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Tag Archive for 'Broadband'

SES Astra’s Astra2Connect service to use satellite to bridge UK’s broadband gaps

January 28, 2009 by Barry Flynn

The potential universe for broadband access via satellite in the UK could be as high as 800,000 households, according to Mike Locke, the man in charge of VSAT, Internet & Special Projects at satellite equipment distributor Eurosat.

Speaking yesterday at a UK launch event for satellite operator SES Astra’s Astra2Connect two-way broadband satellite product, Locke said that while BT estimated there were 100,000 UK homes which would never get ADSL, with Ofcom reckoning a higher figure of 200,000, private research calculated there was a much higher figure of around 800,000 homes with a poor broadband connection. “The true figure [for the potential market] is somewhere in between,” said Locke.

Mike Chandler, managing director of Astra UK, was at pains to point out that the Astra2Connect service, for which Eurosat is the UK distributor, was intended to be complementary to terrestrial broadband, not in competition with it. It was neither as cheap nor as fast, Chandler conceded: what the product sought to do was “to bridge the gap for people unable to get broadband.”

The Astra2Connect proposition is tiered by speed, with 4 service-levels available between 256KBit/s and 2MBit/s downstream, ranging from £19.99/m to £74.99/m. Upstream speeds to the satellite (Astra 1E/3A at 23.5oE) range from 64KBit/s to 128KBit/s. The kit, including the dish, special LNB and satellite modem, is priced at £299.99, with a current install offer of £100. Given the proximity of Astra1E/3A to the UK-focussed Astra2 series at 28.2oE, the dish is also able to receive BSkyB or Freesat satellite channels.

The service is already available in Europe, and currently has close to 50,000 customers, said Chandler, with the most popular tier being the 1MBit/s one.

The service was demonstrated live at the event, and successfully coped with embedded video streamed from Internet websites. The opportunity to test how the BBC i-Player might perform was not available, though, due to the fact that the range of IP addresses assigned to the service are currently Luxembourgeois ones, which are automatically barred from access by the BBC.

Locke maintained that the true performance speed in the packages matched the advertised one very closely, and produced a graph demonstrating an average download speed of around 800/900KBit/s for a four-day test of the 1MBit/s service. This compared very favourably with similar tests carried out on terrestrial broadband packages, he said.

The Lyngsat website shows the Astra2Connect service occupying three transponders at 23.5oE, potentially offering a throughput of 40MBit/s each, according to Chandler. A fair use policy for the service was deployed to ensure that actual speeds matched advertised ones as closely as possible.

As for future developments, a VoIP service is in the pipeline, but there are no intentions to use the service to deliver IPTV. Both Chandler and Locke suggested it would make little commercial sense to do so given the ability of the installation to offer hundreds of satellite TV channels alongside a broadband service.

The Astra approach contrasts with rival satellite operator Eutelsat’s claims that it will be able to use its forthcoming Ka-Band capacity to offer IPTV as a possible service.

Connected TV is sceptical about such claims given a true IPTV service’s requirement to devote around 1.5MBit/s to each active customer, which would very rapidly use up available transponder capacity and would be very expensive to deliver.

However, using satellite as a fill-in broadband service for those forced otherwise to rely on dial-up Internet access seems a reasonably attractive option given the sort of prices Astra is charging. Previously, the customer premises equipment required for satellite broadband was in the £600-700 range.

The service could face problems if it becomes very popular, however, since if using the same number of transponders, Astra would gradually need to tighten its fair use policy. This could be solved by bringing additional transponders onstream, but the question then becomes to what extent do you allow service levels to deteriorate before adding the additional capacity.

Posted in Broadband, IPTV, Research and TV-over-Internet. 1 Comment

Netflix and LG Electronics link up for ‘broadband HDTVs’: but will a walled-garden approach succeed?

January 6, 2009 by Barry Flynn

HDTV sets made by LG Electronics are to become the latest device to be linked to the Netflix Watch Instantly service (see here for our previous post on the Netflix/Xbox360 tie-up).

What should we make of this?

In fact, LG is not the first TV set manufacturer to have come up with the idea of broadband-enabling its receivers to receive Internet content, so obviating the need for a separate device such as a games console or set-top box. Sony announced a module called the Bravia Internet Video Link at CES in 2007 for streamed video, and both Samsung and Sharp showed Ethernet-enabled receivers at CES a year later.

There are clear advantages to playing back disintermediated OTT services seamlessly on a TV set. Linking a laptop playing back OTT video material to a TV set works, but it is clumsy, depends on having the right connectors, and requires the viewer to control the experience via a keyboard rather than a remote control.

Significantly, the LG deal represents the first time a TV set maker has tied such technologies to an Internet service backed by a substantial amount of relatively high-quality content (although early-release blockbuster films still elude Netflix). According to the press release, Netflix members pay “as little as $8.99 per month for unlimited instant streaming and unlimited DVDs from a catalogue of more than 100,000 DVD titles in more than 200 genres.”

Although LG will embed the Netflix streaming software in some of its TVs, it does not appear to have gone as far as also including an Internet browser. Thus, viewers will have to use the Netflix website to add movies and TV episodes to their individual ‘Instant Queues’ before these appear as options on the TV screen. This is therefore a classic ‘walled garden’ service - no content will be viewable that is not available to the Netflix user base.

There are pros and cons to such an approach : judging by the plaudits the Netflix Watch Instantly service has garnered so far, its progressive download model appears to work well, so there is an implied quality of service associated with it. On the other hand, buyers of LG’s ‘broadband HDTVs’ , who are likely to be familiar with what the OTT universe has to offer on a PC or laptop (Netflix is an online service, after all) may wonder why that same experience is not available on their TV.

The interesting question is whether or not it will be in the TV set manufacturers’ interests to move to a paradigm in which their broadband-enabled TVs will come with an Internet browser enabling their customers to access any video content they like. It is difficult for them to earn any ongoing revenue streams from such a model, whereas they can from a ‘closed’ deal like the LG/Netflix one - through bundling subscriptions with TV set purchases and/or agreeing subscription or pay-per-view revenue splits.

Of course, this should make a ‘proprietary’ TV set less expensive rather than more, since such revenues can subsidise the cost. Surprising, then, to see reports that the LG broadband HDTVs are going to cost an extra $200-300 - especially since, on Connected TV’s reckoning, the bill of materials for the upgrade should only add a few tens of dollars to the price.

Posted in TV-over-Internet. 2 Comments