Thursday, May 2, 2013

Convergence of TV, Telephone & Internet


I've been doing some research on phone systems over the internet for a proposal for a prospective client and I couldn't help wondering why we shouldn't switch all communication to over the internet.

Currently we have Television through cable and satellite, phones and broadband services are tansmitted through the same lines yet they currently are 2 different technologies.

But why do we NOT transmit everything together over the same lines? A coaxial cable or a copper wire has enough capacity to transmit high bandwidths (we currently use a very small amount). With FTH or Fibre To Home currently coming in, each fibre has enough capacity to transmit extremely high bandwidth to 50 homes per fibre, while a cable will have many fibres woven together. So there will easily be enough capacity to allow atleast 50-70mbps per fibre per home (this is a guesstimate. Generally speaking its a lot).

We can easily shift the phone technology onto VoIP systems thereby increasing call quality and reducing cost as we will have 1 system in place for internet instead of 2.

Come to think of it, we can shift TV, Broadband and telephone to be transmitted over IP over FTH or satellite. In which case 1 system will handle all 3. This will increase quality of service for the consumer at reduced prices. It will also increase the control over all these systems for the consumer.

How you ask?? Its very simple. Since everything is digitized, request for VoD, Games on Demand and channels shown is pushed to the consumer. He/She can log onto the account over the web, select which channels or products he/she wants and at a click of the button the same can be transmitted or blocked. Similarly with phones and call also, the control at the hands of the consumer increases. Blocking numbers, diverting calls, listening in and call costs all become available to the consumer.

Service Providers need not have the headache of creating special packages for marketing, or migrating old account to new packages. The consumer is charged on a per unit basis and he/she can then set the limits and control his/her spending and services availed.

The Service Providers reduce the headache of managing each customer's account and pass on the headache to the customer who will be more than eager to gain control of their own spending. Currently activating / de-activating any service needs a lot of headache and research for the consumer, who intern has to inform the service provider who undertakes the switching on and off requests. Automate everything and pass on the headache to the consumer I say!

This increases transparency and reduces cost for the service providers who can pass on the benefit to the consumer. With reduces prices the consumer will spend more thereby leading to increased revenues and profits for the Service Providers.

Its a Win-Win situation for all the parties involved.


p.s. If anyone is interested in building this, please contact me! :)



-> SJ