CONNECTIONS™ pre-show events address trends, solutions, and opportunities in digital content and device management

CONNECTIONS™ announced two pre-show events, taking place June 24, 2008, bringing expert analysis on business strategies and consumer and industry trends in digital living as well as the opportunities and challenges of device management in the digital home.

Business Cases in Digital Living, a strategic workshop from Parks Associates, and Device Management Summit: Low Cost Device Deployment & User Support, from TM Forum, will be held in conjunction with CONNECTIONS™: The Digital Living Conference and Showcase.

According to Parks Associates, almost 33 million U.S. households will have broadband services 10 Mbps or higher by 2012. These connections create opportunities for multiple industries, a key topic for Business Cases in Digital Living. At this seminar, Parks Associates analysts provide strategic recommendations regarding digital home services and consumer purchase decisions. The seminar also features a special session with executives from Icron Technologies, SyncTV, AwoX, PacketVideo, and Allegro.

Device Management Summit, hosted by TM Forum, covers the entire device-management value chain, including manufacturers, integrators, consultants, executives, and service, technology, and application providers. The agenda features discussion on optimizing end-to-end device management and the latest efforts to solve device-based management issues.

This summit features speakers from TM Forum, Device Management Forum, Coxhead Consulting, Cisco Systems, Peak8 Solutions, DSL Forum, Home Gateway Initiative, OSGi Alliance, and Telcordia.

Cisco CIO, Rebecca Jacoby to Share Vision of Next-Generation Customer Experience at CONNECTIONS™

Parks Associates and CEA® today welcomed Rebecca Jacoby, Sr. VP & CIO, Cisco Systems, Inc., who will deliver the opening keynote at CONNECTIONS™: The Digital Living Conference and Showcase on June 25, 2008.

Ms. Jacoby will present “The Next Generation Customer Experience: a CIO’s Perspective” at 10:00 a.m. on June 25. Today’s business environment requires a transformation in the way we bring together the business and technology architectures. She will discuss the new opportunities inherent in new technologies that will aid in the acceleration of this transformation. The keys to success include the ability to deliver productivity, an improved experience, and expansive growth.

“Total U.S. consumer spending for home technical support services will reach nearly $1 billion by the end of 2011,” said Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst, Parks Associates. “This is a critical growth area for the digital living markets, and with the benefit of Rebecca Jacoby's leadership vision, CONNECTIONS™ will explore in depth the issues relevant to this sector.”

Additional CONNECTIONS™ sessions on this topic include:
• Metcalfe’s Law or Murphy’s Law? Customer Support for the Digital Home
• Customer Experience Management Success Stories for Digital Lifestyle End User Support, hosted by Peak8 Solutions

Orb First to Enable Live TV on iPhone

Finally iPhone Users Can Enjoy TV, Internet TV, and Webcams...With another demonstration of the power and flexibility of the Orb architecture, Orb Networks, announced the world’s first way to stream live TV to the iPhone and iPod touch.

For the first time, iPhone users can enjoy the immediacy of live sporting events and fast-breaking news on their phone. Learn More...

Orb Networks is an award-winning developer of software and services that unlock the digital media stored on personal computers. Orb gives consumers secure, free, instant, and everywhere-access to everything from their TV and music to photos and video on virtually any web-enabled device. The company's partners and affiliates include, amongst others, AOL Winamp, AMD, and Creative Labs. Orb Networks is a privately held company in Emeryville, Calif.

Hervé Utheza, VP and General Manager, TV Properties of ORB Networks, will speak at CONNECTIONS US. Hervé will be speaking on June 26th at 2:15 PM on the session, PLACE SHIFTING +CONTENT STORAGE: Moving the Value of the Network Upstream.

Other confirmed speakers on this session include: Quartics; Tara Maitra, Vice President, General Manager of Programming of TiVo, Inc.; and Scot Zarkiewicz, CEO of SingleClick Systems.

Online Storage and Backup Add Value to Broadband Service Provider Offerings

How can broadband service providers keep customers and make money? Online storage and back-up services!

"Enabling Solutions for a Rich Broadband Experience" examines the global broadband market and analyzes the drivers, demand, deployments, and critical enabling technologies for broadband value-added services. According to the report, providers will see $188 million in subscription revenue by 2012 if they provide these value-added services.

Online storage and backup services will spur revenue generation and customer retention over the next five years for U.S. service providers, bringing in more than 1.5 million subscribers, according to Parks Associates’ Enabling Solutions for a Rich Broadband Experience. “Online storage and backup services are great customer retention tools and upgrade incentives,” said Yuanzhe (Michael) Cai, Director, Broadband and Gaming, Parks Associates. “They fit with broadband service providers’ strategic advantages, complementing existing trust and billing relationships, network ownership, and guaranteed quality of service.”

