Recently in IPTV Category

Tomorrow, November 28, I'm honored to be the opening presenter at the 4th Annual Industry Conference on Broadband Communications and VoIP, hosted by the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA). The event is a half-day investor conference attended by institutional investors and analysts, and features companies that want to get more exposure on Wall Street, and includes CTI Group, mPhase, and VoIP Inc.

The New York Society of Securities Analysts (NYSSA) is the premier membership organization on Wall Street for portfolio managers and security analysts, and the largest society of its kind in the world. Founded in 1937, it is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to educating investors and advancing the competence of investment professionals. Founders included Benjamin Graham, considered to be the father of security analysis.

According to a new 2007 Industry Review study from Boonton, New Jersey-based Insight Research Corp., the worldwide telecom industry is in a strong growth mode, and overall industry revenue is expected to climbs to $1.3 Trillion in 2007.

According to the study, strong growth in wireless is leading the way as wireless service revenues are expected to grow at a compounded rate of nearly 10 percent over the next few years, while wireline service revenues grow much more modestly at two percent. Nearly all of the growth in both sectors is expected to occur in broadband services, with wireless broadband service revenues expected to grow at a compounded rate of more than 60 percent over the forecast period, while wireline services grow at 10 percent over the same forecast horizon.

“The 2007 Industry Review states that in the growth environment set off by the rush to meet subscriber demand for broadband services, service providers are trying to create viable business models on the fly in order to deliver new types of IP-based services, including Residential Video Telephony, Fixed Mobile Convergence, File Sharing/Downloading Services, Audio/Video Streaming Services, Location-Based Services, and Presence-Based Services.

The study highlights rapidly growing industry segments such as VoIP, WiFi and WiMax, fixed-mobile convergence, IMS, IPTV and streaming media, as well as technological innovations such as grid computing and DWDM and WDM in fiber optics. The report also looks at changes in telecommunications buying patterns among enterprises that purchase managed services as well as other communications services.

“According to Insight Research president Robert Rosenberg, the telecommunications industry has fully recovered from the malaise of the past few years and is again in a growth mode as it ramps up to build the broadband networks that will provide new service types. “But even with the build-outs going full steam ahead, the overall revenue contribution from these new IP services is expected to be modest. Voice still rules, and will for some time to come.

An excerpt, table of contents, and ordering information for the 279-page report are available online here.

According to a new study from Insight Research entitled “IP-Based Application Services Market 2006-2011" a wide array of new Internet-enabled communications services geared to the needs of consumers is expected to generate nearly $265 billion for phone companies and other telecommunications carriers worldwide over the next five years.

These new Internet-enabled services include residential video telephony; fixed-mobile convergence; file sharing services; streaming services; location-based services; and presence-based services.

What's more, the study notes that wireless and mobile telecommunications carriers seem to be making the most headway when it comes to offering these new services, mainly because they tend to have greatest amount of control over the content in their networks as well as more flexible billing platforms. Wireline carriers expect operational and infrastructure savings by deploying the new IP-based services, and are initially choosing to rollout the new services as an overlay on their existing network.

For more info, including an excerpt, table of contents, and ordering information, go to: http://www.insight-corp.com/reports/ipapps06.asp.

The VP of Engineering of a company that will remain nameless here has contacted me looking for an consulting expert who is hands on and up-to-date with regards to how broadcast TV or studio signals are moved over the Internet to a CDN for distribution over an IP wired or wireless network.

This company is seeking an individual who has strong experience using existing equipment/protocols/systems to solve real-world problems, and not someone who specializes in designing next gen networks.

Knowledge of the following is required:

• Relaying video signals over IP channels
• IPTV architecture
• ATM vs. IP for video transfer
• Knowledge of current standards, including codecs, formats, QoS, and Protocols
• Knowledge of current industry practices, including popular hardware for signal relay over IP, bandwidth issues, integration best practices, and SLAs.

If you are such an individual, or know of someone who would make a good candidate for this assignment, please contact me directly and I will put you in touch with the company.

By now I hope all of you have heard about the IP Communications Business Summit, a new workshop that's been added to the agenda at the upcoming Internet Telephony Conference and EXPO in San Diego.

In case you missed the email blasts, TMC and yours truly (RCG) are presenting this unique workshop to help educate the investment community -- including venture capitalists,
investment bankers, financial industry analysts, M&A specialists, angel investors and any other interested parties -- about the leading industry trends and market drivers in the hopes of ultimately identifying attractive IP communications companies.

The discussion will be feisty, informal, and hopefully fun and illuminating for everyone.

And since admission is free with any registration plan, you have one less reason to not check it out!

Summit Speaker Update:

We recently added notable industry analysts and bloggers to the panels, including Jon Arnold of J Arnold Associates, Ronald Gruia of Frost and Sullivan, and Ken Camp of IPadventures.com.

