IPTV Ripe for Social Networking
In a most informative presentation to the Royal Television Society last night, Cisco’s Steve Brigden, said he believed that interactive TV apps that embraced social networking approaches would be big on IPTV.
In a wide ranging presentation that sought to explain the implications for the TV industry of the government’s ‘Digital Britain’ report, Brigden also gave over a good deal of his presentation to explain the nature of the looming bandwidth crunch.
He explained how video intensive applications such as BBC iPlayer, YouTube, and HULU are putting a strain on ISP cost structures – as business models struggle to cope with the exponential growth in usage from users watching streamed video content, often at high quality.
He added that it was his personal view that ‘all you can eat’ £10 a month broadband packages were possibly not sustainable when the consumer was expecting to consume so much bandwidth for this low cost.
Cisco is predicting that in less than four years more than 90% of consumer broadband bandwidth will be for video. BBC iPlayer alone, is already responsible for 7% of the UK’s bandwidth usage.