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[Black Sheep]

A snippet of Ian Livingstones message to his employees ..........

At the start of the global economic downturn we made a bold commitment to invest in fibre. Our £2.5bn investment programme has already brought fibre broadband within reach of more than half of the UK’s homes and businesses. Delivery is on budget and 18months ahead of our schedule. We believe that, together with government support and subject to an acceptable investment environment, we can pass more than 90% of premises with our network in the next three to four years.
The broadband market has continued to grow with 17.6m users now on our network. Over 834,000 were added in the last year alone, with BT Retail achieving over a 50% share of this growth. Demand for Retail’s fibre services was particularly strong with 1.3million consumers and small businesses buying them.
Broadband will increasingly be at the heart of how people watch TV, with customers able to buy a complete package of phone, broadband and TV from us. The launch of BT Sport this summer will bring real competition to the pay TV market. Our three channels – BT Sport 1, BT Sport 2 and ESPN - will provide premium sports content including Premier League first picks, exclusive rugby coverage and women’s tennis. By offering BT Sport for free with BT broadband, we are making world-class sport affordable. Superb production facilities, and a team of top sporting and broadcasting talent, promise to make this a great service.

[asbokid]

The City of London is certainly pleased with BT's performance this year, with the speed and coverage of its FTTC rollout, and with the company's plans for Sports IPTV.  All helping to ease the burden on Sky TV.       BT's share price soared 12% on Friday on the announcements.

Unsurprisingly, there are already sour grapes from the OLOs, TalkTalk in particular is grumbling about its impossibly low margins.  And BT stands accused of cross-subsidising its retail products using profits from other areas of the business. So someone may yet throw a spanner in the works of BT's plans for TV domination! 

On a technical point, the IPTV packets will presumably be multicast down dedicated VLAN ports, a la the IPTV configuration below. It is the 'configuracion' for a Huawei DSLAM from a Venezuelan Triple-Play provider.  That architecture also aids Quality of Service provisioning and IP security.

Currently, Openreach is using just two VLAN interfaces in its FTTC service.  VLANID 101 is used for subscriber internet access,  and VLAN ID 301 is for the in-band network management services (NMS).    So possibly we will see the addition of other VLANs to accommodate the new IPTV channels, and to ensure there's no video jitter in the coverage of the women's beach volleyball!

http://saber.ucv.ve/jspui/bitstream/123456789/735/2/Archivos%20de%20Configuraci%C3%B3n%20de%20Equipos.pdf

cheers, a

[Black Sheep]

Yes, it was good news for those of us with various share options. I hope the dominance continues to gather pace, then maybe early retirement becomes more than just a pipe-dream. 

[asbokid]

You guys all deserve it for bucking the economic trend 

cheers, a

[Black Sheep]

Ha ha ........... granted, it is an achievement in the current climate. Cheers. 

[kitz]

Im actually glad for BT.   
They were the only (large) company will to invest in fibre.  At the end of the day they are a PLC and it wasnt so very long ago that the shareholders were quaking in their boots at the price of the huge investment which iirc was estimated to take 10yrs to recover. 

IMHO the OLOs have no cause to moan, there's several small organisations that have done so in various regions.. and they could have put more involvement in if they wanted.   
Virgin hasnt a leg to stand on, when was the last time they thought of expanding their network... Im sure there are plenty of towns which would be profitable for them.

Actually thinking about the other 2 major players  (CPW aka TT & sky) - Have they ever actually invested in any new technology as such... or between the 2 of them have they simply swallowed up all the more innovative SPs. :/

[Black Sheep]

There is a completely unfounded rumour doing the rounds at BT, that 'we' are looking into purchasing VM's network to help with the Fibre roll-out plans ?? Believe me, our company is founded on rumours and I never know what to believe ?? 

[kitz]

On a technical point, the IPTV packets will presumably be multicast down dedicated VLANs ports, a la the IPTV configuration below. It is the configuracion (sic) for a Huawei DSLAM from a Venezuelan Triple Play provider.  That architecture also aids Quality of Service provisioning.

Currently, Openreach is using just two VLAN interfaces in its FTTC service.  VLANID 101 is used for subscriber internet access,  and VLAN ID 301 is for the in-band network management services (NMS).    So possibly we will see the addition of other VLANs in the system to accommodate the new IPTV channels, to ensure there's no video jitter in the volleyball!

http://saber.ucv.ve/jspui/bitstream/123456789/735/2/Archivos%20de%20Configuraci%C3%B3n%20de%20Equipos.pdf

cheers, a

Not looked at the link..  but aaaah multicast...  as someone heavily involved in the multicast trials of circa 2005, this sparks an interest.  The progs were very limited back then (tennis/golf/ a couple of cup matches) but it worked well on 2Mb - when a few broadcom issues had been sorted.  The failure back then was it may have been a bit ahead of its time and lack of nodes.  These days streaming and IPTV is much more the norm, so there could well be a place for it. 

