What exactly IS IPTV (television over Internet Protocol)?

this is net video i'm jason romney we're

in sydney australia where we're at the

offices of alcatel

and we're joined today by jeff hayden

who has the title director innovation

and market development at alcatel he's

about to change his role to a more

asia-pacific focused role but we've

tracked him down here in sydney and are

very lucky to have his opinions about

australia's broadband future jeff

welcome to the show thanks jason it's

nice to have you here at alcatel we've

been talking

in a demonstration format just before

this interview began about the

remarkable alcatel microsoft solution

that delivers a broadband based

television experience to the home

and which is sharply differentiated from

services such as foxtel's digital

service by the fact that you've got all

the broadband

services running in parallel and

accessible through the tv at once what

is unique and exciting about broadband

tv

okay

the whole idea of

iptv is that it's delivered over an ip

network now that to begin with it's

important to explain that that ip

network is not the internet it's not

something that you can do on the web

today and it's not something that you'll

be able to do on the web in the future

this is about building an ip network

that has quality of service and and can

deliver multiple services at the same

time

things like video

in all its forms tv video on demand free

to air all those things can be delivered

over an ip path and even multiple tvs on

on separate paths so they can all work

perfectly without interacting with each

other

but then you have to consider adding

high speed internet as well and voice

over ip as well and multiples of those

so a typical home can have multiple tvs

being used at the same time multiple

broadband internet connections being

used at the same time as well as

multiple phone circuits and then over

time how all of those things integrate

together makes it a unique experience so

that idea of a multi-service broadband

network does that mean that the big

broadband service providers in australia

need to somehow carve out and dump the

existing broadband network

infrastructure and replace it with

something entirely new

well

sadly the answer to that question is it

depends

because there's a

there's a lot of work that can be done

to to evolve the existing broadband

networks

in some cases

but the most

the challenging thing is if you want to

deliver a lot of tv type services you

need a lot more bandwidth so let me give

you an idea of what sort of impact that

has

today when you connect to the internet

via broadband and it really doesn't

matter whether it's on a cable or dsl or

even via satellite and it really doesn't

matter what access speed you've

purchased whether it was 256k or 1.5 meg

or anywhere in between or even higher

the point is once that access network

has been connecting you to the internet

the back end network that's connecting

you has very high contention ratio so

you might get and most telcos around the

world offer services that connect you to

the internet at say an average of 20 or

30 kilobits per second even if you've

got a very high speed access

and that's that's okay when you're on

the web because you can surf and you

download bits of content you can

but what they won't do is guarantee that

you can get end-to-end performance the

web just isn't like that it's a shared

thing there's a high contention ratio

when you move to a video delivery you

need to have very high speed connection

end to end nailed up for the whole time

you're watching the tv circuit so that

requires you to have multiple megabits

end to end whereas today's broadband

networks are all tens of kilobits end to

end that's what has to start to change

so it's an upgrade to the access to give

you more bandwidth into your home

and an upgrade to the entire indoor

network to give you enough bandwidth to

deliver

video services

so at the moment australia is poised to

have a mass deployment of adsl 2 plus

which will provide much higher speeds

is that the kind of new network we're

talking about well that's that's a major

upgrade to the access part of the

network and that's that's a requirement

for this kind of service being able to

deliver

something of the order of 10 or 12

megabits per home

is necessary to make this work but

that's just the beginning you still have

to have the back end shared network and

that shared network has got to be

upgraded to support

enough bandwidth to deliver real-time

services across it and that's a major

upgrade as well

is this kind of network upgrade

something which the market will look

after itself or is this something that

the government needs to take a lead in

subsidizing and setting up all kinds of

artificial stimulants and incentives for

industry to go ahead and implement this

for such a small country like australia

that's a that's a tricky question for

australia can i can i start by answering

a little more generally to begin with

and then we can get into the more gnarly

issues of australia

the the idea that um

any telco who

or any uh cable operator for that matter

who can deliver broadband services

they certainly could and many are

starting to

deploy this kind of network but they're

really going to target their high value

customers and their high value high

density community areas where there is a

valid return on that investment what's

