On the design of television as a service based on average TV watching

Ten households were interviewed about their TV watching to inform the design of TV services. Our participants were average TV viewers who had Internet access but were not technically advanced or frequent users of the Internet as a source for TV material. We found that the flow of programs that broadcast television brings to viewers was the most important motivation for our participants to turn to the TV on-demand possibilities they had access to. Examples of triggers were social cues from people talking about things seen on TV, or time-shifting issues such as missing all or part of programs in the broadcast flow. Special interests such as sports were also a strong motivation for on-demand behavior. For the viewers, linear and on-demand TV watching was intertwined. We conclude that on-demand services should be integrated with broadcast TV in the design of future TV services

Scenarios for the Internet Migration of the Television Industry

All the conditions for the television industry’s migration to the Internet are now in place. While this migration will be gradual, it will have a deep-seated impact on the industry:•the exclusive rights model will no longer be the standard;•some consumers will abandon traditional managed networks;•a globalization trend will be sparked, to the benefit of the major rights holders. Unlike the music and print media industries, the TV industry is gaining a strong position on the Web. As a result, television is poised to play a central role in video services. This offensive strategy will likely pay off down the line, but does not entirely eliminate the possibility of destroying value. There are structural reasons for this, including a fiercely competitive online advertising market and a lack of control over program circulation. Far from being simply transitory, the 2009-2010 economic downturn marks the beginning of a decade of restructuring for the TV industry. This new period will begin with an overall decline in the sector’s resources before increasingly varied consumption patterns spur a new period of growth. The decade running from 2010 to 2020 will also be a period that focuses on cost control, with the industrialization of TV production that will depart once and for all from its historical model, i.e., film. This migration to the Web poses a threat to the European industry in particular. A reassessment of the television industry’s regulatory strategy appears both necessary and urgent, and will involve the creation of integrated pan-European conglomerates.Television, video, networks, on-demand, connected devices, advertising, pay-TV.

How to choose and how to watch: an on-demand perspective on current TV practices

In Sweden, digital TV services have until very recently not been accessible to most people through the TV set. At the same time, TV channels offer more and more content on the web and the majority of the population has access to high-speed internet connections. A web survey aimed at investigating attitudes and behavior related to on-demand TV was distributed in December 2008 to 52 households in an experimental, open (operator neutral) access network in Sweden. Questions were posed on TV arrangements, habits and attitudes; social aspects of TV watching; watching film or TV on-demand; and watching film or TV using the computer. Complementary interviews were also performed with participants that were not part of the experimental environment. Results show that participants in the studies understood and felt a need for time-shift and on-demand TV services: time-shift needs for re-scheduling, catch-up and repeats were expressed as well as on-demand needs for movies and for accessing otherwise unavailable TV content. Support for on-demand TV could also be found in that subjects reported little need for viewing TV content according to a broadcast schedule, with the main exception of news, sports events and other live broadcasts

Insights in the cost of continuous broadband Internet on trains for multi-service deployments by multiple actors with resource sharing

The economic viability of broadband Internet services on trains has always been proved difficult, mainly due to a high investment cost and low willingness to pay by train passengers, but also due to unused opportunities such as non-passenger services (e.g. train performance monitoring, crew services) and optimization of the resources consumed to offer Internet services. Evaluating opportunities to improve the return on investment is therefore essential towards profitability of the business case. By efficiently sharing resources amongst services, costs can be pooled over several services in order to reduce the investment cost per service. Current techno-economic evaluation models are hard to apply to cost allocation in a multi-service deployment with multiple actors and resource sharing. We therefore propose a new evaluation model and apply it to a deployment of Internet services on trains. We start with a detailed analysis of the technical architecture required to provide Internet access on trains. For each component, we investigate the impact by the different services on resource consumption. The proposed techno-economic evaluation model is then applied in order to calculate the total cost and allocate the used and unused resources to the appropriate services. In a final step, we calculate the business case for each stakeholder involved in the offering of these services. This paper details the proposed model and reports on our findings for a multi-service deployment by multiple actors. Results show important benefits for the case that considers the application of resource sharing in a multi-service, multi-actor scenario and the proposed model produces insights in the contributors to the cost per service and the unused amount of a resource. In addition, ex-ante insights in the cost flows per involved actor are obtained and the model can easily be extended to include revenue flows to evaluate the profitability per actor. As a consequence, the proposed model should be considered to support and stimulate upcoming multi-actor investment decisions for Internet-based multi-service offerings on-board trains with resource sharing

Change & flexibility: the role of serviced office space in corporate real estate portfolios and office markets

With the increasing pace of change, organisations have sought new real estate solutions which provide greater flexibility. What appears to be required is not flexibility for all uses but appropriate flexibility for the volatile, risky and temporal part of a business. This is the essence of the idea behind the split between the core and periphery portfolio. The serviced office has emerged to fill the need for absolute flexibility. This market is very diverse in terms of the product, services and target market. It has grown and gained credibility with occupiers and more recently with the property investment market. Occupiers similarly use this space in a variety of ways. Some solely occupy serviced space while others use it to complement their more permanent space. It therefore appears that the market is fulfilling the role of providing periphery space for at least some of the occupiers. In all instances the key to this space is a focus on financial and tenurial flexibility which is not provided by other types of business space offered

Techno-economic viability of integrating satellite communication in 4G networks to bridge the broadband digital divide

Bridging the broadband digital divide between urban and rural areas in Europe is one of the main targets of the Digital Agenda for Europe. Though many technological options are proposed in literature, satellite communication has been identified as the only possible solution for the most rural areas, due to its global coverage. However, deploying an end-to-end satellite solution might, in some cases, not be cost-effective. The aim of this study is to give insights into the economic effectiveness of integrating satellite communications into 4G networks in order to connect the most rural areas (also referred to as white areas) in Europe. To this end, this paper proposes a converged solution that combines satellite communication as a backhaul network with 4G as a fronthaul network to bring enhanced broadband connectivity to European rural areas, along with a techno-economic model to analyse the economic viability of this integration. The model is based on a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model for 5 years, taking into account both capital and operational expenditures, and aims to calculate the TCO as well as the Average Cost Per User (ACPU) for the studied scenarios. We evaluate the suggested model by simulating a hypothetical use case for two scenarios. The first scenario is based on a radio access network connecting to the 4G core network via a satellite link. Results for this scenario show high operational costs. In order to reduce these costs, we propose a second scenario, consisting of caching the popular content on the edge to reduce the traffic carried over the satellite link. This scenario demonstrates a significant operational cost decrease (more than 60%), which also means a significant ACPU decrease. We evaluate the robustness of the results by simulating for a range of population densities, hereby also providing an indication of the economic viability of our proposed solution across a wider range of areas

Fake View Analytics in Online Video Services

Online video-on-demand(VoD) services invariably maintain a view count for each video they serve, and it has become an important currency for various stakeholders, from viewers, to content owners, advertizers, and the online service providers themselves. There is often significant financial incentive to use a robot (or a botnet) to artificially create fake views. How can we detect the fake views? Can we detect them (and stop them) using online algorithms as they occur? What is the extent of fake views with current VoD service providers? These are the questions we study in the paper. We develop some algorithms and show that they are quite effective for this problem.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figure