Copper broadband networks a secure alternative to deliver copyrighted content

Aliant Telecom says it will prove the value of broadband IP networks as a secure platform for TV content and other copyrighted material with the launch of several new services including another kick at the broadcast can. This month it will launch several new services, including TV programming, video-on-demand (VOD), and subscription music to about 100,000 high-speed Internet subscribers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. Many of the video services will be provided using technology from Aliant subsidiary iMagicTV Inc. that has been more promise than reality for almost 10 years. Joe Mosher, a director of strategy and business development at Aliant, tells CNM that three new services have been quietly launched – or are set to launch – that take advantage of the company’s high-speed facilities to offer broadcast and music services with superior quality of service (QoS) and secure delivery. On July 8, Aliant opened its video portal – previously available only in New Brunswick – to high-speed customers in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and P.E.I. The video portal offers content such as TV broadcasts and clips from providers such as BCE Inc. affiliates CTV and TSN on a closed network available only to high-speed subscribers. Clips include news, sports, entertainment, and other video content. Second try at broadband TV The move marks a second try at providing broadcast-over-IP for the Atlantic telco. Last month, the company announced that it was winding down its poorly-received VibeVision digital TV service using copper wires. The service had only attracted 3,300 subscribers since its launch in January 2000, and generated only $1 million in revenue in 2001. Aliant is expected to move many of those customers to BCE’s satellite option, Bell ExpressVu. (For more information on VibeVision’s demise, see affiliate publication Canadian Communications Reports, June 21/02.) The June 18 VibeVision announcement coincided with news of a new $85-million investment to expand Aliant’s high-speed network across Atlantic Canada. In contrast to VibeVision, Aliant’s video portal, which offers clips on-demand, attracted 50 per cent of Aliant’s New Brunswick high-speed customers when it launched in February. The company will offer 10 channels of broadcast TV on the same portal beginning July 19, though it has not yet announced a price point. Mosher says Aliant can offer TV broadcasts where other companies such as JumpTV.com Canada Inc. and iCraveTV.com Inc. have failed for legal reasons because the content is available only on its intranet – something only a facilities-based ISP can offer. Telco-grade infrastructure a must "You definitely need a telco-grade broadband network," he explains. "In our case, I’m as interested in helping someone else deliver their content to my customers as I am in Bell Globemedia or our own content. "The only way this is going to work is if we make it easy for content and application companies to re-engineer their processes to leverage the power of broadband and change the way they do things – to help broadcasters and programmers take their stuff from scheduled to on-demand and making it real attractive for them to make that available on my intranet. You’ve got to be able to make money on that. "The currency may be subscriptions and the currency may be advertising. The currency may be sponsorships from Irving or Aliant or whatever. We should be able to show them a better business case." Because the content will be provided on an intranet basis, Mosher says it will be better quality than that offered on the web. CTV content, for example, might have to pass through three or four hops on its way to the Atlantic provinces. Though gatekeeping might arise as a concern since Aliant will have final say over which content gets posted to the network, Mosher assures CNM that the company has a heritage of openness in its business dealings, and that there are several reasons the company doesn’t demand exclusivity in its contracts with third-party content providers. "One is critical mass. Openness means you get faster economy of scale and more standards. This early on in the broadband game we can’t afford to have anything proprietary or exclusive. You need scale." TV-to-the-PC and VOD are also precursors to greater interactivity and convergence between IP content and TV broadcasts, Mosher says. Desktop PCs are far more powerful than the crop of set-top boxes in use today, but it’s too early to tell how Aliant might exploit that greater computational power. "Right now, we’ve got to get the stuff out there and get the scale. Then, we’ve really got to go talk to some customers and say, ok, what do you want to do with this?" Mosher notes, though, that the company will likely try to build on partnerships now in place with affiliate Bell Canada. For example, one possibility might be to tie TV-to-the-PC in with web content from GlobeInvestor.com to create new convergent products. Another use for its broadband network currently being tested by Aliant is for a subscription music service. Mosher says about 60 households are currently testing the CBC’s Galaxie digital music service delivered to the PC, with a commercial launch likely at a $2.95/month price point. Again, he says, the service is only possible because the service is offered on the company’s intranet, and not on the broader world wide web, thus satisfying copyright protection and digital rights management issues. Offering the new video and music services on an intranet basis using the high-speed network is an important competitive advantage, Mosher says. "Because it’s all on our intranet, we don’t have to pay as much Internet transit cost. Whenever you leave our network and go out on the Internet, you have to pay someone to manage, to carry that traffic. In an absurd way…we pay customers to leave our network. I pay Nexxia every time a customer downloads something from California….(The customer) doesn’t get as good a quality a service and I get less revenue. And I’m not getting as much branding benefit. "Having said that, that is how we’re approaching the applications that we’re now layering on our broadband network – in ways that we’re finding to monetize our investment and bring more value and competitive differentiation and advantage to our customers and our network."

Copper broadband networks a secure alternative to deliver copyrighted content

Broadcast | July 10, 2002

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