much more challenging is looking at

delivering it to the entire community

because

in any country there are higher density

higher value customers and lower density

lower value customers and and

in the markets where we're deploying

this kind of technology now

the those telcos are typically targeting

high value customers in higher density

high density areas to give a good return

on their investment

the rest of it's harder and so

that's where

government can potentially play a role

where there is a need to kind of and i

don't want to just use the word subsidy

because that's just one way of solving

that problem but

it's probably appropriate to say that

atelco won't find

a business model that simply says they

can deliver this service to everybody

and perhaps they never will find a model

that delivers it to everybody

the challenge is how do we get it to an

appropriate a

high percentage of the population cost

effectively and uh and that's that that

really is a challenge

in my view you could probably uh

deliver services in australia to

comfortably possibly half the population

the other half would be financially

challengeable challenging to do and uh

and how that is done remains to be seen

if indeed it ever is once this bold new

network is instated there's the prospect

of being able to deliver movies and

games all kinds of broadband related

content properties to the television in

the home

now when that happens

what sort of issues does the home user

have is this going to be an easy

experience or is it going to be baffling

and and stress engendering

yeah well if you were looking at the

market today and you're looking at the

product sets that are available to

consumers today you would have to say

that only the bravest and uh and

technically savvy guys and girls will

have a go at it

and and that isn't the model that makes

sense in the scalable

solution

one of the things that will happen

through this process of implementing an

iptv kind of solution

is that the service provider who

delivers that service will start to

manage the service end-to-end into the

home which really does mean that it

becomes a mass-market kind of solution

and not just

a geek solution

and that's very important that's

fundamental to making this a success

today

if people want to simulate these kinds

of capabilities they can buy a windows

media center running on a windows media

center dedicated pc or an elgato itv on

the mac platform and they can save

movies for example to their hard disk

and watch them later they can also save

broadcast television from the

terrestrial transmitters and from ostar

or or

foxtel that pay television services in

that way to their hard disk but what

we're talking about now is a situation i

think where it's coming from the network

which is very much more live and

bandwidth oriented and an exclusive

product of your relationship with

microsoft is that right yes in fact what

you've just described is the way

anybody who is downloading movies today

off the net is doing it you know they're

simply connecting either with a mac or a

pc to the internet they're getting the

content through whatever sources they

they choose to much of it now is

available to purchase uh there are

service providers around who sell the

ability to download uh movies this this

model we're describing now the iptv

model is just simply not like that

that if you like the traditional model

of movie download is a non-real-time

experience it's using the web it's using

pcs

and that's a that's a great model for

many people who are who are on the net

and and using it i mean we all do those

things but that's a kind of a trickle

feed situation which is absolutely not

real time you know you're taking

advantage of the fact that the internet

can deliver you stuff in whatever speed

that the internet can deliver to you and

you certainly can't get it at a speed

that would be able to then be watched

real time while it was streaming in high

quality or even even standard definition

tv would be impossible over the net uh

and high definition would be you know

completely out of the question the model

we're describing is one where all the

content can be delivered to you real

time so the idea of changing channels

and selecting from hundreds of tv

channels and the idea of having movies

on demand that are just you know

one one um remote control click away

from ordering and watching uh that

requires

um

a lot more bandwidth a lot more

sophistication in the networks and the

the microsoft tv application integrated

across

the sort of broadband networks that

alcatel build and integrate end to end

um provide that whole new experience so

it's a it's a tv oriented kind of

experience rather than a pc oriented

experience we're used to being

non-real-time with a pc or we're used to

having small windows with video in that

we can do off the net in a streaming

sense but this is much more about you

know filling the screen with a full tv

experience and indeed high definition is

available day one out of the solution uh

with surround sound and with the normal

home theater experience so it really is

shifting um an ip network from being

just a web connected ip network to a

multi-service

uh network environment that can deliver

high-speed services to tvs

now the interface that you demonstrate

when you show people the microsoft

alcatel solution

looks similar to the windows media

