Alcatel-Lucent: Providing Solutions to Take TV Everywhere

Next Generation Communications Blog

Alcatel-Lucent: Providing Solutions to Take TV Everywhere

By Susan Campbell

There is a dynamic change taking place in the television consumption model and for those of you who want your preferred viewing available at any time and from any device, you’ll be sure to get excited about the concept of TV Everywhere.

In a recent Alcatel-Lucent white paper: TV Everywhere: Taking Television to the Internet, the company explores the potential of enabling this model to bring a number of additional services and capabilities to subscribers throughout the marketplace. It is bound to be a driving force for Comcast and Time Warner as they enable existing TV subscribers to watch preferred television content online and on-demand, without additional charges.

The world is growing increasingly wireless as consumers and business users alike want real-time access to innovation solutions all the time. To deliver a compelling TVE experience, the top layer of the TVE ecosystem will contain various content providers and broadcast studios producing content for Linear TV broadcasters.

To drive TVE online, the content produced is transcoded and published directly into content delivery networks for on-demand TV and video through connected distribution partners and Web-based content repositories. The bottom layer of the model includes various devices that can leverage TVE content. While the end vision is a large TVE content cloud, it is likely to start out as multiple smaller clouds that will eventually merge into one.

The primary concern for network providers already delivering TV services will be the need to accommodate a large set of stored content that will have to be encoded or transcoded in other resolution formats for consumption. A content management system will be needed to manage assets and enable views to search and select their desired content.

Essentially, the TVE content portal will act as the store front and point of contact for the end user. As a result, the TVE will also be the key driver in determining the overall user experience. The quality of the experience will rely heavily on the ability to provide interesting and relevant content stores for subscribers. These stores must not only encourage subscriber use, but also browsing, viewing and the purchasing of more content.

The Multi-Screen Foundation must also be present for TVE to be successful, and includes all the necessary back-office support functions to deliver TV Everywhere. The foundation enables a seamless content experience across user devices, allows for a single sign-on for use and contains converged payment and unified billing functions.

To ensure optimal content delivery and that all players are ready to participate in the TVE ecosystem, an End-to-End 4G LTE Solution is needed. Providers can work with Alcatel-Lucent to build out the reliable and sustainable solution needed to launch and support these services for long-term revenue opportunities and success.



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