I have been watching their development for half a year now and I am impressed with the rate of development in Tesla.

Hopefully their cars will be ok to import…

The best definition of IPTV is “the QoS-assured delivery of standard- or high-definition network or studio programming in either broadcast or on-demand form using the IP protocol.” … Tom Nolle, President, CIMI Corp.

Apart from the tautology of IP protocol I agree with Tom’s assessment.

Over the last 18 years I have been involved in a number of iTV and IPTV laboratory and field trials, studies, business cases; you name it. Many executive and product management staff in the telecommunications industry have rarely shown a full understanding of Television and to make matters worse of recent times the term IPTV has be shanghaied by many to the point of weakening its meaning, which Tom seems to be trying to reinstate.

In fairness to those telco executives the TV executives have even less of an understanding of the telecommunications industry; to the point of distrust in many cases.

The TV industry, be that free to air, or Cable TV, or Satellite TV, have spent millions of dollars and many, many years in building brand value through the reliable delivery of linear TV content. This is what Tom means by … QoS-assured delivery … in his definition of IPTV.

This point is often missed by the many offerings today that purport to be IPTV solutions.

The other party that is often misunderstood is the asset owners who value the quality of experience, which directly translates into the quality of delivery in the linear TV world as well as the IPTV world. Their desire to protect their assets, and thus their revenues, is understandable. However over the years I have seen content negotiations fail due to a lack of respect for this position from telco executives. This is one of those challenges I love about IPTV as a successful IPTV deployment is more than the sum of technology parts.

Later today I will post what I think an IPTV experience should be; linear and yet not.

Throughput

is the actual speed data will transfer at from one point on the network to another. The actual speed, throughput, of a network is very often much less than the stated Bandwidth. The hardware used to communicate, heavy/light traffic, etc…can effect throughput.

Bandwidth

is more often quoted than Throughput since it is easier to calculate and not subject to changes in many variables.

The important thing to note about throughput, which is what customers actually measure, is that it is defined between two points of the network. The choice of which points is very important.

The Hon Senator Stephen Conroy has stated publicly and within the current NGN RFP that the goal is at least a 12Mbps network that can support high definition video conferencing. There is mention of contention ratios, which coupled with a knowledge of the network architecture can be used to determine a likely throughput, but there is no quantified statement given for them or for a throughput figure.

The implications of the inclusion of high definition video conferencing in the stated application suite that the new network should support should hopefully bring about a network for Australia that approaches the capabilities Ken mentioned in his VodCast. One where the Bandwidth and Throughput are near equal.

Lets hope the respondents rise to the challenge, the reviewers take this into consideration, and that Australia catches up for all our sakes.

For a written version of the detail of the VodCast see World Broadband Speeds

I have been waiting for their Workgroup Edition to come out to give it a try for my own business.