Skip to main content

In an IPeal world

Discussion around IP is already steady and high, VoIP is popular and IPTV is a recent and so far has low volumes but still a reasonably consistently ranking in the blogosphere. There are all the same a method of access that is finding new uses all the time.

Living in a country of limited choice for television I welcome the dawn of IPTV as the low infrastructure cost (the customer buys most of it themselves) means that there should be more programming choice as the provider (publisher) can invest more in buying the programmes (content) and delivering to me (the subscriber)

I use the terms
  • publisher
  • content
  • subscriber
for the generic tone that it requires. We could equally be refering to games for your phone or ring tone, TV programmes, Pay Per View films the applications are fairly limitless the delivery framework is the same. The uses are personal and/or commercial and are centred around IP Access.

Having already mentioned the impact on non-traditional media channels with respect to the BBC it made me think on how the borders of coutries (and by default their control) is blurring and shrinking.

For instance SlingBox opens up non-US people [potentially and possibly not legally] to the US cable cloud, OK maybe not a nice thought but a thought. Now being a "brit abroad" I would probably like to choose to see some programmes from home, not necessarily the ones that Thailand's UBC wishes to show me.

That was IP ultimately allows me; choice. Choice of what, when and where. Channels as we see them should collapse, the niche media sectors (UK's Food Channel) will become more popular and dictated groups of schedules (e.g. BBC 2) should become less popular.

The revolution within the TV Media industry could be alikened to what we are starting to see in the MVNO trend. Strong brands packaging content (films, programmes, radio stations etc) and delivering through IP channels.

Deregulation needs to start, if necessary driven by the publishers themselves, if they are to survive. As the borders blur; and grey channels open up to meet the "it's available here if you want it now rather than wait for your network" demand, the players will have to accomodate the market that bitTorrent pushes the edge of every day.

The rollout will have to managed in order not to pressurize the current hardware out there today. Check out Paul Jardines ramble on the subject for more insight.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Crisis Connections

What the flood situation in Thailand has shown once again is the power of social networks to fill the void of communication. In recent times the role of Facebook, Twitter, and Blackberry messenger has been shown in good and bad light.  The same methods that released the Arab Spring have also been used to coordinate the London Riots . Love them or loathe social networks are here to stay and what the floods show is how they keep people connected.  Some will say there should be no communication void if central government is on top of its game, but with a situation that can change so rapidly, and over such a large area the traditional press certainly struggle to keep the public up to date. Twitter and Facebook have been saviours for those of us outside Thailand at this time.  With roving reporters and connected people like Patee Sarasin and Jetrin out doing and tweeting many more people are kept up to date. Equally useful is the ability to time shift news updates through TV ch

The Loki Planet Guide

The mighty Om thinks that WiFi location based services will be the next kickstart in the industry. I agree that this could be the killer app, the SMS of WiFi/Max, that could really be a key integration point for Muni nets, FON networks and the newest WiFi enabled handsets. He mentions Loki so I went off to have a quick look. It seems pretty interesting and it made me revisit a previous idea for book readers . Combining LBS with a brand like The Lonely Planet would be a pretty powerful partnership; apply the whole thing in a PDA or some other WiFi enabled device that makes book reading easy (something like Nokia's 770 ) and you have your own tour guide in your pocket that is as close to being smart as you can get. It will be able to know which country you're in and allow you to subscribe to the guide for that country, or mini-guide for that city. Once walking around the LBS granularity would enable a smart book mark to move you to the section of the guide for where you

Me I Meebo

While playing around with my new favourite collaboration tool, Jeteye , I saw that it was possible to save IM's as well. This led me to Meebo . Meebo allows you to embed an IM client into your website or blog through a widget that you can configure as MeeboMe.com. You can get a multi way conversation from your site(s) in parallel in browser at Meebo.com. The thing I like about Meebo is that I can also connect to any SIP client and have a consolidated list of my contacts and who is online and offline. I can set my presence globally and this cascades to all of the clients. No more having Yahoo say I'm in a meeting and MSN saying that I'm available. The application of this client is for on demand client service or similar real time contacts from your web presence. A great little b-web product.