unnamed “major European mobile operator” is “seriously considering WiMAX.”

Meanwhile, amid this increasing momentum, chipset companies are positioning themselves to support a wide variety of device types beyond the traditional handsets and laptops, including UMPCs, mobile Internet devices, and consumer electronics products such as portable game devices, portable media players, and imaging devices.

The new ABI Research study, “WiMAX Market Analysis and Forecasts”, examines major drivers and barriers for WiMAX and compares it to 3G and other 4G technologies. The report contains forecasts for 802.16-2004 and 802.16e-2005. It forms part of four ABI Research Services: Digital Media, Mobile Content, Mobile Devices, and Mobile Operators.

Source : TVOver.net

YouTube announces the YouTube Nonprofit Program

Hundreds of nonprofits currently leverage YouTube to raise awareness of their causes. Today at the Clinton Global Initiative, YouTube announced the YouTube Nonprofit Program, a way to make it even easier for people to find, watch and engage with nonprofit video content on the site.

YouTube's 2007/2008 Clinton Global Initiative commitment enables nonprofit organizations (in the U.S. those with 501c3 tax filing status) that register for the program to receive a free nonprofit specific YouTube channel where they can upload footage of their work, public service announcements, calls to action and more. The channel will also allow them to collect donations with no processing costs using the newly launched Google Checkout for Non-Profits. YouTube's global platform enables nonprofits to deliver their message, showcase their impact and needs, and encourage supporters to take action.
"Video, unlike any other medium, allows nonprofits to give a tangible demonstration of their efforts, connect with people and exponentially widen their reach," said Douglas Staples, Senior Vice President, Strategic Marketing & Communications from the March of Dimes. "We are excited to be an initial participant in the program. We'll use our YouTube channel to reach out to an audience of all ages and engage them in our mission, which is to give every baby a healthy start, and we encourage other nonprofits to do the same."

YouTube Nonprofit Program participants will receive:

• A premium channel on YouTube that serves as a nonprofit's hub for their uploaded videos. Through the channel, people can connect with a nonprofit via messages, subscriptions, comments and more. Nonprofits will also receive enhanced channel branding features and increased upload capacity.
• Designation as a "Nonprofit" on YouTube that clearly identifies organizations as a nonprofit for YouTube community.
• The ability to embed a Google Checkout donation button on their channel and video watch pages, allowing people to quickly and securely make a contribution directly from YouTube. Starting today, nonprofits who offer Google Checkout for Non-Profits as a donation option -- whether through YouTube or on their own sites -- will receive 100 percent of donated funds, as Google has committed to processing all donations for free through at least the end of 2008.
• In the coming months, nonprofit channels will have a centralized area on YouTube, making them and their videos more easily discoverable.

"When YouTube was founded we dreamed that people would someday leverage the site to make the world a better place," said YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. "It is an honor to have great organizations and individuals utilizing the YouTube to raise awareness of noble causes and we are thrilled to offer a program that helps them thrive and inspire change."

At launch there will be a thirteen organizations participating in the YouTube Nonprofit Program including:

24 Hours for Darfur * American Cancer Society * Autism Speaks * 92nd Street Y * Asia Society * Strong American Schools' ED in '08 * Friends of the Earth * International Rescue Committee * March of Dimes * YouthNoise * The ONE Campaign * The Clinton Global Initiative * World Vision Australia

Application Process

Nonprofits can apply for a nonprofit channel type by going to youtube.com/nonprofits and filling out a short application, which will be processed by our grants team. This page will also contain information on how to take advantage of this new channel type, as well as some tips for how to use YouTube effectively for advocacy and fundraising.

Credit to TVOver.net

Talking Point: IP-based Television at the crossroads

IPTV News : In about 2002-2003 the availability of high speed broadband networking via ADSL combined with optimised MPEG-2 encoding and the reduction in costs brought about by the move to the single-chip solutions for Set-Top-Boxes (STBs) as pioneered by firms such as Amino with the AmiNET103 and AmiNET110 devices made for a step-change in the history of IP-based television service delivery. The first cross-roads had been reached; it became possible to deliver the required bandwidth at good quality and an affordable cost for the first time. IPTV moved from the lab to the customer; from science project to deployable business venture.
In the years since the number of deployments and their scale has exploded as telephone companies exploited the opportunity to roll out video based services in a wide variety of forms - multicast channel zapping, video on demand, pay per view, with many competing user interfaces and methods of delivery over the basic IP channel.