center electronic program guide but it's

different in the sense that the windows

media center interface is being

generated by that software running on a

pc whereas this is running on a digital

set-top box connected to the cable or

adsl modem would that yeah that's a very

good way of describing the difference

even though they have

somewhat similar looks and feels about

them i mean it is microsoft after all

they are in indeed in microsoft quite

separate businesses and quite separate

market opportunities and i i've no doubt

and perhaps you should talk to microsoft

about it but in from as an observer and

a partner microsoft i would say that

they are probably going to make those

things look more and more alike over

time but they are distinctly different

solutions one is a web connected

go buyer thing and run it on your pc

model the other one is an integrated

end-to-end solution to deliver services

to the tv which

you won't go and buy from microsoft

you'll go and buy from the service

provider and it just will be powered by

a microsoft set of applications is it

the case that the australian digital

terrestrial broadcasters like 2 7 9 10

and sbs if they were re-transmitted here

would have access to a rich interactive

palette of services that they could wrap

around their tv properties to generate

new revenue streams and that this would

therefore be good for their business

model or would this actually be a menace

to their business model yeah i think

that

the answer to that is a complex one

because there's there's really a couple

of different ways of looking at this

whoever the service provider is that

deploys this kind of technology

they will have a desire to deliver as

much rich content as they can and

they'll they'll want to have as many

broadcast channels available to the to

their customers as well as

video on demand and other more

integrated sort of triple play kind of

services as well now that so that so the

existing

uh digital broadcasters

could absolutely be delivered over this

platform

completely unchanged in in

in simply a re-transmission form to

deliver just standard free-to-air tv and

there are many people in australia who

can't get standard free-to-air tv in

apartment buildings and places like that

that's that's a real um challenge

to deliver in many cases and so this

provides a vehicle potentially to get to

many other people who can't get it but

then if you're suggesting that that

could then become a rich interactive

experience

it absolutely could but that would

require quite a lot of collaboration

between the service provider delivering

the triple play services into the home

and those broad broadcasters who are who

are simply having their content

re-delivered in a new form

there's no there's no natural component

for them to just build an interactive

component of their channel

it's more an interactive component of

the whole solution that could be that

could be brought into play so

there'd be a lot of commercial issues to

resolve to work out the best way to make

that an interactive experience not just

a technical solution but certainly

we're in the process now of integrating

more a fixed and mobile experience

together now the first steps of that are

to make a

a mobile device have some control and

interaction with

this because remember that

3g networks are just another ip network

they happen to be mobile

ip connectivity across those networks is

is just like ip connectivity in a fixed

network so getting information from an

ip connected 3g device into an ip

connected home

entertainment environment is actually

quite straightforward so being able to

remotely control

things in this environment is quite

straightforward being able to put

messages on the tv screen is all

straightforward even seeing the 3g phone

with it with a nice screen as a client

that can

can receive

the programming

as well is also foreseeable and and part

of a longer term plan so there will be

um an ability to deliver

the sorts of services into the home as

well as to to mobile devices over time

that isn't available yet of course you

have a demo of a

personal digital assistant running a

microsoft operating system that lets

people send messages to the television

for their children to read for example

like go to bed now and

set the start and end times in the

channel that will be recorded on the pvr

is that kind of thing

just the start that's a good question we

we see it as the beginning

and in fact the further out into the

future we look the harder it is to

determine which particular device will

be the thing that

that gives us a whole new kind of

experience because what what we're

seeing here is the embryonic stages of

what we at archetypal describe is a

user-centric broadband model where the

user buys devices and connects to

networks without even being aware of the

networks in some cases maybe even

multiple networks

with complete lack of visibility from

the user it has to be that simple and

that invisible to the user and one of my

favorite analogies on this is that you

know 100 years ago when people started

installing water and electricity into

the home

nobody was

planning dishwashers or clothes washers

they became a valuable converged

application of water and electricity

combined with a new device to do

something new and interesting 100 years

later

i think what we're seeing here is once

