Does Video Quality Matter?

Recently my good friend Bob Logan blogged on Dialogic's Exchange Network that he believes video quality is a key differentiator for wireless service providers. In particular, Bob points out that consumer expectations are high because of professionally produced content and how we view that on television today, quality within video is noticeable to the human eye, and mobile devices continue to improve in terms of screen size.

The question I have is 'will they care about video quality?' There are many possible answers.

One of the players in ensuring video is efficiently served into operators' networks are CDN players such Akamai, Limelight, CDNetworks, Panther Express, and a host of others. I have seen a number of initiatives coming from Verizon (Partner Port), AT&T, BT (Content Connect) and Level 3, as they build on their existing enterprise CDN experiences to create video CDNs.

One consideration is the carrier-based CDN mentioned above. Operators should know what content their customers like to view. Do they also know if the customer is having a poor viewing experience, and if so want to correct it? Can they make money from that?

My view is that given Amazon's commoditization of the market, CDN players will have to incorporate value added services to differentiate themselves -- quality, analytics, trans-coding, and site acceleration.

Introduction

It is September 19, 2009, a Saturday morning at about 8:30am. I have decided that today, finally, is the day I start to outwardly collaborate. To be honest, I am not sure how often I will write on the blog. I hope to start off a couple of times a week. The purpose, at this point, will be to share a my thoughts on technological trends with the the hope that open discussion and debate will lead to conclusions about what our future holds. I also hope that this will be of use to my friends and colleagues in the telecom and enterprise industries. Please add your comments to the entries as I value your feedback, and suggest topics for future discussions!

Earlier this morning I wrote an entry on my company's blog related to "over-the-top" video content and I thought it would be useful to share as my first posting in my own blog as it has been on my mind lately.

One interesting debate I have been following recently is whether consumers will choose to download videos using their service provider's video-on-demand service or whether they will choose to download or stream videos from third parties, i.e., iTunes. Generally speaking, this last option is often referred to as “over the top" because the service runs over the top of an existing broadband service and it not controlled by the service provider.

The real question I see service providers struggling with are whether consumers would be willing pay for the quality of service that comes with downloading video content from the service provider -- this could be their value add. "Over the top" service providers believe they can offer a cheaper solution or better service, since they do not have to worry about providing the network and access. To take this a step further are companies like Sony, whose TVs will support direct internet connectivity, granting access to Sony's online store of movies and TV shows.

So will service providers have to go head-to-head with the consumer electronics giants such as Sony and Microsoft (Xbox live) in addition to “over-the-top" providers such as Amazon and Apple? One model of cooperation is the iPlayer channel offered by Virgin Media in the UK. Virgin Media is the major cable MSO in the UK and now offers a dedicated iPlayer channel enabling customers to watch all the BBC content available on iPlayer with the quality of a video-on-demand service and without impacting the customer's broadband Internet bandwidth. Time will tell whether this model of cooperation spreads.

It is my personal belief that "over-the-top" service providers may eventually win out. They usually have maximum flexibility in terms of technologies, business models and the ability to adapt offerings quickly. They also are not usually reliant on old processes and procedures and can offer new things quickly. Not the least of which they can offer their services fairly cheaply, cheaply enough that we, as consumers and enterprises, seems willing to pay for them.

What do you think?