Vodafone and Liberty play chess over a megamerger, 5G hunts
for business, and AR makes ground over VR. Small devices will make big moves in
the year ahead.
Europe is the most highly penetrated mobile region in the
world, with little room for subscriber growth. According to the GSMA, about 84
percent of Europe’s population subscribes to mobile services, a number forecast
to grow, albeit sluggishly, to 86 percent by 2020.
Slowing subscriber growth is, though, being offset by rapid
migration to 4G networks. 4G is expected to account for more than 60 percent of
the total subs base by 2020 amid growing demand for data and as 4G network
coverage increases. Indeed, the number of 4G connections overtook 3G
connections in Europe for the first time in 2016. European mobile operator
revenue is expected to top €146 billion by the end of 2020, according to the
GSMA. By then, mobile technologies and services are expected to generate around
€674 billion, or 3.9 percent of Europe’s GDP, as the region experiences strong
growth in productivity brought about by continued adoption of M2M
(machine-to-machine) technology and the increased digitisation of industry and
services.
Globally, mobile data traffic is set to grow tenfold between
2016 and 2022, according to the “Ericsson Mobility Report” of November 2017,
with video growing to 75 percent of the mobile data load in that time.
5G Trials Advance, but Success Is Not Guaranteed
A few dozen of the 800 operators around the world are
actively involved in trials of the fifth generation of cellular networks. Great
hope is being put in 5G as a transformative technology for everything from
changing vehicles into driverless entertainment hubs to enabling remote surgery
and building the fourth industrial revolution on the Internet of Things.
In Europe, Vodafone installed 10 Massive MIMO (multiple
input and multiple output) base stations in Madrid and will install 60 base
stations in Milan in 2018, covering 80 percent of the city by the end of the
year, then the same number again in 2019. The operator is already working with
hospitals, police, and railways to explore how drones or remote cameras could
improve their services.
In Germany, Deutsche Telekom made a public 5G
connection in Berlin and reported download speeds of 2Gbps at a latency of just
3 milliseconds (ms). That compares with an average latency of 50–60 ms for some
of the best current souped-up 4G networks. Its demo included a live
transmission of UHD and an augmented reality (AR) application.
Select London businesses and residents benefitted from a 5G
trial, too. Arqiva tested the performance of Samsung base stations and reported
downlink speeds of around 1Gbps. This level of performance would allow for the
simultaneous streaming of more than 25 UHD 4K TV channels, according to Arqiva.
It said the trial was of particular interest for parties looking to a future of
ubiquitous UHD.
Arqiva shelved $2 billion plans to float on the stock
exchange last November. It operates the UK’s broadcast TV network and most of
the country’s radio transmitters—together with renting 8,000 sites on which
mobile operators EE, Three, O2, and Vodafone install their own signalling
equipment. The company, which the Financial Times calculates made a
net loss of £900 million over the last 3 years, is betting that 5G will power
huge growth in demand for mobile video streaming and eventually replace DTT in
the home.
EE is backing this too. The mobile arm of UHD sports
broadcaster BT is looking for media and entertainment applications that would
suit the power of 5G, such as live virtual reality streams and multi-angle,
viewer-selectable switching of live sports. It claimed speeds of 2.8Gbps using
a 100 MHz slice of 3.5 GHz spectrum in its 2017 lab tests, using a 5G baseband
unit from Huawei and another Massive MIMO antenna.
With the first commercial 5G networks in Europe due to be
switched on by 2020, the GSMA forecasts that there will be 214 million 5G
connections in Europe by 2025.
Nonetheless, alarms continue to ring about the lack of a
business case and incentives to invest. The CEO of BT Group, Gavin Patterson told
Huawei’s Global Mobile Broadband Forum in November: “If you look from 3G to 4G,
the case was underpinned by going from what was a pretty poor internet
experience to one which was really opening up the potential of the internet to
mobile. And we haven’t found that for 5G.,” Patterson said. He acknowledged
that the performance would be better, “but ultimately, as carriers we’ve got to
make a significant investment and put the capex down...”
At the same event, Vodafone Group CTO Johan Wibergh stressed,
“The increased efficiency ... from Massive MIMO and radio ... means 5G is as
much as ten times more cost-efficient than 4G,” adding that he doesn’t
understand why industry members are not talking about that more.
Deploying 5G faster networks is costly—estimated by Deloitte
at around £50 billion ($63.1 billion) for rollout in the EU. The analyst says
availability of higher speeds “will likely reveal uses we cannot currently
imagine with multiple ‘killer apps’.” In the US, 4G is estimated to have
accounted for some $150 billion in economic growth and more than 750,000 jobs.
In any case, Europe and the US are likely to be leapfrogged
by Asia. The GSMA forecast that 5G connections in China will reach 428 million
by 2025, or 39 percent of the 1.1 billion global 5G connections expected by
that point.
Part of the reason for this is the large-scale public
showcases of 5G built around successive Asian Olympic games, helping Asian
telcos convince financial teams to invest. This starts in South Korea in
February with a great opportunity for operator KT to show off 5G, moves to
Tokyo in summer 2020, and then to Beijing in 2022 for the next Winter Olympics.
