Networking Portals
Broadband Bananas: proliferation and convergence
Broadband Bananas is the world?s biggest networking organisation for the Interactive TV and Broadband industries, with an outstanding information and community-based web portal that offers unique opportunities to watch and learn from Interactive TV applications and operator marketing campaigns from around the world, in addition to finding news and written resources. We already have 26,000 qualified professionals registered to be part of our community and we get more new visitors to our website every day. Our real-world networking parties are well-known in the industry and cement our position as a contact point for anyone who has a professional interest in Interactive TV and broadband digital TV in general.
Building on this success, Broadband Bananas is now reaching out to a wider audience. We want to create a community of interest that is focused on the challenges and opportunities presented by the proliferation of digital TV platforms and the convergence of digital broadband technologies. Interactive TV will still be an essential part of our new portal, but we intend to introduce the same networking and research opportunities, and innovative content offerings, for a number of other specialised communities that we hope will include you -- encompassing IPTV, mobile TV, Internet TV, cable, satellite and terrestrial broadband wireless.
The new Broadband Bananas will reflect the immense changes in our industry including the growth of new media delivery platforms like IPTV, mobile TV and Internet TV.
We believe IPTV technology is already disrupting the existing world order for video services, and we think the world?s major traditional media companies will adopt IP video themselves to compete, either building or buying DSL or FTTH networks or arranging access deals with IPTV network operators and then using hybrid delivery systems like cable/DSL or satellite/DSL, for example.
Network operators are becoming more technology-agnostic and it will become increasingly difficult to categorise media companies according to their access network, like cable or satellite. The growth of hybrid delivery architectures represents true convergence - something that has long been talked about but which is finally becoming a reality in the field.
Ultimately, every major media company is aiming for the same end goal: to be able to offer a complete triple-play offer of video, voice and data, and possibly a quad-play that includes mobile telephony too. We are convinced that IP will be the common thread and believe that the migration to all-IP in the video industry -- however long it takes -- provides an area of shared interest for professionals in all market segments, whether you are currently working within an analogue cable, digital satellite or DSL environment, for example.
The new Broadband Bananas will reflect this real-world convergence and provide the means to research and discuss its implications, either online or by meeting people with similar interests at our various networking events, which will be held around major industry trade shows and conferences.
Alongside our overall theme of broadband digital media convergence, our new web portal will contain smaller communities of interest that are specific to the access network that operators currently use. All the resources in these parts of Broadband Bananas will be geared towards the unique requirements of each market segment as it copes with increasing opportunities and increasing competition. So for satellite, topics of interest could include how operators introduce Video on Demand and compete with the huge volumes of on-demand television anticipated on IPTV, or how they introduce a full triple-play solution. For cable, the evolution of switched IP networks right into the customer premise is an area that our web portal will address.
There will also be a community of interest on mobile TV. This new delivery platform is hugely exciting and represents the opportunity to make new money for everyone in the content-to-consumer value chain, from content owner through aggregator/platform operator and transmission network operator to retailer -- which now includes mobile phone operators. The mobile TV community will include all the traditional digital TV players plus some significant new entrants including made-for-mobile content producers and of course, mobile phone handset vendors. We believe a new community of interest is evolving that draws people from all quarters of the media industry, and which deserves to be represented on Broadband Bananas.
The new Broadband Bananas will also address Internet TV as the public, unmanaged Internet finally emerges as a viable platform for direct-to-consumer pay video. The birth of Internet TV, with premium content available over broadband connections, will truly revolutionise the media marketplace and make the disruption caused by IPTV look insignificant. Once again, every content owner, distributor, aggregator and transmission network operator will be impacted, as will set-top box and DVR vendors whose role as gateway providers will be threatened by the PC. There are so many threats and opportunities, so many themes for discussion and such a need for information exchange that we believe Internet TV also deserves a new interactive community.
The growing interest among Internet Service Providers in IPTV, and the ambition of search engines to become video aggregators, provide more food for thought on Broadband Bananas. So does the increasing migration of content from set-top boxes and Personal Video Recorders into PCs, and vice-versa, in an example of how consumers are beginning to become technology agnostic as well. Conditional Access to DRM bridges, which are now entering the marketplace, point the way to more TV/PC co-habitation, with broadband video downloads finding their way onto PVRs, and Pay TV programmes being stored on PC-based media centers.
Over time, consumers will expect to to take their premium television and on-demand video with them outside the home, with gateway devices providing the bridge between trusted and controlled Pay TV environments and mobile devices that are either supplied by network operators or bought via retail.
The convergence of the broadband and television industries in the home is an example of how communities of interest can overlap -- with cable, satellite, IPTV, mobile TV and Internet TV all represented in the fight for consumer eyeballs.
The new Broadband Bananas will reflect the interests of these specific communities and also provide the over-arching convergence forum that is relevant to all. We hope that if you are a professional in the media industry with an interest in the future of digital entertainment delivered over both broadband and narrowband networks, you will find resources at Broadband Bananas that help you do your job. We hope you will join us for the next phase of the broadband revolution and part two of the digital TV story -- the part when everyone gets together and we all have a happy ending.