we've got high speed internet once we've

got high sp ability to deliver tv once

we've got

voice over ip being delivered all over a

common infrastructure then we'll see

many many devices that we've yet to

dream up that can take elements of all

of those things and make many more

interesting applications and services so

i think this is just absolutely the

beginning and when we talk about triple

play being voice video and data i think

we're missing the point triple play is

much more interesting when you look at

okay voice video and data provide an

underlying capability so now what do we

do and then it really gets fun net video

recently spoke to martin douglas over at

pbl where they're trying to take the

9msn content and applications and span

them across lots of platforms and

devices in a seamless experience in the

wonderful world of tcp and i'm hoping

the answer to this will be yes

does the fact that everyone's just using

ip addresses mean that even though that

might in some respects be a separate

network to the one that say telstra

might set up

that people will be able to reach

seamlessly and interoperably between one

network and the other

from it from a network perspective um

the

the vlan that's delivering the tv

services is a completely contained thing

so you have to subscribe to that service

to get access to it

but

the point is though and and your point

is valid one we when we're all in in an

ip environment and we all are identified

uh uniquely and and in a consistent way

then the ability to subscribe to these

things becomes a lot easier and a lot

more uh friendly for users you know we

are all seriously suffering today from

having way too many passwords and user

names and and having to remember which

one and the fact that they change for

security reasons every month or every

three months you know those things are

all awful experiences for users and they

they chase users away in many cases

certainly when we when we're when we're

basing this all on on common ip

infrastructure and there are security

regimes put in place that are actually

consistent for everybody then

we will we will see that improve you

know we'll see

a much more uh sophisticated identity

management coming into play that makes

it easier for users and and when i say

sophisticated it might be hard to

implement but the user has to see it as

a very very simple thing so i think

identity management's going to become a

very very important part of any

service providers model you know i'd

love to see

the fact that the tv knows that it's me

watching and not my kids so that

i can be presented with ads that are

relevant to me and the kids can be

presented with ads that are relevant to

them

without us having to really be aware

that the system is aware of us

that's what more personalized service

means in the tv context you know and

that's once again just the iceberg

but yeah i think this whole area of

personalised service and identity

management is uh is a big one and we'll

see a lot more investment in that area

i'm not sure we'd like to see our

our first experience as a kid on a games

machine

create the one identity we live with for

the rest of our lives

because many people choose quite bizarre

names for themselves when they're young

and trying to play a game they might not

want to use the same one when they go

into the bank in a properly user id

managed world

you probably can use the same tag for

every experience but with some

nesting of access

when you're doing a banking transaction

there might be a level of security

that's a bit different to

logging onto a games

machine or logging on to another kind of

broadband connected service

there's a lot of work to be done in this

area yet it's a very fertile ground in

the industry right now the xbox 360

coming out and halo being a cult classic

and so on it's games that are

increasingly the engine room of of

innovation and and consumer take-up what

sort of benefits does this kind of

technology yield there

it's it's a very

uh

simple model to implement games into

this environment because you are simply

connected to ip networks now whether

those games are in a what we'd call a a

walled garden or a gated garden

environment where the performance of

them can be guaranteed and very high

performance can be delivered

in a quality enabled network or whether

they're connected via the internet and

in the way those games are today

both models can be supported in this

environment very easily because you've

got

everything being delivered over ip

you've got a reasonable amount of

upstream bandwidth as well as downstream

bandwidth you've got high quality

interaction to either the tv or the pc

depending on the implementation

the games environment can be very rich

one and it can be just to the tv if

that's where where people want it now

these things are not all implemented yet

i'm talking about capabilities here

rather than available solutions

games provide

a key value add to the iptv platform and

it's absolutely part of the part of the

the plan to it to have it in that scene

but equally

the same broadband connection can be

delivering games to the tv or the pc

environment sbc in the united states has

already plowed forward with this what

kind of problems came up for them or

indeed policy considerations that we're

going to be able to learn from here sbc

are

building networks today

and thankfully alcatel is the one