Megamerger On the Cards
2017 saw Vodafone further its ambitious plans to combine its
European mobile networks with ultra-fast broadband and offer bundles of wireless
and fixed-line services, including TV. It plans to pump €2 billion into routing
fibre-optic lines to 13.7 million homes and businesses in Germany—its biggest
market—by the end of 2021.
The mobile network operator previously invested in
fixed-line broadband networks with Portugal Telecom and Orange in Spain and now
has its eye on the UK.
Partnered with network builder CityFibre, it aims to connect
5 million UK homes and businesses. That would represent a fifth of the local
market and a considerable improvement on its current position of around 245,000
broadband subscribers on copper lines rented from dominant UK broadband
infrastructure provider Openreach. CityFibre’s new fibre-optic lines will offer
speeds of up to 1Gbps, more than 10 times faster than on the Openreach network.
Vodafone could also extend its reach in partnership with
Openreach, a BT subsidiary from which BT was forced to separate by UK regulator
Ofcom in November. Either way, a major investment in full fibre by Vodafone
would signal “a radical shift” in Britain’s telecoms industry according
to The Telegraph.
Notably, a reinvigorated Vodafone would present Liberty
Global-owned Virgin Media with a serious rival. To complicate matters, Liberty
and Vodafone continue to manoeuvre for a $175 billion (£131 billion) megamerger
which would see the two combine fixed-line and mobile assets across Europe.
Liberty’s potential sale of UPC Switzerland and UPC Austria
is seen as prelude to a wider deal. In 2016, the companies presented a proof as
to how a bigger combination would work when Liberty-owned Ziggo joint-ventured
with Vodafone in the Netherlands.
Premium Content Streams on Mobile, but TV Remains Dominant
According to Cisco, video accounts for well over half of all
mobile traffic. That figure is set to rise as network speeds upgrade (4G to
5G), handset reception technology develops, and the volume of premium content
available on devices increases. Indeed, Ooyala reports that content greater
than 20 minutes in length now represents the majority of time spent watching
video across all screen sizes, at 63 percent. Quality of video is up, too.
Almost 40 percent of mobile video traffic globally is now HD quality, found
traffic management specialist Openwave Mobility. According to the study, HD was
just 5.7 percent of mobile video traffic 4 years ago, and is expected to surpass
the 50 percent threshold by the end of 2018.
Ooyala advised content providers to tailor their strategy
around mobile. Significant deals showed old media tying the knot with social
media and developing bespoke short-form content.
In 2016, Viacom and Turner, for example, partnered with
Snapchat parent company Snap Inc. to create original content for Snapchat’s
Discover section. In Viacom’s case, the agreement also grants Viacom the right
to sell Snapchat’s US-owned ad inventory. Discovery’s partnership with Snap
will see some user-generated and behind-the-scenes content from the Winter
Olympics in South Korea published to Snapchat users across Europe.
However, this activity, which places mobile first, needs
setting in the context of Nielsen’s October 2017 revelation that 89 percent of
video streaming takes place on TVs and not on a smartphone, PC, or tablet.
“Most people prefer to watch TV on the big screen with
better sound and a true lean-back experience,” noted Andrew Ferrone, vice
president of pay TV, Roku. “The big screen matters to millennials too.
Streaming provides consumers with choice and control, a consumer benefit that
appeals to many.”
Streaming is a part of, and not a replacement for, the
traditional TV experience. “Many operators do offer a TV Everywhere solution
that is available on mobile devices and web browsers, which is a perfect
solution for the 10 percent of consumers that watch TV on mobile devices,”
added Ferrone.
This is especially the case with 4K content streamed to the
home and displayed on a TV. Some 35 percent of TVs sold globally in 2017 were
4K UHD, a total of 79 million, bringing total penetration to 8 percent
according to Futuresource data. This is expected to reach a global average of
21 percent by 2021. The UHD streaming device market is also on the rise, with
worldwide shipments of 19.5 million expected through 2017 and accounting for 36
percent of all media streamers sold through 2017.
Anecdotal evidence reported by Ampere suggests that achieving
the full 4K environment requires no small amount of expertise on the part of
the consumer, and even those with all the kit may not actually be experiencing
4K if one aspect or component is set up incorrectly.
“There are the usual claims of 4K availability via pay TV
operators and OTT SVOD operators, but realistically these are marketing claims
and produce a largely sub-par experience both in terms of the resolution
actually received (owing again to file sizes) and volume of content,” Richard
Cooper, research director, Ampere, told Streaming Media. “The whole
in-home 4K experience is very dependent on having a fully compatible setup from
end to end.”
Dynamic range is considered by many to matter more to the
perceptual quality of an image than resolution. Even here, rollout is not fast.
Just 7 percent of production companies are being asked to deliver in HDR
despite HD HDR providing an increased quality of picture with just a small
increase in bandwidth requirement, said Futuresource analyst Tristan Veale
in the same article. “However, HDR is a more difficult consumer message to
convey, and therefore monetise, than 4K resolution.”
It may require the impetus of an all-UHD/HDR FIFA World Cup,
which will be produced and delivered live from Russia this summer, to
kick-start enthusiasm for the format and for the necessary upgrades to internet
connections into the home.
