Bandwidth Implications of Online Video

It remains to be seen whether more use of Internet delivery for today's video entertainment programming is a good thing for access providers, whatever it may mean for other contributors to the video ecosystem.

The reason is the sheer cost impact of supplying enough bandwidth to support even a part of today's viewing requirements.

Video, in fact, is the chief reason there is a growing gap between ISP revenue from providing access services and the revenue that can be earned by providing such access (click image for larger view).

To be sure, multiple approaches will be taken to better match demand and supply. Price increases, retail price plans better tailored to actual consumption, wireless offload to fixed networks, signal compression and other efforts are likely.

How Much Bandwidth is Enough?

Nobody yet knows how much Internet access bandwidth a typical user will need in the future, at peak times (average usage doesn't much matter). It is easier in many ways to model bandwidth requirements for entertainment video services. 

If a provider uses a "broadband" approach(in the sense of all linear channels being delivered to the user, whether or not the user is watching), it is a simple matter of ascertaining how many discrete video feeds one wishes to deliver, how much bandwidth each feed requires, and then doing some simple multiplication. 

 If one then decides to deliver all on-demand programming, one needs a switching infrastructure, and then must make some assumptions about simultaneous peak viewing. Will a typical user, at the peak viewing hour, want to watch one feed, two feeds or three, keeping in mind that one of the feeds might be recorded for later viewing while a second is actively watched. 

The Internet access portion of the planning exercise is more murky, but still hinges on video behavior. If business logic allows it, users might be able to stream video, even HDTV video, over IP connections. Whether this bandwidth is of the "public Internet" type or the "walled garden" type is less important, in some sense. 

 Assuming there is a revenue model, how much bandwidth must a service provider be able to provide? Whatever end users may think, a service provider will deliver bandwidth in amounts that allow it to make money, and no more. 

 So asking how much bandwidth users may want is probably less important than how much they are willing to pay to get that level of bandwidth. 

And so far, few users seem to have shown a willingness to spend hundreds of dollars to get symmetrical bandwidth, whether that is a T1 connection or a 50 Mbps symmetrical service from SureWest Communications. To use the old but useful analogy, all of us might enjoy driving a Lexus. But not all of us do. We solve our transportation problems, but not always with a Lexus. In principle bandwidth ultimately will represent that sort of choice as well. 

Just about anybody can buy a T1 connection today. But not all businesses do so, and few consumers do so. Granted, the bulk of consumer bandwidth requirements still will remain of the asymmetrical sort (barring a massive switch to peer-to-peer), so symmetrical bandwidth might not be the best analogy. Still, the question remains: how much bandwidth will consumers pay for? "Need" is it that sense a subsidiary question. 

There's no question typical consumers are showing a clear preference for paying more for higher bandwidth. The issue is the elasticity of that demand as service providers start to move into the "scores of megabits" range, and then contemplate bandwidths an order of magnitude higher than that (100 Mbps or more). 

 If one looks simply at the price-per-megabit, users have shown a wide willingness to pay $50 to $100 a month for unrestricted use of 200 Mbps to 500 Mbps of linear video (with implicit quality of service assurances). 

 They likewise have shown high willingness to pay $50 a month for a few megabits to several megabits per second of interactive Internet access bandwidth in the downstream direction, with no quality of service assurances. 

 Assume that most also have been willing to pay $50 a month or so for a wireline voice connection and you are looking at $150 to $200 worth of monthly revenue for services offering several hundred megabits-per-second of downstream bandwidth, plus services on top, using a highly asymmetrical network. 

That does not leave lots of headroom for networks that deliver more symmetrical bandwidth (scores of megabits per second in the upstream and hundreds of megabits per second for linear and on-demand video plus 100 Mbps for interactive applications). 

 In the consumer markets, the rule of thumb has been that $10 a month of incremental spending is a big deal. Still, shown a value proposition high enough, even $50 a month in incremental spending now has become fairly commonplace. 

So the issue might be more "how much will consumers pay?" rather than "how much bandwidth will they need?", as important as that question remains. 

There always are trade-offs engineers can make: bandwidth versus processing, processing versus storage, non-real-time versus real time, bandwidth versus image quality and so forth. Ultimately, consumers are going to drive access bandwidth with their wallets.

