Vision - September/October 2008 - (Page 19)

Watching on the Web necting people to their things and things to each other. “It’s anybody’s guess what the [IPv6] applications will be,” Homren proclaims. “As IPv6 is built into everything and the network is ubiquitous, it becomes economically viable to do an awful lot of things. This is an enabling technology for some really hot applications in the future.” It likely will be the wireless and mobile devices “used outside the hierarchical architecture of the house” that will benefit most from IPv6, says Filipovic, postulating that NAT is sufficient for static CE devices in the home. If one thing is certain, the experts say, it is that the wholesale transition to IPv6 from IPv4 will take many years—and may even be delayed by attempts to recoup IPv4 network addresses that are currently wasted. “The Internet is a huge and complicated organism and change like this is going to come gradually,” Traw says. Alternative Solutions “Rumors of the running out [of IPv4 network addresses] may be premature,” declares Neil Rickard, research vice president at market research firm Gartner in Egham, England. One-third of the total number of available IPv4 network addresses were set aside and reserved for “testing and future use,” and now there are attempts underway to have these released into service, Rickard says. In addition, he says, it has been proposed that ISPs be allowed to reclaim IPv4 network addresses that currently are not in service because their former users have abandoned them. Of all the IPv4 network addresses assigned to individuals, he notes, only three percent appear to be in service. Finally, Rickard says, there also is a school of thought that supports a free market in IP addresses, allowing them to be bought and sold like any other commodity. This would incentivize owners to relinquish unused IP addresses and help postpone the expected IPv4 network address drought. While “doomsayers” predict this shortage to materialize in the 2010–2012 timeframe, Rickard says, “At the moment we’re on the skeptical side of this.” It will be at least another five years—to between 2015 and 2017—before this occurs, he contends. Even so, he says, ultimately CE device www.ce.org Television delivered via the Internet, also known as IPTV, remains a niche marketplace today—a tag-along behind cable-TV and satellite-TV. But the picture is changing. Over the next 10 to 15 years, it is expected that the Internet will become a major medium for the delivery of TV programming, video-on-demand (VOD) and related services, thanks in large part to the proliferation of mobile CE devices that can access all this content. “IPTV is definitely going to be a paradigm shift for the consumer. I think it’s going to revolutionize the way the consumer gets entertainment,” declares Steve Rago, principal analyst at iSuppli in Scottsdale, Ariz. “As consumers get more acquainted with this new experience, they’ll want more. The infrastructure to support that, however, has to be built up.” According to market research firm Gartner, headquartered in Stamford, Conn., there were 1.7 million IPTV subscribers in the U.S. at the end of 2007, encompassing 1.5 percent of all households. By 2012, Gartner predicts the number of these subscribers to grow to 10.9 milSteve Rago lion, for an 8.7 percent increase in household penetration. (Between 2007 and 2012, the number of U.S. households is expected to grow, as well, to 125.2 million from 117.7 million.) Compared to other “pay-TV” services, however, IPTV is just a speck, says Amanda Sabia, principal analyst at Gartner. Counting cable-TV, satellite-TV and IPTV together, she says, there were 97.2 million U.S. pay-TV subscribers at the end of 2007, comprising 83 percent of all households. In 2012, she forecasts, this total will grow to 106.6 million Colin Dixon or 85 percent of all households. Now IPTV is a me-too service, she declares. “Going forward, they will have to offer more video-on-demand and pay-per-view [programming], gaming. It’s going to be about the content, and they’ve got a challenge ahead of them regarding the kind of content they’ll get.” There already is tremendous consumer interest in video delivered online, notes Colin Dixon, practice manager, broadband media, at research firm The Diffusion Group in Sunnyvale, Calif. Twelve percent of broadEero Kaikkonen band users already do 25 percent of their TV show viewing online—by watching on websites where it is available—Dixon says. “When it hits the TV, the usage level will go up tremendously.” In 10 to 15 years, Dixon predicts, “a heck of a lot of TV viewing will switch to the Web. It has started now.” And he believes much of the content, offered on an a la carte basis, will be special interest programming that would not be profitable in a traditional pay-TV service. “Content owners are still learning how to monetize IPTV,” says Eero Kaikkonen, chief marketing officer at On2 Technologies Inc., a Tarrytown, N.Y.-based maker of video encoding and decoding technologies. And the IPTV market is all about convergence, he says. “There is a huge need for different kinds of devices working together,” ranging from cell phones to set-top boxes, TVs and portable media players. Yet ultimately, Kaikkonen adds, the fate of IPTV will be determined by consumers’ responses to the variety of CE devices they can use to access that content. “Content is mobilizing, but at the same time customers always want to use the best possible display,” he says. “There’s still work to be done to get there.” • makers will be forced to migrate to IPv6 to take advantage of the new applications that it will enable, including large-scale mobile services and “building smarter stuff in the home.” In the final analysis, it will be the con- sumer who will both inspire the IPv6 transition and benefit from it most. “People are not going to go out and buy new [IPv6] devices unless they’re getting something cool,” asserts Intel’s Traw, “something that they didn’t have before.” • September/October 2008 19 http://www.ce.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Vision - September/October 2008

Vision - September/October 2008 Contents Shapiro's Spectrum In this Issue The Economist Visionary C4 Trends Coming to a Neighborhood Near You IPv6: Connecting People and Things Israelis Spend Big on the Latest CE Devices Tech Speak Tech Policy CEA Newsline Going Global Eye on Business Market Insider Just the Stats

Vision - September/October 2008

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