However, IP delivery is now at a very interesting stage - a second crossroads. Ahead of it down one path is High-Definition TV, which is sweeping through the market and seeing high adoption rates where it can be delivered. The latter qualification though is important. Satellite and Cable providers are blessed with enough bandwidth, and tricks like statistical multiplexing of channels that, in combination with the advances in coding efficiency with MPEG-4 AVC, mean that they are now easily able to deliver HD quality TV to the consumer. IP networks based of Fibre (or perhaps other technologies such as VDSL where range is not a problem) can compete effectively against this, and IP STBs such as the advanced AmiNET130 are delivering MPEG-4 AVC HD content at the consumer premises. Yet there remains a substantial copper-based, ADSL broadband network community out there, for whom the data-rates demanded to put several TVs all running full quality 1920x1080i pixel High Definition TV, perhaps with PVR boxes that record one channel while streaming and displaying another, is well out of reach. Typically these networks are able to deliver 8 megabits per second. To fulfil the multi-room, PVR demands of a home with perhaps two HD TVs one can easily show that at least 25 megabits will be demanded, and perhaps more. This effectively means that operators with these networks have some issues ahead.

But, there is another path open, this lies in the direction of open-access Internet delivered content, offered up from web sites - thousands of them. The future here is foretold in the story of music downloads - iTunes, Napster and so forth - and the simple explosive growth that these exhibited. It became practical to stream or download music once modems were replaced with broadband even in its fairly early forms. 256K bits per second is enough to stream excellent quality compressed audio - four times too much for a V90 modem, but easily done with the first broadband systems. As soon as it was possible, the supernova like explosion was triggered. Video is next. Data rates for video are, now, with MPEG-4 AVC and the Microsoft competitor codecs, such that pretty decent results are possible at below 1 megabit. YouTube and its competitors are the first result, with user-generated content, although the quality of much of it is dubious. Ahead lies a world of professionally produced content published via the web directly by a range of content owners, aggregators and individual organisations with specialist interests. Niche sports, hobbies, ethnic programming and a range of things we have not even thought of yet will appear as "web channels" on the net. Initially the consumer has to access this from the PC, but this will migrate into delivery via the TV set - and this requires a very low cost unit with attractive living room quality styling, and a neat, simple user interface. Amino has anticipated this and developed the AmiNET124 and the second generation AmiNET125 products targeting this future.

Back to the crossroads. Is the future to be found along the High-road to HDTV with 25+ Megabit service delivery? Or should we look for it along the low-road....of myriad web-channels and streaming in the 1 to 2 megabit range.

Perhaps the answer is to be found in that famous Scottish ballad:

“You take the high road, and I'll take the low-road..... and I'll be in Scotland before ye!”

Credit to IPTV News

IPTV in Asia Subscriber Rates Reach 2.7 Million

Research and Markets announces the addition of IPTV in Asia: Carriers Start the Battle to their offering. With a warm up period over the past few years, Asia/Pacific IPTV subscriber numbers have increased quickly. There were 2.7 million subscribers by the end of 2006, an 87.4% growth rate from 2005.

The Asia/Pacific IPTV market's development has remained diversified. Mature markets include Japan and Hong Kong, with approximately 60% of the total subscribers in 2006. They are expected to continuously take the lead in the regional IPTV development process.

Together with the fast expanding broadband infrastructure and decreases in service price, an expanding middle class is transforming China into the future IPTV dragon. Taiwan and Singapore have a relatively higher penetration of broadband and are pioneers in technology adoptions. For South Korea, the government regulatory issues are expected to be solved soon.

Australia and New Zealand are lagging behind other developed markets, with conservative attitudes from major telecom operators and low general public interest. Other markets like India, Malaysia, and Thailand, together with China, are fueling the growth of the Asia/Pacific IPTV market. Indonesia and the Philippines are expected to provide little uptake due to their weak infrastructures. It is expected that by 2009, IPTV will be present in all of the markets in the region.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that IP-based HDTV is on its way to the Asia/Pacific, with both Hong Kong PCCW and Singapore Singtel expected to start offering IP-based HDTV in 2007.

Credit to tvover.net