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.