The report recommends that as broadband service providers reposition themselves as experience providers, they should introduce a variety of value-added services to strengthen customer relationships, increase ARPU, and showcase the benefits of high speed. Such value-added services include broadband entertainment, management and support, and control and monitoring services.

“Service providers need to offer a portfolio of new offerings to create meaningful revenue growth,” said James Kuai, Research Analyst, Parks Associates. “BSPs need to experiment with different services and white-label solution providers.”

Michael Cai will discuss broadband service strategies in the session Solutions for Broadband Providers: Carriers as “Experience Providers at the CONNECTIONS™ conference, June 24-26.

All Eyes on the TV: What Will Define the Next Generation of Services?

by Kurt Scherf, VP & Principal Analyst, Parks Associates

The Evolution of TV: No Longer Just “Lay Back”!

For years, the tried-and-true television experience was very much the “lay-back” experience. Before cable and satellite services grew in significance, viewers had four main channel options. Even after the Fox Network was launched in 1986 and subscriptions to multichannel offerings became the norm, the model remained the same –viewers tuned in at specified times to watch a particular show based on a predetermined schedule. In other words, it was television on somebody else’s terms.

With the rise of digital video recorders, alternative content available through the Internet, and fierce competition among different television providers, control over when – and even more dramatically what – to watch is very much in the consumer’s hands. As the television audience becomes increasingly fragmented, consumers demand more in terms of the content choices they are offered and the overall value of their television service. More importantly, the value of entertainment services is not measured by one facet (such as the number of channels) but by providers’ success at offering blended services to their customers. In initial stages, this blending will include bundled services, in which one company provides voice, video, and data services (generally over one type of fixed-line connection), typically at a discount. However, the longer-term offerings will include actual convergence in offerings, in which end-user devices and home networks facilitate the delivery of services in new ways.

Television Gets Smarter: Stages of Evolution

As new entrants seek to attract and retain customers for broadband, television, and communications services, we see significant opportunity for a host of new services and applications to drive new revenue and serve as competitive differentiators. Television service, in particular, will transition from a relatively basic offering of several hundred channels and some interactive features such as video-on-demand to a fully interactive and distributed service that reflects key digital lifestyle attributes, such as home connectivity, a blending of services, and an emphasis on holistic applications, including home management, safety, and health.

Three stages of television’s evolution to a more personal and interactive medium are highlighted in the figure below. At the present time, the major markets in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific sit mostly between the near-term and mid-term opportunities. The basic services are in place, and the scene is set for some dramatic changes to video services in the next few years.

Development Path for Advanced TV Features

Efforts in the near-term stage will emphasize a more personalized television experience, with a key focus on DVR functionalities, home networking (linking the PC to the set-top box), an enhanced level of information (through informational widgets), and rethinking the user interface. We are not expecting a wholesale evolution of the electronic program guide (EPG) during this phase; however, program guides will incorporate more advanced (32-bit) graphics to help sell additional services such as premium VoD movies (by displaying easier-to-read title boxes).

The second phase of advanced TV services deployment will rely more on two-way communication to provide even more Internet-like content. Companies will incorporate place-shifting features (such as those embodied today in what Sling Media or Orb Networks can offer) into television services, which will allow consumers to stream recorded content from a DVR and play it on any Internet-connected device. Social media enhancements will offer features like channel and/or program recommendations that come to viewers from a circle of friends and "virtual water coolers," where viewers can see the top-viewed shows for any given night or week.

The last stage of development will include more advanced entertainment and communications convergence. Providers will enable videoconferencing at the TV, and there will be applications tied to t-commerce (allowing consumers to order products directly from an advertisement using a remote control). We also expect to see features such as home monitoring and health (i.e., Web conferencing to check on an elderly relative). Community features will allow for a more customized information service related to local information (updates on city government and school events; allowing subscribers to connect to each other on Craig’s List or Angie’s List).

Are consumers ready for these features? As service providers seek to differentiate and add value to their services, the additional investments necessary to create these advanced features have come with significant questions. Telco/IPTV providers in particular have come under scrutiny for their investments in deep fiber technologies and their deployment of television and bundled services, but after some initial skepticism from Wall Street, these efforts are being seen in a more favorable light as subscriber numbers have increased.

Now that the basic offerings are in the field, the focus has returned to the consumer. As television services expand beyond “me too” offerings, do consumers see value in these additional features – interactivity, more programming, greater personalization, higher-quality content, etc.? Our data (most recently from Digital Media Habits II) indicate that premium video-on-demand services will be a key differentiator, followed by the ability to enjoy music and user-generated content (such as photos) on the TV.

This article was published for the 2008 CONNECTIONS™ Conference Industry Insights, the official publication of CONNECTIONS™.