building the network for them

and integrating the the microsoft tv

solution for them

that that work is going on right now

they're planning to launch services

towards the end of this year uh and so

many of the uh the customer experiences

are yet to be had you know obviously

they've they've trialled and they've

done things in a in a relatively

contained manner uh real service launch

happens towards the end of the year and

then we'll really get to see

what kind of experiences the customers

value and

and and how the how their take-up rates

go how they win back customers from

cable operators

you know i i live and work in the

asia-pacific region so i'm not terribly

intimately involved in all the details

in sbc but i do know that they've had a

quite a a long history now of losing

customers to a very aggressive cable

company who are offering triple play

services voice video

and data services

on the cable and sbc have been really

suffering that that pain of losing the

battle in many cases with customers

migrating over

this is sbc's way of of stemming that

flow and in fact hopefully offering

something that's way more exciting to be

able to win customers back again

and they've they've first of all had to

suffer that pain to to make this kind of

bold step to to to try and win customers

back again we'll have to wait and see

how successful that is

the initial implementation of digital

terrestrial broadcasting in australia

still used mpeg-2 as you would expect

but there are now a whole lot of

additional video encoding formats such

as h.264 or windows media for example uh

and your system the alcatel microsoft uh

joint system

can support all three of those can't it

mpeg-2

h.264 and windows media nine yep

is the video

format an important issue or is that all

just going to go away no it actually is

extraordinarily important and

increasingly so

first of all there's

mpeg-2 is is a is a problematic for

broadband because the cost of delivering

more and more bandwidth is not

insignificant and so however you can

compress the video to be more

efficiently delivered over broadband

networks really does help in a business

model so

the first implementation of the iptv

platform supports windows media 9 and

very soon will follow h.264

they are much more highly compressed and

a much more modern video compression

techniques than than the the now aging

mp2 uh the really valuable thing about

h.264 and windows mini 9 is that the

content can be compressed to

to any level quite suitable for

delivering to mobile phones at say 100

kilobits

that's a valid thing and the quality is

still quite quite good at that level on

a small screen uh mpeg2 doesn't scale

down that way if you ended up with

mpeg2 delivered to a to a mobile phone

you might end up with one or two blobs

on the screen and you would be able to

tell if it was a person or a spaceship

you know it just would wouldn't scale

so mpeg

4

which is h.264

and windows media 9 really do scale very

well they also

enable some very clever tricks to be

played to make fast channel changing

possible

mpeg2 doesn't permit that because it has

standard reference frames that come

along every couple of seconds and and

you have to really

synchronized to those to get channel

changing to go at whatever speed that

can support

there can be some really interesting

tricks played to to make channels

happening very fast with the modern

video compression and in fact i should

highlight that the iptv platform from

day one supports high definition and

standard definition and the user doesn't

really experience anything different

except that if they're subscribing to a

an on-demand movie that's that's

delivered in high definition with with

surround sound they're likely to pay a

bit more for that that's what i like i

think has a very cool piece of

flexibility that you can

charge any piece of content

for what it's worth you don't have to

just simply categorize something as a

latest release and whatever quality it

is is what it is you can now have a high

definition launch which can be charged

potentially a little higher than a

standard definition one with with only

stereo sound so those sorts of

flexibilities are really important for

this sort of video compression

telstra and bridge networks here in

australia are conducting an

h.264 based trial using the broadcast

bandwidth the dbph so-called standard

what is it about the kind of user

experience that will be

afforded by that trial to the nokia 7710

handsets that will pick up the various

video channels that are being

transmitted as part of the trial that's

different from what you're doing

well that that model is very much around

delivering delivering a broadcast

content to mobile phone devices and and

that's that's a very interesting and

worthwhile um

project

this iptv model we're talking about is

really around home entertainment in the

first instance

and will evolve into delivering to more

more devices

but that that's a broadcast model

there isn't a lot of interactivity

because db is a broadcast standard

that yes you can have interactivity

through through the mobility component

you know like through the normal um

mobile phone

up links and things uh it's really quite

quite a different focus i mean there's a

there's a huge amount of interest and

value in delivering video services to

mobile phones

particularly 3g and higher quality

