Next Generation Communications

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.

By Susan Campbell

Can you image a world with TV Everywhere? This concept goes beyond televisions made available in your favorite restaurants and bars. Instead, TV Everywhere is a concept that allows you to access your favorite TV content on any screen, at any time and from any location. Alcatel-Lucent is working to make this a reality.

TV Everywhere is an initiative launched by Comcast and Time Warner designed to enable existing TV subscribers to watch their preferred television content online and on-demand without any additional cost.

Global telecoms giant, Alcatel- Lucent, seems to be consolidating its leading position in the rapidly expanding Femto / small cell market with this month’s deal to deploy the technology across Telefonica’s Spanish operation.

To paraphrase an old saying: “Cometh the hour, cometh the technology” and it seems as though Alcatel’s offering has arrived just in time to help head off the perfect storm of soaring data traffic that is threatening to engulf existing mobile infrastructure. There simply aren’t enough traditional base stations to cope with forecast traffic demands and, if mobile operators are to maintain the quality of reception for their customers, then rolling out small cells would appear to a solution which is destined to rapidly gain traction.

The idea of using small base stations connected to broadband as a way of improving mobile reception in residential and smaller office environments is by no means new. The technology has been around for years. The reason it hasn’t been rolled out before is all down to the cost of the microchips it requires. Recent advances have enabled the chips to be manufactured much more cheaply so that it is now economical for dwellings and small offices to take advantage of what Femtocells have to offer.

Typically they have a range of about 10 metres and, apart from the fact that they enable mobile devices to pick up a signal which might previously have been physically impossible, they provide operators with an inexpensive and quick way of boosting capacity.

As consumers and businesses users throughout the world continue to demand mobile video and multimedia, wireless networks are under intense pressure. In fact, mobile operators are finding that their networks are struggling to keep pace and still deliver the quality of service that consumers demand.

To start to pave the way for the necessary change, Alcatel-Lucent suggests that mobile operators gain a comprehensive view of their market, business models and network strategies. The converged all-IP network can pave the way for LTE and 4G, but mobile operators need to scale their bandwidth while managing costs and protecting their application enablement capabilities; take advantage of new revenue opportunities through advanced services; and deploy a flat IP architecture that will support LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 4G services.

Delivering advanced services is a great pathway to new revenue opportunities for mobile operators.