In addition, Ray J. Hernandez, Managing Director, Investment Banking at VC firm ROTH Capital Partners, LLC, has agreed to present a session described below:

Valuing Voice over IP Services:  A Public Market Perspective
October 10, 2006, 2:15 pm -- 3:00 pm

Certainly one of the most exciting things about the IP communications market is the growth of new businesses offering Voice over IP services.  Indeed, there is still a vast amount of untapped market potential in the industry, and the dramatic rebound of the economy together with renewed confidence in the industry’s prospects has helped the growth of Voice over IP services across all market sectors. As Voice over IP services providers build their businesses, they will want to know how much their businesses are worth.  In this session, you’ll learn about how Voice over IP is being valued in the public markets and what adds to and detracts from building value in a Voice over IP business.  

Some background on Roth Capital Partners:

Since 1984 Roth Capital Partners, LLC has been a leader and innovator in the small and micro cap markets.  Roth provides a full spectrum of investment banking services, including raising capital, research coverage, creating liquidity, trading and market making, merger and acquisition advisory services, sales support, and investor conferences.

Over the last ten years, Roth has raised over $8.7 billion for small and micro cap public companies and completed over 123 merger, acquisition and advisory assignments.  In 2005, Roth raised $1.7 billion for its clients, and the firm has been the leading placement agent in the U.S. over the last two years for the number of PIPE transactions, raising over a billion dollars.

 

ClearSight Networks, a company that specializes in VoIP monitoring and analysis products, has enhanced the newest version of its ClearSight Network Analyzer to provide Triple Play/IPTV support in real time.

The new Version 6.0 adds Triple Play network monitoring to the standard product at no additional cost. Administrators can now track and troubleshoot the full-breadth of network resources, including data, telephony and entertainment/IPTV resources. Other enhancements include additional reporting capabilities and patent-pending algorithms for measuring the video quality being delivered over the network.

According to Masaru Gomi, ClearSight's CEO, "Version 6.0 of ClearSight Analyzer significantly raises the bar for real-time monitoring and analysis tools. In today's networking environments, the ability to effectively and consistently manage multiple environments has become critical. ClearSight Analyzer now incorporates Triple Play in real time, including patent-pending video analysis and support for IPTV flows and analysis. This is a tremendous leap for those charged with supporting provider or enterprise networks."

ClearSight Analyzer provides real-time information about the application, network and physical layers of the network to help users accurately identify the source of network bottlenecks and service impairments. And a simple GUI helps network administrators monitor network activity to solve problems quickly and intuitively.

ClearSight's Analyzer has garnered broad attention from industry-leading organizations and publications, including Network Computing magazine's Well-Connected Award, Frost & Sullivan's 2006 Technology Innovation of the Year Award and Network World magazine's "Best of the Tested."

Version 6.0 will be available in mid-November.

Global telecommunications and information technology consulting firm Detecon, has been featured by the International Engineering Consortium's "Analyst Corner" to discuss key
business and technology issues for IPTV. For this engagement, the firm has produced a short, special report entitled "IPTV: Technology and Development Predictions", which details the state of this emerging technology, and covers IPTV architecture, middleware issues, video on demand and other key aspects of IPTV.

According to Detecon, IPTV is ready for prime time. The technology of most IPTV components is mature and the cost of equipment is far more reasonable than it was previously. Content providers understand that TV is changing and emerging digital media has created new ways to distribute video content. And cable MSOs have built formidable networks to support voice, video, and data.

Visit www.iec.org/newsletter/aug06_2/index.html for a copy of the IEC's Analyst Corner report.

MatrixStream Technologies has just come out with a new low-cost, high definition video on demand (VOD) and IPTV basic server package. The contents includes an IMX500 middleware server, an IMX 2410 XMS streaming server, and an IMX 4010 video encoder, capable of handling up to 500 concurrent users. The price for the package is under $70,000.

The MatrixStream platform is H.264 compliant, and includes billing management, subscriber management, channel management and digital rights management - engineered to duplicate and advance the home theater experience, bringing a virtual video retail store into the family room.

Espial, a company that provides IPTV middleware and applications, just announced support for the first wave of High Definition (HD) set-top boxes from Tilgin. Espial’s Evo™ service platform now runs on Tilgin’s new High Definition IP STB, the Mood 400.

The Evo™ service platform allows operators to offer subscribers a superior HD quality of experience that is graphically-rich, fully skinnable, turbo-fast, and truly open and customizable. The platform is built upon an open and modular data-driven architecture that allows operators to provide a captivating IPTV experience without the performance degradation that is typical of first-generation technologies. It also enables operators to have full control to brand and customize their offerings to their exact specifications. Evo includes applications such as Electronic Program Guide, Video on Demand, Interactive Portal, Personalized Settings and Browser.

Apparently, the word hasn't spread as far and wide as I had hoped, as a number of people I've spoken with recently weren't aware that the upcoming VoIP Demo and IP Communications Business Summit events have been rescheduled and moved venues.

Originally slated for this week in Santa Clara, the events are now proudly co-located with the Internet Telephony Conference and EXPO West, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, CA, October 10-13, 2006.

This is exciting on a number of levels, including the fact that the October timeframe is far better from a show schedule perspective than mid-summer, and also the events will be in a prime position to serve an even greater attendee base, as upwards of 9,000 IP communications-interested attendees are expected to converge on the convention center.

For more information about the agenda, visit the VoIP Demo show site here.