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Tag Archive for 'Ofcom'

Higher TV viewing: DVRs may be the reason

December 17, 2009 by Barry Flynn

The UK regulator, Ofcom, has released international comparison data showing that the UK witnessed the highest average increase in TV watching during 2008 across 11 major economies, up by 3.2% to 3.8 hours a day. Ofcom also noted that the UK remained the country with the highest proportion of households with digital TV on their main set, at 88%.

It has generally been assumed that TV viewing is a counter-cyclical activity, because in a recession, consumers tend to cut down on going out and are therefore more likely to stay at home watching TV. However, the recession only began half-way through 2008, and although it was deeper in the UK than most other economies, this may not tell the whole story.

Ofcom’s second data-point suggests an additional factor: as digital TV penetration has increased in the UK, so has penetration of digital video recorders (DVRs) - and owners of DVRs watch more TV. Evidence from BSkyB’s Skyview panel suggests that users of DVRs watch in the region of 17% more television than their ‘linear’ counterparts.

Farncombe’s calculations (based on Ofcom’s quarterly digital TV reports), show that the number of DVRs in the UK (excluding Freesat) increased by 60% in 2008, putting DVRs in nearly a third of UK homes at the end of last year. This is no doubt contributing to the TV viewing increase noted by Ofcom.

This underlines the positive contribution on-demand consumption can make to viewing-levels increasingly under pressure in a traditional linear broadcast environment.

Posted in Digital Cable, Digital Satellite, Digital Terrestrial and Research. 0 Comments

ICO reiterates opposition to EC S-Band allocation award, continues to ‘assess its options’

May 18, 2009 by Barry Flynn

Not that it adds that much to the story, but - following the award of the European S-Band frequencies to Solaris Mobile/Inmarsat - ICO, which was passed over, has reiterated its opposition to the whole allocation process - officially known as Decision No. 626/2008/EC.

In a statement released last week, ICO said it was “challenging this process, having initiated legal proceedings in September 2008 in the European Court of First Instance seeking the annulment of Decision No. 626/2008/EC of the European Parliament.”

ICO argues that the Decision - essentially the one that gave rise to the European beauty contest - is illegal and should be annulled “pursuant to Articles 230 and 231 of the Treaty establishing the European Community”. ICO noted that as these legal proceedings had not been completed by the October 2008 deadline to submit applications to the EC to provide mobile satellite services in the S-Band above Europe, it decided to go ahead and file an application anyway, ‘without prejudice.’

Michael Corkery, acting chief executive officer of ICO, is quoted in the statement as saying: “ICO has spent years clearing the S-band worldwide, has an operational satellite using this frequency band and is registered in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Master International Frequency Register (MIFR). We believe the just-concluded EU process jeopardizes years of international cooperation and coordination that has governed satellite communications worldwide.” Corkery concluded that “ICO will continue assessing its options in defending its international legal rights.”

This doesn’t give any clue as to whether ICO will be asking for a judicial review of Ofcom’s proposal to recommend that the ITU allocations referred to above be rescinded, but it’s only got until the end of this week.

Posted in Digital Satellite and Mobile TV. 0 Comments

TDG: network-connected video platforms in virtually all broadband homes by 2020

March 17, 2009 by Barry Flynn

A new report from Dallas-based research firm The Diffusion Group (TDG) concludes that it is ‘inevitable’ that by 2020, virtually every broadband-enabled home will have a multitude of network-connected video platforms.

By that date, TDG predicts that the total number of ‘non-portable network-enabled video nodes’ within global homes will reach 3.6 billion.

TDG bases its assertion on its estimates for global broadband penetration, which predict that the number of global broadband households will near 440 million by 2010 and top 1.2 billion by 2030. During that time, the number of broadband-enabled home networks will grow from 150 million in 2010 (34% of broadband homes) to more than 1.0 billion in 2030 (83% of broadband homes).

According to author Dr. Predrag Filipovic, video delivery over the Internet is a primary part of this future. In the short term, Filipovic says these trends will be driven by two major shifts in industry behavior:

  • Consumer electronic vendors will embed Internet support and IP video sub-systems into their mainstream platforms, meaning even average consumers will be buying new CE platforms with native Internet support, and
  • Incumbent TV providers will incorporate walled-garden broadband video applications and services into their Pay TV experience, meaning set-top boxes will be required to support broadband connectivity.

Filipovic also notes that by 2020, more than 1.6 billion households around the world will have access to some form of home video service, with Asia enjoying the most rapid growth. These service additions will in many cases be broadband-based or hybrid in nature. Given these factors, TDG expects the number of ‘non-portable network-enabled video nodes’ within global homes will reach 3.6 billion by 2020 and top five billion by 2030.

What is notable about the report, in Connected TV’s view, is its lengthy time-scale, reflecting a healthy scepticism about how long the IP-related video trends we are currently seeing bubbling to the surface will take to become main-stream.

It is interesting to read it in conjunction with an entirely different piece of UK-based research commissioned by the UK regulator Ofcom last year from consultants Analysys Mason, which has only just been published.

This sought to look at the impact network congestion could have on the ability to provide high-quality video services over the Internet in the UK, and what regulatory measures might be required to alleviate such problems.

