Web traffic delivery surged to record levels during President Barack Obama's inauguration yesterday, according to content delivery network provider, Akamai. As the largest day ever for the delivery of concurrent live streaming over Akamai's global servers, the company reported it delivered a peak of over 7 million active simultaneous streams (the majority being live streams) at approximately 12:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. Typical simultaneous streams on an average day are less than 1 million. more»
British Telecom's IPTV division, BT Vision, has just celebrated its second anniversary with 350,000 user although called by some critics as a slow growth. In a Telegraph interview, Dan Marks, BT Visions' chief executive has defended the company's progress saying: "What do you mean it isn't catching on? ... We've had extremely rapid growth compared to other platforms, look at the early days of cable or Sky". BSkyB took two years to sign up its first 300,000 customers, he claims. According to the latest figures released by Ofcom, the communications regulator, BSkyB now has more than 9m pay-TV subscribers and Virgin Media is also streaks ahead with 3.6m households signed up. more»
The online video audience is expected to reach 190 million people by 2012, 88% of the Internet user population, according to the recent report by market research firm, eMarketer. The future of the video industry depends largely on how stakeholders navigate technical challenges, infrastructure upgrades, the migration to mobile, and ongoing consumer resistance to ads and payments. "After some false starts with ill-fated transactional experiments, online video content owners and distributors are pursuing a strategy that closely follows the standard TV business model," says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst. more»
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan research firm suggests that the IPTV subscriber base in Asia-Pacific -- covering 13 countries -- reached 4.1 million in 2007 and estimates this number to reach 22.4 million by the end of 2013, at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 32.7 percent (2007-2013). Of the 13 countries, eight had commercial IPTV services in 2007, while the rest are conducting trials for expected deployments from 2009 onwards, according to the report. "Many service providers feel the urge to launch IPTV services as a defensive strategy to increase their 'n-play' offerings with one more service." more»
Worldwide subscriptions to internet Protocol television (IPTV) services are on pace to reach 19.6 million subscribers in 2008, a 64.1 per cent increase from 12 million subscribers in 2007, according to research company, Gartner, Inc. Worldwide IPTV revenue is projected to total $4.5 billion in 2008, a 93.5 per cent increase from 2007 revenue of $2.3 billion. In 2008, 1.1 per cent of households worldwide will be subscribers of IPTV. By the end of 2012, Gartner forecasts worldwide household penetration of IPTV will be 2.8 per cent, while worldwide IPTV revenue is expected to total $19 billion in 2012. more»
While celebrating its 10th year anniversary this month, Google reflects on the "enormous impact" that the Internet has had on people's lives around the world. "It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of," says Google in its recent blog postings related to "Google at 10". In today's blog post, Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder, YouTube (acquired by Google) says: "Today, 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and we believe the volume will continue to grow exponentially. Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call..." more»
Online TV viewing has been gaining in popularity according to a recent survey of 10,000 households. Nearly one-fifth of American households who use the Internet watch television broadcasts online, double the viewership from 2006, The Conference Board and TNS reports. The top two destinations for online broadcasts are the official TV channel homepage and YouTube. "The shift from appointment TV to content on demand is well underway," says Michael Saxon, Senior VP at TNS. "Fundamentally, consumers expect content to be available when they want it, and on the screen of their choice -- TV, PC, or mobile. For consumers, PCs enhance content on demand from simply time-shifting to place-shifting. Online content can be viewed in any room in the house, or at work or school." more»
A recent report released by the Discovery Institute estimates that by 2015, U.S. IP traffic could reach an annual total of one zettabyte (1021 bytes), or one million million billion bytes. From YouTube, IPTV, and high-definition images, to "cloud computing" and ubiquitous mobile cameras, 3D games, virtual worlds, and photorealistic telepresence, the new wave is swelling into an exaflood of Internet and IP traffic. more»
The number of viewers watching TV piped into homes over the internet is increasing as more broadcasters look to offer their content this way.
Research out today reveals the number of people downloading television content or watching it live online is growing rapidly in the UK. According to findings from Continental Research, 5.4 per cent of the UK population have watched IPTV. In total, 3.6 per cent have watched streamed live content and 3.3 per cent have watched a program that they have downloaded. more»
The growing popularity of smartphones, IPTV and other gadgets connecting to the Internet is eating up real estate on the net, and soon techies can expect cyberspace to run out of room, according to a Frost & Sullivan analyst briefing Thursday.
Experts say today's Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) also limits services of multimedia content and data communication, including mobile IP, P2P and video calls. With new mobile IPv6, telecommunication providers can easily roll out custom services from movies to ring tones to television. more»
