Internet Usage patterns and the unlimited problem

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#1106654 11-Aug-2014 18:23

Sky's one insurmountable advantage is reach. I can get Sky in places I can't even get dial up. There must be a way to make some use of that.

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vexxxboy

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#1106685 11-Aug-2014 19:28

PhantomNVD: Yes, but didn't they just lose a major sport event lineup to an online streaming co.?

If someone like with pockets as deep as telecom (Lightbox) starts gaining traction with VoD's, why wouldn't they want to pouch on Sky's sports scene too?

While it might take 10 years or so, I really think ALL pay to play when WE decide you can (esp in low 720p def like sky is now) is on it's way out. Look hard at the Netflix/Hulu/Amazon moves to capitalise on 'big pipe' fibre broadband capabilities, add in unlimited caps... Tell me again why SKY will still be here (unless it adapts pretty quickly!) in 10 years?

they didnt want the EPL, it didn't rate and it wasn't that much to retain the rights . If i remember the reports it was only around a million . The only way they will be in trouble is if they lose the rugby rights but i doubt that will ever happen . if you see any sports going to other providers , then you can be sure Sky didnt want them.

Common sense is not as common as you think.

NZFINEST

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#1106700 11-Aug-2014 20:05

I think the Warriors & Rugby are the 2 things Sky has going for it { I don't watch either }. If these 2 became streamable live with no pausing { like isky does } and easy to setup to stream then really what does Sky tv offer.

Anything I suggest or say is my own thoughts and not provided by anyone else unless stated

DonGould

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#1106701 11-Aug-2014 20:07

hio77: Sky have quite a large amount of live sport followers currently... would be interesting to see lightbox successfully capitalize upon that!

Get back to me when Chorus have a layer 2 product in the market with IGMP snooping as part of the interface like NBN Co have with the Australian NBN so that a provider like Spark can deliver live streams via unicast.

In the mean time Lightbox is a VoD product from what I can tell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGMP_snooping

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#1106703 11-Aug-2014 20:10

SaltyNZ: It's too early to say Sky's days are numbered. But the cracks are starting to show. And no matter what the CEO says in the paper, he's scared alright. If he's not, then the shareholders should consider agitating for someone who IS.

Sky COULD turn it around. But not with their current attitude.

I was a Sky customer for 10 years before I cancelled it in favour of Netflix and Hulu. They didn't lift a *finger* to try to get me to stay when I called. The writing may not be on the wall yet, but they've chosen a colour and a nice new brush.

There's enough water under the bridge now that only a very stupid CEO would be frightened.

The market is VERY well understood.

I'd be way more concerned about things if I was the Spark CEO.

Telstra Australia have been in the media space before and given an extremely expensive hiding.

The question I'd have is what do Telecom have set up in that 4G network? Peter care to tell us? (as if...)

D

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#1106707 11-Aug-2014 20:21

No-one's going to do unlimited wireless data, not even on 4G, if that's what you're getting at. It would be suicide. :)

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JimmyH

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#1106713 11-Aug-2014 20:38

DonGould:

You're in dream land if you think Sky's days are numbered.

I will very much agree that there might be a bit more value coming from Sky and we might see a price correction on some of their products but the suggestion they're over is just being silly.

Sky have an installed based of ~1.5m or more units.

I'm pretty close to cancelling after a 17-18 year unbroken subscription. Now that we finally have affordable broadband plans for decent amounts of data, moving to streaming (Netflix, Hulu and the BBC) is starting to look like a no-brainer. I already have most of the infrastructure (network, media players etc) in place to do so, and it will all be in place by month end.

What they would have to offer me is not so much a price correction (although an extra $10 a month for an "HD Ticket" is pretty obnoxious) but a product correction. About the only channel I watch a lot of entertainment on is SoHo - not just because it has decent content but also because it's ad free.