screens and things but but what we're

really focusing on is how fixed services

can be delivered into the home at least

for the immediate future

has sol trujillo in his previous roles

had experience with or adopted already

solutions in this area that you might

reasonably extrapolate he would have a

preference for here in australia well

remember that this stuff is all pretty

new

i don't know salt but i i

i know roughly when he was working in

the u.s

at that time there were a lot of trials

going on with these sorts of

technologies very very few deployments

and indeed there still isn't too many

deployments um his more recent

experience in europe potentially uh

um

gives him more relevance to this sort of

set of issues i mean he's done a lot of

work in france and uh and france is a

market which is developing very rapidly

with video services

from both competitive operators and

telcos uh so my my expectation is that

he would have a pretty fair

understanding of

of the success of those applications and

services in that in france particularly

and in some of the surrounding markets

as well i mean italy is a very

interesting video market already with

fastweb and telecom italia going head to

head with um

with with video solutions and

we're involved in in various ways with

both of those

i have to say that neither of them are

part of this

microsoft alcatel collaboration right

now but um

only because they've been around for

quite a long time before we we in fact

formed this relationship

but it gives us a lot of experience in

those markets i'm sure

the new ceo of telstra will have similar

experience from being

intimately involved in the french market

is it conceivable that foxtel might

ultimately dump its existing

infrastructure to replace it with this

kind of solution that is a radical

question

one has to think about that over a very

long term

if

if you ask me that question in the

context of 20 years from now i would say

yeah almost certainly

if you're suggesting that they might do

that in the next 12 months i'd say no

chance

where does that cut over point happen

where does it become interesting it's a

very tough question to answer but

one one thing i'd

i'd recommend we think about is

at what point does an hfc network

actually need to be retired

you know these things don't last forever

they have a finite life

money needs to be spent to keep them

alive and maintained and refurbished

i don't know

what the expected end date of that sort

of network is but but when that end date

eventually arrives

there's no way in the world that it will

be rebuilt with the same technology it

almost certainly would be rebuilt with a

fiber to the home kind of technology and

i think it's very interesting to to bear

in mind that

even today's existing foxtel services

could run quite happily on today's

available fiber to the home technology

alongside all of the services that we've

been talking about today so you could

deliver

foxtail services on a piece of fire but

at the same time as running ip based tv

services at the same time as running all

the necessary high speed services for

internet and and all the voice services

all on the same fiber so if i was

putting my what do i think is important

for australia hat on i would say that in

20 or 30 years time there'll be an

individual fiber running to many homes

in the country and that fiber will be

being used to deliver every

conceivable service into the home

other than those that are being

delivered on wireless solutions and

there'll be some of those as well

so

tricky question because

over time we ought not to have more than

one network

there's no practical reason why we can't

have one network what there is is

political will or

competitive pressures or regulatory

frameworks that make having one network

potentially quite difficult to implement

but that should be the objective of the

country i think to have one only network

that can do everything just to clarify

is it the case that foxtail digital is

digital in the sense that it's not

analog but it's not digital in the sense

that it's a tcp ip based digital exactly

iptv is around delivering um

a digital

modern video compressed digital tv over

an ip network foxtel is delivering

mpeg-2 digital broadcast

and with their iq

capability they've added a little bit of

interactivity but it's very very limited

and it's a nice pvr function it has some

really cool things but but has limited

interactivity has a reverse channel it's

a dial-up modem for example that you

know really does provide some

limitations

but it is it's still absolutely digital

and in fact all the free-to-air

broadcasters are broadcasting in digital

in the same way as foxtel is today one's

on a coax ones in the in the in the

atmosphere but

they're both the same mp2

compressed digital video signals

this iptv model we're talking about is

using more modern video compression

techniques which provide more

flexibility and better compression

but they're being delivered on ip

networks so they have an intrinsically

more interactive potential

jeff you mentioned before that one of

the interesting uh implications of

adopting this kind of platform is that

advertisers will be able to know who is

watching what ad does that mean that the

network is watching you

well

the the intrinsic to an iptv type of

application is the ability to

um first of all you would be able to

manage all the content so you've got to

