Smart to move into old Magnet TV Market Segment

Sponge Bob

Now that magnet no longer do IPTV for new customers.....along comes Smart .

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single9127

Fibre people first and DSL next year....or so it seems

The new state-of-the-art MPEG4 IPTV headend and middleware investment will see the platform of over 100 TV and radio channels made available to an addressable market of 550,000 homes across Ireland.

The new service will be introduced in November and a phased rollout of channel line-up and IPTV services is planned to be unveiled for the wider broadband residential market from the first quarter of next year.

oh and a NEW modem

Our new range of set top boxes can provide Personal Video Recording (PVR) functionality.

pizzahead77

Well, I do hope its going to be an awful lot better than their current FFTH offering.

The number of complains on their own forum it remarkable but they do seem to be trying to improve it so fingers crossed.

If it is I may even ditch NTL next year

dub45

what line quality is necessary for this product? Surlely this is a major potential problem towards really reaching a mass market?

pizzahead77

Probably need to get more than 8Mb/sec for this to work decently

watty

12Mb/s and even then no simultanous 2nd channel.
Big delay on channel changing compared to Cable or Satellite.

bungholio

need 4mb uncontended bandwidth to provide the signal, thats why when u used to get 8mb dsl2 from magnet you only really got 4, this does not effect the fibre though

bk

bungholio wrote:

need 4mb uncontended bandwidth to provide the signal, thats why when u used to get 8mb dsl2 from magnet you only really got 4, this does not effect the fibre though

Funny thing it does effect Smarts FTTH setups!!!

Basically how Smart do FTTH is really bizarre.

- First they have fibre running to the apartment basement, seems to be 2.5Gb/s GEPON
- Then they have telco gear in the basement including a DSLAM, connected to the fibre.
- While a Cat5e ethernet cable runs from the basement to each apartment, they actually only use one pair from the ethernet cable and run a normal plain old telephone dialtone from the telco gear in the basement to a DSL modem/router in each apartment.
- The DSL modem seems to sync at 13m/1m.

So when you connect a STB to the router, it uses 4m of this bandwidth and while there is sufficient bandwidth for a second STB, it simply doesn't work properly when you try it, the picture keeps breaking up.

Why they don't just have a Cisco switch in the basement and connect the ethernet port from each apartment directly to it is beyond me. It would likely be a cheaper setup and offer at least twice the bandwidth

watty wrote:

Big delay on channel changing compared to Cable or Satellite.

On the contrary watty, I've been surprised at how fast the channel change is. There is no delay when surfing up and down the channels, it is instantaneous. There is a delay when you enter a channel number, but I believe this is due to the way that the remote works, it is waiting to see if you are going to enter another number (1 versus 11 or 111).

Actually I'd say that it is actually faster then the NTL digital channel changing speed and about equal to Sky.

The biggest problem I believe that they will face is their channel lineup, it is very poor at the moment compared to NTL or Sky. There is no:
- Sky one
- Sky News
- Any Discovery Network channels
- History Channel
- Film 4
- Sci-fi
- No Nickelodeon Network Channels
- Non of the good kids and music channels (Toonami, Jetix, Kerrang, Amp, etc.)

Basically coming from NTL Digital to the SmartVision TV service the channel lineup is down right depressing. I rarely watch TV anymore as about 90% of the TV I watched was on the missing channels

People in SmartVision areas, generally have no choice but to go with Smart, but for people in LLU areas, who probably do have a choice, I just couldn't see them choosing Smart over NTL or Sky with their current very poor TV lineup. They will need to badly improve the lineup if they want to compete.

Also they will need to introduce a flat rate local and national call package in order to compete effectively against the likes of NTL and BT.

Cabaal

Certainly no loss with Sky News not being there

watty

On the contrary watty, I've been surprised at how fast the channel change is. There is no delay when surfing up and down the channels, it is instantaneous. There is a delay when you enter a channel number, but I believe this is due to the way that the remote works, it is waiting to see if you are going to enter another number (1 versus 11 or 111).

It has to buffer MUCH more than Satellite or Cable or DTT. With real broadcast systems you can even get PIP channel surf with no increase in bandwidth. On IPTV that would double the bandwidth.

Why they don't just have a Cisco switch in the basement and connect the ethernet port from each apartment directly to it is beyond me. It would likely be a cheaper setup and offer at least twice the bandwidth

Because a DSLAM is managed and is a similar price or cheaper to a Managed switch. Ethernet only goes 100m. DSL on Cat5 can go 10km, or very fast on 500m . Ordinary phone lines are Cat3. Also then you don't need a more expensive ATA for phone. The ATA can be at the DSLAM and share the twisted pair, cheaper and less for users to fiddle with/break. They then only need DSL filter for phone.

Fibre gear is very expensive. It makes sense to convert in the basement to DSL or Cable. Coax Cable has the advantage that in theory it could carry 8Mbps broadband per person, basic digital cable TV, phone AND multiplex 950Mhz to 2100MHz to carry satellite from a Multiswitch so each user can have up to 4 satellites worth of payTv & free TV.

bk

watty wrote:

It has to buffer MUCH more than Satellite or Cable or DTT. With real broadcast systems you can even get PIP channel surf with no increase in bandwidth. On IPTV that would double the bandwidth.

I know, but non of the other broadcast systems in Ireland offer PIP, so it is a pointless comparison and PIP isn't all that great anyway, it is a gimmick.

The Smart STB seems to buffer only the current stream/channel, it just seems that it can switch to different streams/channels very quickly and that in my real world experience, it simply isn't an issue.

watty wrote:

Because a DSLAM is managed and is a similar price or cheaper to a Managed switch. Ethernet only goes 100m. DSL on Cat5 can go 10km, or very fast on 500m . Ordinary phone lines are Cat3. Also then you don't need a more expensive ATA for phone. The ATA can be at the DSLAM and share the twisted pair, cheaper and less for users to fiddle with/break. They then only need DSL filter for phone.