Many of the other Sky channels such as Jones and the Box, which I might want to watch for nostalgia reasons, are essentially unwatchable because of the ceaseless interruptions to bombard the viewer with ads and promos. If they want to keep me, dialling back the ads and promos so they only run between shows rather than every 5-7 minutes during them would be a good start.

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DonGould

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#1107043 12-Aug-2014 13:37

JimmyH:
I'm pretty close to cancelling after a 17-18 year unbroken subscription. Now that we finally have affordable broadband plans for decent amounts of data, moving to streaming (Netflix, Hulu and the BBC) is starting to look like a no-brainer. I already have most of the infrastructure (network, media players etc) in place to do so, and it will all be in place by month end.

What they would have to offer me is not so much a price correction (although an extra $10 a month for an "HD Ticket" is pretty obnoxious) but a product correction. About the only channel I watch a lot of entertainment on is SoHo - not just because it has decent content but also because it's ad free.

Many of the other Sky channels such as Jones and the Box, which I might want to watch for nostalgia reasons, are essentially unwatchable because of the ceaseless interruptions to bombard the viewer with ads and promos. If they want to keep me, dialling back the ads and promos so they only run between shows rather than every 5-7 minutes during them would be a good start.

I suspect they're happy just to wave you bye bye right now.

The tide isn't turning fast enough to worry about you right now.

This is a very well understood market place now. Providers like Sky aren't going to make rash moves in it.

This isn't like my small business which is very reaction driven. These guys use large amounts of capital to drive markets.

Just look at Igloo. They're having a toe in the water and seeing what works.

Currently we're seeing Spark do some things. If I was Sky (which I'm not), I'd be just sitting back and watching a bit. I'd be expecting some customer loss and continuing to monitor customer feed back and churn.

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#1107045 12-Aug-2014 13:51

SaltyNZ: No-one's going to do unlimited wireless data, not even on 4G, if that's what you're getting at. It would be suicide. :)

Agreed.

People are unlimiting xDSL currently because core switching capacity has leapt ahead of tail capacity again and there isn't enough UFB to worry to much about what those guys will do.

Wifi has also become the new bottle neck. AC will address this, but is going to require people to actually put wires in their houses (which will take time and money).

We're also starting to see a video platue (sp) like we eventually got to an audio one.

More and more people are pulling video to a small wifi device which simply doesn't require HD 1080 60mbit streams.

Folk are starting to use wifi enabled TVs, but even those aren't requiring large pipes and again poorly installed 2.4g wifi is the bottle neck.

Salty you'd know way more about what's happening in the mobile 4G space than I would and most of us, however history tends to indicate that mobile technology gets cheaper and investment gets sunk.

In the past you required a shipping container for a mobile site. Now you can put the whole thing in a back pack for 1000 people, including the battery.

You needed a 100 foot tower, now you can do useful things with a hockey stick, and the list goes on.

This suggests that freq reuse and breaking cells into clusters of smaller cells with much lower power out put comes possible.

Consumer resistance to wireless infrastructure also abaits. Yes there are still problems like the recent one in Bishopdale, Christchurch, but our local council has put Wifi APs up all over the city recently in places that people on line told me point blank couldn't be done because of the consumer back lash and there just hasn't been a word. I actually have to explain in detail to people what they're looking at or they just don't see this stuff on the polls.

/ramble about current state of play. :)

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#1107239 12-Aug-2014 19:05

DonGould:

Get back to me when Chorus have a layer 2 product in the market with IGMP snooping as part of the interface like NBN Co have with the Australian NBN so that a provider like Spark can deliver live streams via unicast.

In the mean time Lightbox is a VoD product from what I can tell.

Why? Most content is consumed on demand (tv, movies, news) or trending towards higher on demand consumption. Live sport is the exception not the norm.

insane

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#1107260 12-Aug-2014 19:34

DonGould:
hio77: Sky have quite a large amount of live sport followers currently... would be interesting to see lightbox successfully capitalize upon that!

