As an alternative to cable and satellite broadcast, one of the limitations in getting better content into the home has been bandwidth. "Broadband" - once defined in telephony terms as anything greater than 64kbps (a standard voice channel) has seen its definition morph over past decades to designate speeds for sending movies in real time. Common DSL at 1Mbps doesn’t cut it for quality viewing, even with the best codecs around. Hi-def? That’ll require even more bandwidth, err, bitrate. But there’s hope on the horizon…or I should say Verizon.

John DiLoreto
Analyst and Editor for
Insight Media

Multimedia Research Group’s (MRG) latest global IPTV report has identified faster growth for Verizon and AT&T than previously forecast and predicts Verizon will become the world’s largest IPTV service provider in 2011.

While Europe leads the pack in IPTV subscribers with Asia and the rest of the world moving up fast, MRG points to Verizon in North America for their commitment to bring fiber to the home. Along with that comes a powerful platform for launching competitive service offerings.

According to MRG president Gary Schultz, Verizon will migrate its hybrid RF and IP network to completely IP by 2010. Currently, they use RF for all of the broadcast content and IP for on-demand. In an interview with IPTV Update, Shultz said, "Now, we’ll see if that happens, but my guess is that there’s going to be some real improvements, even in two-way services when they do that."

Verizon has committed to deliver 100Mbps to the home. And with quality of service tools that come with that platform, MRG says that it will allow quality IPTV broadcast much more readily than just an RF environment. The result is a competitive edge as time goes on.

The MRG forecast predicts a robust but flattening IPTV growth rate for service that that will reach 5M subscribers by 2011, of nearly 12M in North America. However, that’s quite modest, compared to the adoption on IPTV in Europe and Asia, where there are expected to be around 30M IPTV subscribers each.

But is fiber to the home necessary for IPTV? MRG thinks that in smaller markets, copper wire will be adequate. "Yet, I wouldn’t be surprised to see AT&T do a hybrid situation with Dish with a really robust DSL two-way network in combo," Schultz said.

In the meanwhile, DSL will continue to improve, so maybe you can get 50Mbits to the average home in five years, some say. But HD makes it harder to stick with DSL, obviously. With a lot of HD on the network, advanced codecs (e.g. H.264) and bandwidth allocation tools available become imperative. Because of HD, the expected push will be towards fiber, with Verizon being 100% fiber for its IPTV services.

MRG says AT&T and other operators are also working hard at equipping large new developments and multi-unit residential structures with fiber.

So, fiber and its hefty bandwidth is coming to a building near you. Hope I don’t have to move to sign up.

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