“There is no greater burden than great potential.” Charles Schultz

There is no denying that television has touched the lives of almost everyone on Earth. In an overall time span of less than 50 years, it evolved from a scientific and technological curiosity to become mankind’s’ principal medium for information, education and entertainment. Civilization is vastly different today because of television.

With over 1 billion cell phones in use in the world today, and with as many as 2 billion predicted by 2012, the evolution of mobile television has the potential to have as profound an impact on civilization over the next 50 years as broadcast television has had during the previous 50. Yet, despite years of hype, delivery of the world's number-one mass communication medium to the mobile device still has hurdles to overcome before realizing its potential. And as Charles Shultz pointed out, “there is no greater burden than great potential.”

Ever since mobile TV debuted, consumers have been pointing out that it's not even close to being up to par with the quality of service expectations set by traditional television. In 2006, a survey of 22,000 European mobile television users found that former users of mobile TV and video outnumbered current users by more than 19%. The research cited reliability, quality and price as the main issues. In fact, between 24% and 29% of the respondents who had tried mobile TV said they stopped using it because of poor quality and reliability.

To be fair, the mobile industry is still trying to figure out the future of mobile TV. As with all emerging technologies there seems to be no end to the number of questions around technology standards, delivery options and business models.

• Will the ideal video content be original or repurposed from traditional television?
• Will it be long-form or all short subjects?
• Will it continue to be downloaded via a unicast model, or will the new broadcast networks take over from here?

The important thing to keep in mind is that behind the myriad of technology and content alternatives, mobile television is ultimately a service. And with any service, a quality experience has to be paramount or the service will not be able to sustain a competitive price. And when it comes to mobile TV, quality (like beauty) is in the eye of the beholder. Even seemingly minor issues like slow, jittery startup, taking too long (10 seconds) to switch into TV mode, and occasionally skipping a few frames can result in a poor user experience and a lost subscriber.

The high-quality experience that consumers expect begins with bandwidth, which, in turn, translates to scalability within the network. Today’s mobile networks were originally designed to deliver one-to-one services to subscribers. As a result, they have difficulty delivering bandwidth-consuming content to a large number of subscribers.

The Importance of Software in Creating Quality Experiences

Network architectures are already evolving to address the bandwidth issues associated with the rapid emergence of converged multimedia applications like mobile TV. The evolution to “next-generation” IP-based networks is also sparking a need for new categories of network equipment that include media gateways, media gateway controllers (soft switches), session border controllers, enhanced wireless base stations and multimedia enabled mobile handsets.

In addition to new equipment categories, the promise of mobile convergence has ushered in an overriding requirement for carrier-grade software platforms that provide the foundation for high-quality services. The truth be told, in today’s world of highly sophisticated multimedia devices, software – more than hardware - sets the stage for a creating and delivering a great consumer experience.

There is perhaps no better example of the importance of software in creating a market winning experience than Sony Corp. When Sir Howard Stringer took over the reins of Sony one of the first questions he had to answer was: how did the company that defined mobile music (and acquired more content than any other industry player to support its devices) lose its leadership position? He answered that question in a frank conversation with Fortune magazine last June. His response: “Menus have displaced knobs….today, the bridge between hardware and content is software. And that was something [Sony] didn’t master.”

As Mr. Stringer quickly learned, developing, debugging and maintaining the software behind converged multimedia applications is an enormous challenge.

In particular, the close proximity to and dependence on the underlying hardware, coupled with the desire to squeeze every ounce of performance and scalability, makes it difficult to build portable software architecture with a high level of abstraction. In addition, to be considered “carrier-grade” the software has to fill a number of demanding reliability requirements that include:

• High performance that scales with hardware and is capable of supporting a large number of simultaneous sessions.
• Scalability: from small to very large configurations.
• Small and controlled error recovery domains that support effective error isolation.
• Hardware and software upgrade capabilities with minimal service interruptions
• Easy and efficient adaptation of protocols and interoperability across systems.
• Configurable security that can provide a high level of safety and protection.
• Controlled and extended life cycle of hardware and software components.
• Support for a rich mix of general purpose processors, digital signal processors (DSPs), network processors (NPs), storage, and input/output (I/O) devices
• Interoperability with multiple network elements

The highly distributed nature of next-generation network systems (including mobile handsets) further complicates matters. Developing complex, real-time applications for a single operating system running on a single processor is challenging enough. Distributing those applications across multiple pieces of equipment running multiple operating systems on multiple processors, well, that’s another matter altogether. The requirement for highly reliable system-wide communications, supervision, and management dramatically increases the complexity of development and deployment.