Get back to me when Chorus have a layer 2 product in the market with IGMP snooping as part of the interface like NBN Co have with the Australian NBN so that a provider like Spark can deliver live streams via unicast.

In the mean time Lightbox is a VoD product from what I can tell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGMP_snooping

You must mean multicast, unicast is 1:1

Ragnor

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#1107262 12-Aug-2014 19:50

Yeah he must have meant ip multicast also Australian NBN is dead in the water with the new government, Telstra's lobbying dollars at work.

I'd rather they focused on bigger/faster pipes/switching and not get to fancy. Let the ISP's and other Service Providers worry about what to put on top.

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#1107263 12-Aug-2014 19:59

DjG: So id like to know what people think on this.

I run a few networks around the place and I'm seeing this more and more.

Users are not downloading (i.e. saving to disk) much these days, torrents are representing SFA of the total traffic, the majority of the traffic down is streamed from the likes of youtube, netflix, hulu etc. The problem i see with this is that the average usage per user of international bandwidth is now 1.8+ Mbit. now I'm considering that my household uses a fair bit of netflix and hulu we stream it at approx 4 - 6Mbit, now if we have 1K users streaming at any one time and thats not that many users and all streaming at one particular time thats 4 - 6Gig of international transit.

From where I sit its just not feasible to be running links that hot for the amount of users, the financials just dont add up unless your doing something dodgy or on the cheep.

so back to my question....

what are the GZ users now doing, are you streaming from the US or are "linux torrents" the way for the majority ?

Davey, might be time for Vibe Communications to get into Colo/Hosting to create a two sided business model.

If you pull that off then you can afford to sell transit cheaper to your customers to mitigate some of the financial pressures they must be facing.

DonGould

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#1107270 12-Aug-2014 20:20

Ragnor: Yeah he must have meant ip multicast also Australian NBN is dead in the water with the new government, Telstra's lobbying dollars at work.

I'd rather they focused on bigger/faster pipes/switching and not get to fancy. Let the ISP's and other Service Providers worry about what to put on top.

yes of course I meant multi cast.... just a brain fade as I was typing, sorry about that.

As for the NBN, the point I was attempting to make was directed at what I was responding to.

Live content needs to stream and multicast just makes more sense for that, but it's just not in current network design, hence I don't think Sky is under much threat on that front.

Having said that, I fully agree with you Ragnor, bigger fatter pipes with switching and not fancy.

NBNCo managed to dump their entire network with test code while attempting to get fancy one day.

As for Telstra's lobbying dollar, pffft!

The NBN just didn't make sense, it's just that simple.

1. Single, government owned and controlled layer 2 provider with DPI technology.

OMG where do I start with that one?

We've spent 30 years working hard to get away from single government controlled communication networks around the globe.

2. Pull out existing HFC networks.

Australia has two of these that run side by side down streets running past 2.2 million homes and it was proposed that the community just scrap that investment.

Telstra might have been visible, but there are a countless number of others who just voted for some common sense.

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#1107274 12-Aug-2014 20:26

Ragnor: Why? Most content is consumed on demand (tv, movies, news) or trending towards higher on demand consumption. Live sport is the exception not the norm.

The point I was addressing was if Sky should be worried.

I was simply saying that if an alternative broadcast platform existed then, yes they should be, but the fact is that it doesn't on the internet currently.

That's not to say that we won't see it appear in the mobile space eventually, but as Salty indicates, that's not happening any time soon.

As for the balance of content, yes I agree with you.

Looking at my own parents (which are not a good yard stick, but do make the point), having access to live sport is the deal breaker for them so they have Sky, but the fact is that they make far more use of the PVR (MySky) box to time shift content than they spend time watching live sport.

But times are changing and I agree with Salty that the Sky CEO doesn't want to sit on his hands.

When the snow took out the Sky dish for a day last winter it was an interesting topic of conversation. When the wind took out the internet feed, it was a trip to DSE for two USB dongles and a back up plan.

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