Analysys Mason’s most extreme future demand scenario, which assumes that almost all TV is online and on-demand, sees total broadband traffic per household per month in the UK growing from 5.6GBytes to about 260GBytes by 2018. It adds that “the majority of this growth will come from online video services that are streamed directly to the consumer.”

More conservative (and more likely) scenarios put traffic per household per month at around 140GBytes by 2018, but still an eye-watering increase.

Analysys Mason appears to be confident that next-generation access deployment in the UK will keep step with this increase, and does not recommend that Ofcom take any immediate action.

But Connected TV wonders whether this may not be a bit optimistic, given the onward march of HDTV and the likelihood that by 2018 future broadband video homes might well require multiple simultaneous HD streams to different TVs in the home.

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

Germany falls in line with UK and France on harmonization of 800MHz band for mobile broadband

February 27, 2009 by Barry Flynn

Germany will be the first country after the UK to harmonise the so-called 800MHz band (780-862MHz) for mobile broadband use, and others will follow soon, it emerged yesterday at Informa’s Digital Switchover Strategies conference in London.

Pearse O’Donahue, head of the Radio Spectrum Policy unit in the European Commission’s Information, Society and Media Directorate-General, told delegates that the German move indicated the EC was succeeding in its mission to persuade Member States of the benefits of earmarking a common frequency band across the EU for possible future use by future mobile broadband services (see previous post here).

Els Hendricks, head of European affairs at commercial broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1, confirmed that Germany’s agreement to harmonisation was imminent, subject to the regulator agreeing to certain conditions demanded by German broadcasters.

These included future occupants of the 800MHz band compensating broadcasters for the costs associated with migrating any broadcast services already occupying these frequencies.

In the UK, Ofcom has put these costs at £5-18m.

Matthew Conway, director of operations at Ofcom’s Spectrum Policy Group, indicated there were other European territories apart from Germany that would follow the UK’s lead, but declined to identify them.

However, Elena Puigrefagut, a senior technical engineer at the European Broadcasting Union, argued that those countries that had so far agreed to harmonization were confined to those where the costs of doing so were lowest, because they had minimal usage of the 800MHz band. The EBU’s analysis showed that the first five Member States to agree to the move - Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, France and the UK - all fell into this category.

She concluded that the costs of harmonization were very significant for the majority of European territories, and predicted that it would lead to a ‘second switchover’.

Posted in Broadband and Digital Terrestrial. 1 Comment

Ofcom following Europe’s lead on clearing 790-862MHz band (so what happened to technology neutrality?)

February 5, 2009 by Barry Flynn

News that the UK regulator, Ofcom, proposes to follow the example of other European countries such as France, and reserve the 790-862MHz spectrum band for mobile broadband, appears to represent a departure from the regulator’s previous policies towards spectrum allocation.

As recently as June 2008, Ofcom had confirmed its proposals “to take a market-led approach to awarding the digital dividend, giving users the flexibility to decide its use”; and “not to intervene to reserve the spectrum for any particular use, and to award the spectrum by auction.”

In line with this policy, the regulator had resisted European moves to harmonise usage of any particular band across Europe, notably a suggestion to allocate a frequency band for pan-European mobile TV services.

Thus it was that two lots of UHF channels were due to be auctioned off by Ofcom this summer to the highest bidder: 31-40 and 63-68.

According to the latest proposals, however, clearing 790-862MHz would extend the upper of these two bands downwards to include 61-62 (originally only the interleaved spectrum in these frequencies was due to be auctioned off - i.e. the ‘white spaces’ dotted around the country at regional level which remain unused for DTT), and upwards to include 69 (which was to be allocated to Programme Making and Special Events - i.e. wireless microphone use - through a beauty contest).

Among the arguments Ofcom put forward in favour of that move this week is that: “This will allow new wireless services, particularly mobile broadband, to be launched here and across Europe.”

Ofcom goes on to say that it estimates the net benefits of the move, “conservatively, at £2-3 billion in net present value (NPV). A major reason why these benefits are so large is that, if we make the same spectrum available as other countries, better mobile broadband services can be provided to consumers at lower cost.”

Ofcom reiterated this week that this doesn’t represent a departure from a market-led, technology-neutral approach. On the other hand, it does seems to be assuming that mobile broadband services will occupy these frequencies. But how is it able to make that assumption if it believes spectrum to be technology-neutral? Presumably, none of the claimed benefit would be obtained if winning UK bidders for the upper sub-band turned out to want it for TV. Then the costs of the harmonisation (which Ofcom estimates at between £90-200m) would have been wasted.

Clearly, then, Ofcom can no longer really believe in technology neutrality. It is now signalling that given the trend by other European countries to harmonise this band, in effect the spectrum has become much more suitable for mobile broadband services than anything else.

One of the intriguing consequences of the move could be actually to lessen the take from the auction process. Given the implied constraints on the spectrum’s most effective use, it is entirely possible that fewer bidders might now enter the race. Usually, less competition would be assumed to entail a lower price - although if a reduced band of bidders take heed of Ofcom’s suggestion that better mobile broadband services could be offered at lower cost, they could conceivably all decide to risk more.

Unfortunately, we are going to have to wait until 2010 to find out the result. As part of this week’s announcement, Ofcom confirmed, as most of the industry was expecting, that the auctions were now not going to take place this summer, as originally planned, but next year.

Posted in Broadband. 1 Comment