The Pragmatic Innovator

The Most Promising Technology in 2011 that People Are Starting to Talk About

Naturally CES was primarily focused on the latest and greatest devices – tablets and other connected CE devices were definitely the darlings of the show. But the bigger story was really how Internet connectivity is changing the way people watch – and expect to watch – video content.

In fact Ryan Lawler of GigaOM writes “If there’s one thing we learned from CES this year, it’s that there’s a paradigm shift happening in the way consumers discover and access content.” He notes that cable and satellite TV is becoming more like the online TV experience. “The cable program guide will become less important as a content discovery mechanism, and personalized recommendations will become a larger part of the way that consumers find videos they want to watch.”

In other words, consumers will be “ordering” the type of content they want to watch on the device they want. Currently this content is being delivering via some type of streaming technique, such as progressive download or adaptive rate streaming (HTTP Live Streaming, etc.).

As we know these delivery techniques require a tremendous amount of bandwidth and network capacity – especially when delivering higher quality video to tablets and connected TVs. It is the network owners who carry the burden of building and managing this capacity – and maintaining a high QoE.

They are struggling to keep up with demand and cover their costs. Case in point, we recently saw Sprint increase its unlimited data plan by $10/month.

Roger Entner of Recon Analytics aptly wrote about this in FierceWireless: “Sprint had to face the economic reality of success. Data usage and hence costs have increased substantially since it introduced its Simply Everything plan and it had to adjust prices to respond to this reality.”

We feel it is only a matter of time before Verizon feels the success of the iPhone and has to drop its unlimited data plan. Now is the time the industry needs to start talking about new ways to deliver data – outside of data caps.

Of course this is the position Opanga has held for the last few years. Since 2006, we’ve been developing and commercializing our content pre-positioning solutions that are designed to help operators manage the overwhelming network burden of delivering video while at the same time providing consumers with wonderful video applications on smartphones and tablets.

Our solutions manage the flow of content over constrained networks, actively seeking out surplus network capacity to transparently pre-position content in real time to any device without causing the network congestion or degradation typical of other video applications. We have invested substantially in our intellectual property rights (IPR) in this area and will soon announce some exciting developments.

And now we are seeing other companies jumping on the content pre-positioning bandwagon. For example, Alcatel-Lucent launched its Mobile Smartloading technology late last year, which was recently recognized by Andrew Seybold for the Most Innovative Mobile Technology at the 2011 Annual Choice Awards.

We predict that see more operators and content owners will be talking about how content pre-positioning is the most promising technology in 2011. You heard it here first.

Part 4: “But How Do Operators Know What their Subscribers Want to Watch?” They’ll tell you.

As the CEO of a start-up company, I tell the story about our technology and products on a daily basis. We typically receive incredible feedback and response to our approach for video delivery optimization.

However, there is one question we are constantly asked regarding content pre-positioning: “How does the subscriber know what they want to watch?”

To answer that question, we point to the many examples of consumers making proactive decisions all the time on what content they want to consume.

Consider monthly magazine subscriptions via the US Postal service, Netflix movies by mail, eBooks delivered to a Kindle or iTunes Seasons Pass TV. All of these businesses are predicated on the consumer making a decision on what they want and subscribing to content of interest. Consumers are willing to pay for a subscription to what they want and have it delivered to them – especially when delivered in the highest possible HD quality with perfect playback every time.

We are also seeing evidence that consumers are migrating to video-based “apps,” customized applications to access the content they prefer. For example, consumers today might subscribe to CNN by purchasing and downloading the CNN app for $1.99. Likewise, a consumer may select ESPN for their sports news and information by purchasing and downloading the ESPN app.  When consumers buy and download apps they are specifying an choosing the content that they want and prefer. Pre-positioned content can transform that ESPN app into an ESPN Sports Center TV experience for Mobile – and generate a small monthly fee per customer.

These are decisions and preferences made by the consumer and align very well with pre-positioned content and revenue generation opportunities. We expect that this trend will continue in the future, especially as it pertains to viewing mobile video.  As subscribers become increasingly disgruntled with the quality of the video that is available to them, they will turn to more consistent alternatives, such as apps that utilize content pre-positioning techniques, for a consistent and high quality experience.

We believe mobile apps are more valuable to the consumer than a mobile browsing experience. Do you?

Capacity crunch strategies: Adapt!