Interestingly in a thread just the other day, we are starting to see some routers possibly reporting what looks like could be G.INP settings.

[asbokid]

Not looked at the link..  but aaaah multicast...  as someone heavily involved in the multicast trials of circa 2005, this sparks an interest.  The progs were very limited back then (tennis/golf/ a couple of cup matches) but it worked well on 2Mb - when a few broadcom issues had been sorted.  The failure back then was it may have been a bit ahead of its time and lack of nodes.  These days streaming and IPTV is much more the norm, so there could well be a place for it. 

It will be interesting to see how well BTV multicast works in practice for those with sub-optimal FTTC lines.    A few back of envelope calculations suggest that, for some, it's going to be a struggle getting the same quality of service experience that we currently receive from high-definition digital broadcast TV.

The DVB-T2 (Freeview) multiplexes (which have a slightly superior picture quality to DVB-S2) have a bandwidth of 40.2Mbps.  Each multiplex can supply four or five high definition channels,  That 40Mbps transport stream is broadcast in MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level 4 standard, at up to 1080p30.  Each TV program stream demands up to 8 to 10 Mbps of bandwidth.

Two or three high definition IPTV channels streaming into the house, each stream to an STB in a different room, and that's nearly 30Mbps of the FTTC service devoured.   Can some of the sub-optimal VDSL2 lines support, what is today, that fairly modest requirement? 

cheers, a

[asbokid]

In SIN 511 [1] there are some specs on the new BT Wholesale TV Connect multicast IPTV service:   Excerpt of the standards below.  Perhaps a surprise, BTW has opted for a MPEG2 compression scheme.   Consequently, BTW has allocated  10Mbps per channel.

cheers, a

[1] http://www.sinet.bt.com/511v1p2.pdf

[ColinS]

... to ensure there's no video jitter in the coverage of the women's beach volleyball!

Better get a move on and make path1 work then?

Perhaps a surprise, BTW has opted for a MPEG2 compression scheme.

Table 2. Parameter Video Format
1080/50 i
Video Encoding Format
MPEG4 [2] Part 10/AVC High Profile Level 4
Video Bitrate (CBR)
7.5 Mbit/s  HD Regular
10.0 Mbit/s HD Premium


Did I miss something?

[asbokid]

Sorry, I didn't read it properly    10Mbps seems a lot for an HD MPEG4 program stream.

cheers, a

[ColinS]

Sorry, I didn't read it properly

Actually, A, I think you probably did  ... it's just that it appears BTW didn't update the existing textual references in section 4 to MPEG2, e.g.

It is expected that this channel will be provided by the ISP as an additional multicast MPEG2 transport stream

Edited the table in the post above: 10Mbps for HD Premium (whatever that means) 7.5Mbps for HD Regular.

[kitz]

10Mbps seems a lot for an HD MPEG4 program stream.

It sure does 

10Mbps for HD Premium (whatever that means) 7.5Mbps for HD Regular.

Guessing, but in comparison the BBC iplayer has various bitrates.  They currently use 1080i for HD content - the i indicating interlaced.
The other HD format - not broadcast by the beeb, nor any of the other streaming content providers - is 1080p (progressive) which gives an even better quality image for fast motion.

Since multicast means one hell of a lot less strain on the backhaul bandwidth,  perhaps BTw can afford to use progressive scan format for full HD.

[ColinS]

10Mbps seems a lot for an HD MPEG4 program stream.

It sure does 

But compatable with

The DVB-T2 (Freeview) multiplexes (which have a slightly superior picture quality to DVB-S2) have a bandwidth of 40.2Mbps.  Each multiplex can supply four or five high definition channels,  That 40Mbps transport stream is broadcast in MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level 4 standard, at up to 1080p30.  Each TV program stream demands up to 8 to 10 Mbps of bandwidth.

They currently use 1080i for HD content - the i indicating interlaced.
The other HD format - not broadcast by the beeb, nor any of the other streaming content providers - is 1080p (progressive) which gives an even better quality image for fast motion.

Since multicast means one hell of a lot less strain on the backhaul bandwidth,  perhaps BTw can afford to use progressive scan format for full HD.

However the SIN spec quotes

1080/50 i
Video Encoding Format
MPEG4 Part 10/AVC High Profile Level 4