know what people have asked to view so

that you can deliver it to them

because this is pretty pretty different

to a conventional broadcasting model

where every channel is delivered all the

way into the home and you simply pick

the one you want to watch in this case

they're all being delivered out of a

head end and you're communicating with

that head end to to to ask for the

particular one you want to watch to be

delivered which is extraordinary when

you think about how much quicker uh the

channel changing is when all that

signaling is going on across the network

end to end to actually turn off the one

you're watching turn on the one you want

to watch and then deliver it to you and

and to recognize that that whole complex

process happens much faster than a

normal uh remote on a cable set top

which in fact is just simply telling the

set top

uh give me this one instead of giving me

that one um so there's um

there's a lot of

sophistication in that sort of service

but but ultimately the system has to

know which thing each tv is is having

delivered at the moment that that

provides lots of information to people

who then want to offer you more

personalised services

so australian content creators and

technology entrepreneurs must be banging

the head against the wall out there

thinking with all these changes and

miraculous new technologies there must

be opportunities for us to come up with

new products and make money

we just can't quite work out what they

are right now are there any hints you

could provide

well the first step is in fact getting a

multi-service network built and there

aren't too many players out there who

are actually seriously likely to do that

but once there is a multi-service

network

then there ought to be plenty of

opportunity for those sorts of players

to

to get access to that multi-service

network

through the wholesaling models that

exist today you know there are plenty of

uh

you know just to use telstra as an

example for a moment they offer a wide

range of wholesale services today if

they had a multi-service network like is

required to deliver these services that

network could be

able to wholesale a whole raft of other

services as well and you could well and

truly imagine a situation where any

content owner could buy wholesale

capacity in a network to deliver their

service in um

in a broadband way to anybody who wanted

to subscribe to that service it's

actually a richer wholesale

model for content owners who don't want

to build their own network and i'm quite

hopeful as an australian wanting to live

in australia we have great services here

that we in fact have a good model that

ultimately means we've got one very cool

network that can have good wholesale

capability and then people who have

really interesting content can be out

there competing without having to have

their own network to compete on it would

be much more interesting to see it all

on one common infrastructure and and and

the competition exist at the content and

application layer rather than at the

infrastructure layer can we just let it

all go and wait for the technology to be

implemented and then attend to it yeah

that's a

i don't think we can just wait and see

what happens um i think

and in fact sbc has had some interesting

um

uh

regulatory issues to deal with in and

all the other carriers in the usa of

course have to deal with the same

regulatory issues

they were very excited about deploying

this kind of network and got very

involved in building business models and

deciding what they'd like to do but

ultimately they didn't do

they didn't make a commitment to build

this sort of network until the regulator

actually gave them some favorable

outcomes

for example

a good many of their customers are going

to be connected with fibre to the home

on this new network

and

most of the rest of them will be

connected on fibre to the kerb

technologies with um with adsl 2 plus

and vdsl as technologies to run the last

bit of copper to the to the home at high

speed

the regulator in the u.s

uh said and made a ruling that said that

um that if you deploy fiber in this

situation you don't have to share it

at the physical infrastructure layer and

and it was only that decision that made

this business model make sense because

if they had to put that fiber out there

and then had to

open it up for competition then they

simply couldn't have made a business

model work

so they they got that regulatory relief

they went forward with building a

network

right at the moment

in the us and in many markets the copper

loop is unbundled so the telco is forced

to share that copper loop with anybody

who wants to to use it

and and i'm not saying that's not a good

idea but if you if you have that same

regime for fiber nobody could afford to

build a fiber network so we have to

think of a way of encouraging the

construction of these new networks and

then have a way of sharing them in a

cost-effective way and i think that the

model is likely to be

one infrastructure and a good wholesale

regime to sell higher value services in

a wholesale sense there's potentially

many possible answers for that one

well jeff hayden from alcatel you've

raised many uh useful issues for the

australian broadband industry and indeed

its regulators to think about thank you

very much for coming on that video today

it's a pleasure jason thank you very

much