TV Over Copper

Telecommunications service providers are operating in an exciting industry. On one hand, they are faced with enormous pressure as deregulation and mergers continually introduce new competitors into their market space. On the other, they are presented with tremendous revenue-generating opportunities as technologies become more advanced and bandwidth more plentiful. Despite the increased competitive activity, few service providers are giving up without a fight. And why should they? Everyone wants a piece of the ""multiservice"" action - the opportunity to provide high speed Internet, television, video-on-demand and dial tone services to customers. Service providers are not only experts when it comes to dial tone services, they have a strong reputation for customer service and reliability. How often do you pick up the telephone and not get a dial tone? New Revenue SourcesThese core capabilities, along with the large amounts of bandwidth that service providers have at their disposal, make it possible for them to offer bundled multiple services to their subscribers and increase their competitive edge. Service providers can introduce new revenue sources and realize enormous economies of scale by leveraging their existing networks for applications that require a lot of bandwidth, such as TV content redistribution. NBTel is one service provider that has made the business decision to be more than a narrowband telephone company. ""Our long term survival depends heavily on our success in operating a company that provides state-of-the-art local and long-distance telephone, data, mobile, paging, Internet, television and e-commerce services,"" said Kevin Hastings, NBTel's Director of Technology-Broadcast. ""NBTel's service is breaking new ground in the areas of quality, choice and value - especially for customers who want to have their choice of television, music, interactive and Internet-based applications all on one network, with one service provider."" Video ApplicationsIn the recent past, introducing any type of video application was a significant challenge for service providers - video did not fall within their field of expertise and the technology had not yet been proven. Several factors needed to be considered and resolved before video could be introduced. Service providers asked themselves, ""Can we afford an expensive video head-end? Will the technology integrate with our existing network infrastructure? How will we manage our video assets? How will we ensure that the video technology will be as robust as our existing technologies? How do we make sure that the technology won't be obsolete in a couple of years? Where will we get TV content to send over the network once the technology is in place?"" As the first telephone company in Canada to secure a permanent Broadcast Distribution Undertaking (a cable TV license), NBTel has had to tackle many of those challenges first-hand. ""We wanted a future-proof system architecture and we fully explored traditional technology options,"" said Hastings ""We found that the new business -- that is, TV and Internet applications converging on multiple appliances -- was still largely in the development stage. Using MPEG video content, sourced from broadcasters and IP resources already in place at NBTel, we are now seeing the long talked about convergence taking place."" PixStream Incorporated, a Newbridge Networks Affiliate company, has worked with a number of service providers to develop the expertise needed to offer a complete TV content redistribution head-end solution - customized to fit within existing telco network infrastructures. The technology has been proven and the business case has been developed. How It WorksThe solution begins with the PixStream VDS5000 video networking system - a complete broadcast video head-end in a box. The PixStream VDS5000 takes in uncompressed and compressed video feeds from any video source, adapts them as needed and then transmits the MPEG-2 video signals natively or within an IP multicast format over an ATM infrastructure. Sourcing TV content and negotiating an arrangement with a TV content supplier can be challenging. PixStream has simplified this task significantly with the PixStream VDS5000, which redistributes TV content from a direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service provider. Channels from the DBS service provider's lineup, that have already been MPEG-2 compressed, are demodulated, descrambled and sent out over the telco network to set-top boxes at customers' homes. Service providers can get most of their TV content from one supplier. If local TV content is desired, the VDS5000 can take in baseband encoded off air signals as well. System ManagementThe system is managed by PixStream VDSmanager video networking management software. This software fits seamlessly into the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) model and into the service provider's existing network management infrastructure, which might consist of MainStreetXpress network and service management from Newbridge, HP OpenView or another SNMP-based network management system. Simply pointing a Web browser at the PixStream VDS5000 enables a telco to operate and maintain PixStream video networking systems (PixStream's Java-based configuration utility can be accessed via any web browser). More importantly, performance information and alarms sent to the network management infrastructure allow the operator to guarantee high quality and reliable content. Solution-oriented modules for specific carrier operator applications and tasks have also been developed. Centralized management of multiple PixStream video networking systems, simultaneous program substitution (where one channel is substituted for another as may be required by broadcaster content regulations, such as during a sporting event ""black out""), and content redundancy management are some of the specific applications that have been developed to simplify traditional broadcasting operations for telcos. ""Using MPEG video content, sourced from broadcasters and IP resources already in place at NBTel, we are now seeing the long talked about convergence taking place,"" says Kevin Hastings, Director of Technology-Broadcast, NBTel. In the end, it all comes down to who can provide the most value to their subscriber base. Service providers that optimize the value of their existing networks by introducing multiple services - like TV - will surely have the competitive edge.

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