Also, law enforcement shuts down IPTV domains around Europe, TiVo figures out a way to add commercials, smart home devices keep growing and Vod.pl bests Netflix in Poland.
In a recent online survey, around 96% of people living in Asia-Pacific said they rely in some way on the products and services available from Internet behemoths such as Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Google, Amazon and Alibaba. In the same survey, 60% of respondents said they'd want to choose from more than the usual five or so companies and almost half believe it will be "difficult or very difficult" to find replacements for the services offered by the online giants, according to the Asia-Pacific Policy Survey 2019. The online survey included more than 1,300 people across 39 economies in Asia and perhaps indirectly gave local telecom operators in each market a reason to pursue competitive services that emphasize security, privacy and offer consumer choice.
Piracy in the High-Speed
Today's high-speed broadband networks, with petabytes of cloud-based content, lure modern pirates to create websites and subscription plans that may appear legit to subscribers. But they are not -- and law enforcement, with the encouragement of copyright holders and legal sellers of content, will take down these illegal products. (Image by Felix Lichtenfeld from Pixabay)
In recent weeks, more than 50 million European IPTV customers lost service when police and anti-piracy organizations quietly took down several IPTV and pirate-box services, according to reports. Police collected info about more than 5,000 Xtream-codes.com resellers, reported Cordcuttersnews. In the US, piracy watch-dog organizations such as MPA America and the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment closed down several alleged pirated-content sites this weekend, wrote TorrentFreak. MPA America also has take down OneStepTV, TVStreamsNow, and DoozerIPTV or BestTVStream, XCaliberTV and MoreMediaBox.com, TorrentFreak said. (See Piracy to Swipe $12.5B in Video Revenue by 2024 – Report.)
TiVo soon plans to insert pre-roll ads in DVR recordings. The pre-roll ads are in testing now and will become part of the vendor's retail platform within three months. The ad inventory will generate new revenue and may help subsidize the price-tag of TiVo's retail hardware, a spokesperson told Light Reading. Customers can skip the commercials, which appear to be aimed at devices running TiVo Experience 4, its current software and services platform. (See TiVo Rolling Out Skippable Pre-Roll Ads for Retail DVRs .)
The global market for smart home devices will increase 23.5% year-over-year in 2019 to almost 815 million devices shipped, International Data Corp. predicts. In five years, at a CAGR of 14.4%, worldwide shipments will reach 1.39 billion, the research firm said. Drivers include decreasing prices due to more competition, growing adoption of smart assistants, and consumers' awareness of the cost savings, convenience and energy benefits smart-home devices generate, Senior Research Analyst Adam Wight said in a statement.
Connected Devices in Every Room
Penetration and assortment of smart-home devices are quickly increasing, according to researchers including IDC.
(Image by Pixaline from Pixabay)
Taiwanese pay-TV service provider Chunghwa Telecom chose Telestream, a developer of file-based media workflow orchestration, media streaming and delivery technologies, to support its 4K broadcast operations. Chunghwa Telecom will adopt Telestream's Vantage media processing platform, and ensure it meets all quality of service standards by using Telestream's Vidchecker, an automated QoS solution for file-based media.
Telefónica and Spanish media group Atresmedia have teamed up to create Spanish-language fiction. The duo will produce and distribute original films and TV series for Movistar+ and Atresmedia. Muy bueno.
Extending Its Audience
Telefónica and Atresmedia are working together to create more Spanish-language programming to appear on TV. No word yet on the type of content, although it could include telenovelas along the lines of the popular show "La Patrona," as well as news, documentaries and dramas.
Location-centric, mobile collaboration platform Nrby continues to focus on the cable industry, with the addition of Bryant Isaacs to its board. Isaacs is the former president of Assurance Solutions at ARRIS, and a 17-year veteran of the cable and field service industry. Recent Nrby clients include Summit Broadband, Schurz Communications and WOW!
Cable-backed, data-driven TV advertising sales and tech company NCC Media is changing its name to Ampersand. Ampersand will act as the central hub for network-enabled addressable capabilities on national linear, and video-on-demand TV inventory for cable providers Charter, Comcast and Cox.
Polish on-demand provider Vod.pl took the top spot in Poland, for the first time relegating Netflix to second place, according to by Gemius PBI's analysis of data for Wirtualne Media. Vod.pl had more than 3.42 million users versus Netflix's 2.923 million subscribers, the research found. Like Vod.pl (which is owned by digital publisher Ringier Axel Springer), relative newbie Chili.com's subscribers increased enough to put the provider in ninth place; other well-established providers including player.pl (sixth) and ipla.tv (eighth) saw total user numbers drop. Cda.pl –premium was the third most popular service after vod.pl and Netflix, the report said.
Democratic lawmakers in the House Energy & Commerce committee are pressing the likes of Comcast, Altice USA, Charter, Cox and T-Mobile to detail their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vendor says low-cost coax testing device enables customers to verify a coax outlet before calling tech support and should help operators reduce unnecessary truck rolls and service calls.
As the Senior Digital Experience Strategist at Canadian operator Rogers Communications, Lindsey Omelon build on her years of marketing experience to approach her strategy with a hybrid ...
There's certainly no shortage of hype around the use of AI in the telecoms sector, but fewer instances of real-world deployments. South Korean national operator KT is one of those ...
Do a Google search of 'artificial intelligence broadband' and you'll get more than 9 million results in less than a second: The sheer volume of content out there shouldn't surprise anyone ...
Comcast, like any other major communications service provider, is undergoing significant changes in the way it grows its business, how it runs its business and the technologies it uses to ...
Today’s access network architecture is under mounting pressure due to a continued surge in the number of connected devices, a proliferation of bandwidth-intensive customer applications and dramatic shifts in usage patterns related to the pandemic, such as work-from-home and e-learning.
Learn why now is the right time for cable operators to build greenfield networks or expand their existing networks with 10G PON, arming customers with high-speed symmetrical broadband. Gain a clear understanding of the drivers impacting the access network and the various approaches being considered to deliver higher speed services. Plus, find out the best practices that operators are employing as they leverage the latest in passive optical technology to future-proof their networks.
Topics to be covered include:
Node + 0 (Fiber Deep)
DOCSIS 3.1, DOCSIS 4.0 (FDX/ESD)
FTTP and 10G PON
XGS-PON, NG-PON2
Provisioning 10G PON within a DOCSIS B/OSS environment
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