AR Needs Killer Content
There are those predicting that 2018 will be the year of
augmented reality (AR), with Silicon Valley’s tech giants pushing product into
the mainstream.
Facebook sees AR as a huge new communications platform, and
launched its Camera Effects Platform for AR developers in February. Google has
been experimenting with products like Google Glass and its Tango platform,
which uses depth sensing to map environments from smartphones.
Apple’s ARKit, announced in June, means developers can
create AR apps for the 700-plus million iPhone users already in the market.
ARKit uses the iPhone or iPad’s camera and motion sensors to find points in the
environment, then tracks them as the device moves. It can “pin” objects to one
point, changing the scale and perspective. It can also locate flat surfaces,
which is great for putting digital props on a floor or table.
Microsoft is also expanding the reach of its HoloLens
headset with its mixed reality (MR) Windows software. This includes inputs from
motion controllers and natural human inputs such as gaze, voice, and gestures.
Rather than just adding artificial elements to a real scene
as with AR, or creating a completely artificial environment as with virtual
reality, MR places all or parts of reality into an environment that mimics the
real world in real time.
The Future Group and FremantleMedia have produced one of the
first MR entertainment formats, Lost in Time, which is currently being adapted
for a Middle East audience.
Aside from HoloLens, brands launching MR headsets based on
MR for Windows include Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung. “We are standing at
the threshold of the next revolution in computing,” wrote Alex Kipman,
Technical Fellow at Microsoft, in an October 2017 blog post. “A revolution
where computers empower us to expand our capabilities and transcend time,
space, and devices. ... With mixed reality, our ideas move beyond the boundaries
... of screens, and beyond the boundaries of description. This is the
fundamental promise of mixed reality. The barrier that exists between our
physical and digital worlds will disappear.”
All that’s needed is a killer piece of content for AR or MR
to go viral.
Live VR Takes a Back Seat
The high hopes the industry had of VR enjoying quick
widespread adoption at the start of the year look to have been overly
optimistic. As 2017 progressed, the industry adopted a more conservative
viewpoint with regard to the speed of uptake.
Futuresource Consulting, in its latest “VR Quarterly
Tracker,” put this down to lower-than-anticipated device sales, but also says
the creative community has lagged behind in its ability to generate compelling
content.
“A key issue for the industry is the lack of killer
applications for VR that are essential to drive consumer adoption, and this has
proved to be a major limiting factor that has impacted growth,” said Michael
Boreham, the report’s co-author. “The slow rate of consumer adoption of VR
hardware has also impacted on the content community, with games and video
publishers being wary of funding VR productions until the installed base of
hardware has reached a level where they can guarantee a healthy return on
investment.”
Sports producers remain keen to tap the potential of the
medium, but have largely failed to commercialise it. Perhaps that’s to be
expected while the technical complexity and new editorial grammar are worked
out.
That was certainly the case at Europe’s most impressive live
VR production to date, when BT Sport covered the Union of European Football
Associations (UEFA) Champions League final from Cardiff in 4K VR using 12 rigs.
While the operator will have learned a lot of lessons about live VR production
and had planned to stream regular English Premier League matches in 360 degrees
during the 2017–18 season, it has not produced another since.
Nokia’s sudden decision in October to exit VR and end
development of the OZO camera and stitching system used by the broadcaster was
also a setback. The OZO seemed to have become the go-to camera of choice for
live VR, used by UEFA’s production partner Deltatre, among others, but it seems
that despite slashing the initial launch price of €55,000 to €34,000, and with
millions of Euros invested, Nokia still couldn’t see a way to break even.
Live VR is far from over, though. Sky Sports continued to
dabble in trials of largely short-form recorded content, including some in
partnership with boxer Anthony Joshua. And the Olympic Broadcasting Services
will capture 50 hours of Winter Olympics action using rigs and processing from
Intel in a feed bought by NBCU. The chip maker is also behind production of
regular NBA games for distribution over a Turner Sports app, starting with the
NBA All-Star Game February 20.
Live VR will return. The BBC continues to push 360° video
experiences, although mostly in recorded content around drama and
documentaries. BBC Earth Productions is reportedly planning to explore “haptic”
(including touch with sight and hearing) VR and AR experiences.
Discovery has earmarked VR for Olympics coverage in 2020 and
before that, motorsport’s Formula E (in which Discovery has a minority stake)
broadcasters are plotting AR and VR innovation.
“[VR] augmentation of the live event requires a robust video
delivery connection that can cope with the bandwidth requirement, ensuring
minimal latency and consistency of video relay,” said Simon Moorhead, Managing
Director of outside broadcast production supplier NEP UK in an interview with
the author for SVG Europe. “This is where the broadcaster is at the mercy of
the viewers’ data connectivity or, more specifically, the ability of the
internet service provider to super-serve this new broadcast medium.
“For these reasons, I see that the broadcasters need to feel
confident in the delivery platform, the potential for mass consumption by the
potential available audience, and their willingness to either pay for this
enhanced experience or have their experience impinged with hard-coded
advertising.”
No comments:
Post a Comment