TowerStream: 8 Mbps for $1,000 a Month

Wireless has been the perennial favorite for believers in facilities-based access competition to the entrenched telephone and cable companies. Some 25 years ago, proponents argued that Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Systems (MMDS) based on 2.5 GHz spectrum were going to be the way new video entertainment providers would gain a foothold.

That effort failed. Similar spectrum then was touted by the likes of Winstar, Teligent and others as a solution for high-speed access in the business market. The effort failed.

Much spectrum then was acquired by firms such as Sprint Nextel, BellSouth and MCI and spend years essentially languishing. Now Clearwire and Sprint say the former MMDS spectrum will be the foundation for WiMAX.

We shall see. A smaller new company, Towerstream Corp., is selling 8 Mbps broadband connections for $1,000 a month in eight markets, and currently plans to operate in 20 cities within two years.

In its Seattle market, starting February 1, new customers will be able to buy 3 Mbps connections bandwidth for $499 a month, with free installation. Towerstream offers businesses a range of bandwidth options including T1, T3, 100 and 1000 Mbps connections

The company has established networks in Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the greater Boston, Providence and Newport, R.I.

Using WiMAX technology, the company can “light" a city with just a few antennas. Its New York City network uses four antennas, including one on the Empire State Building.

TowerStream undercuts competitor prices for a T1 line by 50 percent or better. The small antennas that the company locates at the customers’ premises are installed by contract DISH or DirecTV installers.

Provisioning intervals normally are two or three days, compared with three to six weeks for a T1 line from a telephone company or competitive local exchange carrier.

Mid-band speeds in the 8 Mbps to 10 Mbps range seem to be the "sweet spot."

TowerStream appears to be using both telesales and direct sales approaches. It is said to have a 180-seat telemarketing center and is in the midst of expanding its sales force to 160 people, according to Morgan Joseph analysts, who say the company won 27 contracts in eight days, on the strength of 58 proposals. The company appears to have 100 or so direct sales reps trained and ready to call on prospects.

If history is any guide the company should enjoy at least modest success. By avoiding the mass market, it stays out of the way of 3G and other 4G networks aimed at consumers and small business. That's a strategy that lots of other wireless access providers also use.

So far, however, no single entity has managed to build a big business on the backs of fixed wireless broadband in the small business, medium-sized business or enterprise markets. And it may be that the path to success is precisely to operate as a niche provider, in high-density markets, without getting grandiose. That's typically where operators have stumbled in the past. But we'll have to watch and see.

In many cases the business case rests on prosaic concerns. LMDS operators found they had trouble getting access to rooftops once landlords decided they were sitting on a gold mine. It wasn't, but the incremental real estate access charges were enough to kill the business case.

Then there is the availability of riser and conduit space, access to it and the cost of new cabling. Assuming those sorts of issues can be managed, TowerStream might have a shot, at least in some markets, such as New York.

Bandwidth in the 8 Mbps to 10 Mbps range is a bit more than the 4 Mbps to 6 Mbps mid-band Ethernet service some other providers are finding attractive.

How Much Bandwidth is Enough?

It sort of depends on what sort of end user you are, as this analysis by Motorola suggests. Power users require more than lighter users, to be sure. The issue for a network engineer, of course, is that a network has to be engineered for the needs of the most-demanding user, not the least-demanding user. Which suggests that the supply of bandwidth will continue to climb, though it isn't so clear that power users will escape the requirement to pay more money for the privilege.

Motorola thinks about six percent of users require 58 Mbps by 2010, while a quarter of households will require 40 Mbps service. About 44 percent of households will be able to get by with just 19 Mbps.

HDTV Slingbox: More Stress on Upstream Bandwidth

Sling Media has announced a new version of its Slingbox Pro set-top box that has its own HD TV tuner and can send out a 1080i HD picture over the network. The Slingbox Pro-HD will be initially aimed at the U.S. market.

So forget about what P2P is doing to the backbone and access networks. Now users will be streaming HDTV from their homes, stressing the entire network at its biggest chokepoint: the upstream. Ouch!