Lessons Learned from IPTV

After years of promise and potential, 2006 was supposed to mark the beginning of widespread IPTV deployment in the United States. (According to Strategy Analytics, the number of IPTV deployments in the US is expected to reach 1 million households in 2007.) AT&T, the largest U.S. service provider, launched its U-verse IPTV service in 2006 with a goal of reaching 15 markets. However, in early 2007 the company publicly admitted that middleware issues were delaying deployment. Chris Rice, AT&T’s Chief Technology Officer recently told Business Week that deploying IPTV was “a lot more complex than people thought it would be.”

According to Len Feldman, director of IPTV analysis for MRG Multimedia Research Group, the middleware layer in question may have been built on an architecture that was not designed for real-time performance. The result - slow channel changing. In an attempt to fix the problem more hardware was added to the system (in the form of additional servers), but apparently that only made the situation worse.

Now you may be thinking, “Could slow channel changing actually hamper the deployment of IPTV?” It can if your customer base is comprised of former cable or satellite TV subscribers, where there is an acutely developed expectation for rapid channel change response.

According to estimates from the Yankee Group, the first year installation and support costs for a new IPTV customer can be upwards of $700. (Total customer acquisition costs are actually much higher when marketing expenses are factored in). Losing a customer during that first year due to slow channel changing caused by a software issue is expensive. The fact that initial IPTV customers tend to be early adopters, and early adopters are notorious for being extremely vocal about bad experiences only makes it worse.

When you are providing a service, especially a new service that comes with predefined quality expectations, you need to get it right for every customer or you risk permanently losing those customers and their revenue, (along with anyone else they’re likely to talk to).

The Role of Commercial Software Platforms

Manufacturing a software platform that meets the quality and reliability expectations of network operators requires a significant investment of time and engineering resources– one that distracts from creating and delivering mobile applications. In order to enable the industry to accelerate the delivery of innovative applications and services, a group of leading NEPS (Network Equipment Providers) including Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, NEC, Nokia and Siemens, have formed an alliance (SCOPE) to enable and promote a vibrant ecosystem of Commercial Off-the-Shelf software solutions (COTS) for next generation networks.

Organized as a program of the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization, the SCOPE alliance is committed to identify, prioritize and make public lists of suggested open standards, specifications and associated content that best fit the requirements of carrier-grade platforms. Well-defined profiles are being developed to encourage the broadest possible ecosystem of suppliers from which to choose hardware and software. The end goal is to enable a healthy ecosystem of multiple vendors, with full interchangeability and compatibility of components and true application portability.

One example of a COTS carrier-grade software platform for mobile TV applications is the Enea Accelerator Platform. The Enea Accelerator platform provides all of the real-time operating system technology, protocols, middleware, data management, interprocess communications, and tools components needed to develop, host and manage compelling mobile TV applications.

Beyond the carrier-grade base platform currently defined by SCOPE, the Enea Accelerator platform also integrates the application services, operations and maintenance middleware, and network management middleware needed to partition, control, supervise, and service the application as it is distributed across multiple network nodes in a reliable, secure fashion.

This approach gives mobile TV equipment vendors and network operators the open architecture foundation they require in order to quickly develop the highly differentiated products and services needed to win and retain subscribers.

A well-built COTS platform provides the necessary abstraction to separate the application from the complexities of the underlying hardware. The layered architecture, coupled with standards-based interfaces and intuitive, well-documented APIs, eases integration with other network equipment and enhances portability, enabling operators to upgrade their hardware and software with minimal disruption to applications. Additionally, COTS platforms are proven to:

• Reduce equipment development costs, savings that ultimately manifest themselves as reduced CAPEX and OPEX for service providers.
• Increase availability and reduce maintenance and upgrade costs, in turn reducing service provider OPEX.
• Enable equipment makers to focus precious engineering resources on value-added application development, accelerating the delivery features and capabilities that lead to a higher quality user experience.

Lesson’s Learned from the Mobile Music Industry

Mobile television is poised to have a significant impact on civilization. And although the mobile industry is still trying to figure the best way forward, it can learn a critically important lesson from the mobile music industry – a lesson that, according to Sir Howard Stringer, Sony had to learn the hard way.

The key to winning and retaining consumers is not about having the best devices or the broadest range of content. It’s about delivering a high quality experience - one that provides compelling value and is intuitive and easy to use. And, in order to secure and maintaining a leadership position in what promises to be a highly competitive market, software must be mastered.

Today’s carrier grade COTS software platforms can help bridge the gap between hardware and content. They provide a sustainable competitive advantage in developing and deploying the equipment needed to accelerate the adoption of mobile TV.

John Smolucha is vice president of product marketing and business development at Enea.