BT to launch multicast TV broadcast platform
28 July 2011
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BT to launch multicast TV broadcast platform
In an interview with IPTV News, Simon Orme, Strategy Director of Content Services at BT Wholesale, explained that his company is set to launch a service called TV Connect in the coming year, which will effectively be a new platform for broadcasting video content, including live television.
The BT executive said the telco is currently working with UK internet service providers (ISPs) ahead of a launch. Technical testing is already underway and small-scale trials are expected to involve customers later in 2011, prior to a commercial launch in 2012.
Orme suggested that the new TV Connect offering is similar to, but not the same, as the BT content delivery network offering Content Connect, which was launched earlier in 2011 (BTwatch, #219). He described the upcoming service as the evolution of BT strategy on content delivery.
“ There are massive benefits to [the television industry, and the ISP and operator community] in engineering a multicast solution; it has really been a question of when is the right time to introduce that, and we have felt that the way into this market is to build our on-demand platform — our Content Connect platform — get that into the market first and start the process of building the commercial models around that, and customer engagement models around that; and then bring in the bigger development some time later, which is the TV Connect element. ”
– Orme.
TV Connect will see BT enable broadcasters and operators to deliver media feeds via a television headend directly into the BT network. While using the same physical infrastructure as BT’s broadband network, this streaming will be managed entirely separately from existing broadband traffic until it is merged with the rest of the broadband traffic carried on the network on the ‘last mile’ link to the end user. The service will reportedly offer live real-time encoding of all broadcast television content, including content protection, conditional access, and digital rights management (DRM) functions, and allow the creation of broadcaster-specific electronic programme guides (EPG).
“ We could have built a multicast-enabled network, and then just sat back and seen what happens, but we don’t believe that is going to answer the problem. What we have actually built with TV Connect is an end-to-end linear TV delivery service. ”
“ We are not actually delivering TV Connect through the broadband route: we are delivering it from the headend directly into the exchanges; and that has effectively enabled us to build a television network, as opposed to having to find a way to push multicast television through the broadband network. ”
– Orme.
Service providers will be responsible for arranging their own carriage deals with content providers, and then BT will enable the delivery of the service to end users. One of the reasons provided by Orme for the telco waiting up to a year more before launching the service, is to provide time for the industry to agree standards for the delivery of television content around areas such as DRM, hardware, picture resolution, and set-top boxes, among other things. Orme appeared optimistic that TV Connect will be able to support a range of DRM solutions should the industry agree a standard encryption base.
“ That [DRM diversity] is perfectly viable in this wholesale model — that is exactly the way our wholesale model is designed, so that the retailer entity, whoever they are, manages their own key, their own EPG look and feel, user experience; we are just providing the enabling delivery technology underneath. ”
– Orme.
Orme noted there could be considerable economic benefits for content and service providers in using the TV Connect service compared to existing methods of digital television broadcast. The service is seen as offering ISPs revenue-generating opportunities from pay-TV (such as BT Retail and its BT Vision service) with lower costs than traditional broadcast. It is also expected to make niche broadcasting more viable, as it does not have the same level of annual costs, which are fixed regardless of the size of the actual customer base.
“ We know, for example, that in our broadcast services business, we launched the Eurobird [satellite] service to allow smaller channels to get onto the Sky platform at much lower costs — I can’t remember what the economics were, but it practically halved the economics overnight — and it just spawned literally hundreds and hundreds of channels coming into the market that otherwise couldn’t have survived: TV Connect is much more disruptive or radical than that, and we are anticipating a new wave of innovation in the television on the back of it. ”
– Orme.
Media experience key to new offering
Orme was keen to stress the capabilities and experience BT Wholesale has in providing television network services through its Media & Broadcast business, which has been managing television delivery on a global basis for many years.
“ Because we have been building broadcast television networks for years, we have a whole load of technical ‘smarts’ that enables us to do proactive network monitoring: we have robots in the network, and all of this kind of smart stuff that we have had for years in our global broadcast network that we have been providing the global broadcast network industry with for many years; and we are able to deploy those kinds of techniques into the TV Connect network because it is a dedicated television network, and it is not fighting with other traffic. ”
– Orme.
BT acted with YouView in mind
While the YouView internet television platform may launch before the availability of TV Connect from BT, the potential for the service to use the new platform was an important element of BT’s rationale for developing TV Connect, according to Orme.
“ I think YouView will be a major catalyst for TV Connect: the YouView partners are planning to support multicast within the YouView specification, so, at some point in the service’s evolution, the set-top boxes will be multicast-ready; and clearly because there will be a huge marketing drive behind the deployment of those boxes, and we anticipate large-scale take-up, that is going to be one of the catalysts we think of multicast adoption. And also because YouView is a joint venture between the ISP industry and the broadcast industry — all of those things make it a perfect fit for the TV Connect model; and of course part of the TV Connect thinking was in anticipation of YouView coming to market. ”
– Orme.
BT Retail likely to be key customer
While Orme would not discuss BT Retail plans for using TV Connect, elsewhere executives at the Retail division indicated there are plans to introduce multicast routers across most of its network from 2012, paving the way for full Internet Protocol television (IPTV) services, using quality of service protocols.
The company previously said that, given its BT Vision devices include a DVB-T tuner to receive Freeview digital television services, there was little point in building out its network with multicast routers, and would instead rely on the strength of Freeview plus its own video-on-demand services.
However, speaking at the Connected TV Summit, Steve White, Head of Information Systems and Technology for IPTV at BT Retail, said that cost and the addition of non-DVB-T channels to its offering were the primary drivers for the change of heart.
“ It’s too expensive renting DVB-T multiplex space to deliver Sky Sports to BT Vision customers, so we want to send it multicast. ” – White.
White explained that when BT gained the right to re-broadcast a number of BSkyB channels, it took the decision that sending signals over the internet without full quality-of-service protection as an adaptive stream was not good enough, and it was forced to rent a channel on one of the UK DVB-T multiplexes that drive Freeview.
[Further reference: BT plans to be a super head end to all UK ISPs for multicast TV -- Rethink research, 23 June 2011; BT to embrace IPTV as it upgrades broadband network to multicast -- The Register, 30 May 2011; BT: “TV Connect is actually the engineering of a dedicated television network for online TV” -- IPTV News, 22 June 2011.]
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