Again great in theory but it doesn't seem to be working out that way for Smart.

First of all the ethernet runs are all well under 100m, so not an issue. However Smart is having lots of trouble with the quality of their TV service and I believe it is related to them using telco gear rather then a managed switch.

Does anyone know what Magnet use, from what I hear of the speeds their users get, it sounds like they are using a managed switch.

watty wrote:

Fibre gear is very expensive. It makes sense to convert in the basement to DSL or Cable. Coax Cable has the advantage that in theory it could carry 8Mbps broadband per person, basic digital cable TV, phone AND multiplex 950Mhz to 2100MHz to carry satellite from a Multiswitch so each user can have up to 4 satellites worth of payTv & free TV.

Of course, I never expected true FTTH, FTTB makes a lot more economic sense. But I'm just surprised they are using telco gears, I believe that they aren't making the most of the fibre by going this way versus a pure ethernet setup.

Of course a mixed ethernet/sat setup would have given the most options, but Smart just doesn't do it that way

watty

Anyone can have PIP on Satellite or Terrestrial (analog or Digital where available) the receivers/TVs are freely available.

The problem of IPTV is not solved by a managed switch. The reality is that the numbers do not scale. If MPEG4 SD doesn't work on 8Mbps + ADSL in basement fed by fibre they have a more serious network issue.

How can you be sure the cable runs are under 100m? That's not far by cable trunking route in an average apartment block. Also they will want to do the same system for larger apartments and small housing developments.

Magnet users can have problems having a second channel or downloads while watching, but that might be GLUMP / LLU not fibre.

Magnet has VERY deep American pockets. Smart has no pockets and is losing money. I can't understand why they are doing this, as I can't see how they can offer comparable quality/price to Sky or even UPC and actually make any money at it.

sixtysix

what phone service are Smart customers using Skype or Blueface?
Since Smart have no minute package i assume it would be too expensive to use the smart per minute system.

bk

watty wrote:

The problem of IPTV is not solved by a managed switch. The reality is that the numbers do not scale. If MPEG4 SD doesn't work on 8Mbps + ADSL in basement fed by fibre they have a more serious network issue.

There not using MPEG4 yet, MPEG 2 at the moment, about 5m per TV stream.

The reason I believe a managed switch would be better is the following:
There are 110 apartments in the development, that means using 2.5G GEPON, each apartment would get 23m. They are supposedly upgrading to 10G GEPON, that would be 90m per apartment, that would be more then enough for multiple HD TV streams. However because they are using ADSL2+ kit, they will always be limited to max 20m per apartment, unless they replace the gear with a managed switch or switch the DSLAMs and modems to VDSL and that still wouldn't give you 90m.

watty wrote:

How can you be sure the cable runs are under 100m? That's not far by cable trunking route in an average apartment block. Also they will want to do the same system for larger apartments and small housing developments.

Because being a geek I have of course taken a look around at the setup. They have one room with the telco equipment, but they then have more utility rooms every 15m or so along the basement, with a distribution board connecting to each apartment straight above it and then connecting from the distribution back to the main telco room.

watty wrote:

I can't understand why they are doing this, as I can't see how they can offer comparable quality/price to Sky or even UPC and actually make any money at it.

Unless they improve their TV lineup, I agree. I just heard a rumor that today Magnet added 10 Sky channels to their service (Sky 1/2/3/News/etc.) and they already have Discovery, Film 4, etc. all at no extra cost. So perhaps the same will happen with Smart. Fingers crossed, it would save me having to get a digicube sat setup.

watty

It's the total run from your PC via all patch cords and panels to the managed switch that has to be less than < 100m for EVERY aparment in EVERY block, otherwise since they have to do one system, DSLAM (ADSL2+, VDSL) or Cable (DOCSIS) it has to be. It's too problematical to have ethernet repeaters.

Blaster99

And of the two, cable is presumably the better one?

Tazz T

At the Resident's AGM in Rathborne, most of the meeting was taken up with the appalling TV service offered by Smart's Smartvision package. Problems include delays while changing channels, constant pixelation and length intermittent picture freezes. If the resident's of Earlswood/Rathborne had a choice, few if any would remain with Smart. Everyone here wants NTL.

The company won't engage with residents regarding the problems. I wonder will this new rollout be any better.

watty

Like high latency on Satellite, a much larger delay on channel change than cable/satellite/DTT is inherent. The command must go back to the server, not just your set box. The IPTV needs also a larger buffer than Broadcast systems.

It has been improved, but inherently it's poor.

Blaster99 wrote:

And of the two, cable is presumably the better one?

Not simple comparision.
ADSL/VDSL etc is better for per user data, it's a star topology. But currently there is no broadcast functionality. You could run only maybe 3 channels if it had.

Cable has easily 40 times the bandwidth of ADSL, so you can easily have 120 channels as well as lots of data. The snag is that it is a shared bus. DOCSIS3 while allowing 40Mbps instead of 10Mbps, simply uses the data of 4 to 6 users. It creates nothing extra.

So xDSL could deliver 20Mbps to 100Mbps per user, even uncontended, but really no broadcast. Cable can realistically deliver 10Mbps max or contention is too high. If contention free or DOCSIS3 @45Mbps then it's expensive as a CMTS can only feed a few people.
However Cable only goes up to 860MHz, you can put 4 satellites worth down coax in an apartment block, shared with the Cable TV and DOCSIS broadband. That is in theory nearly 10,000 channels.

Better to scrap the Cable TV in apartment blocks and use the extra capacity for lower contention higher speed data and use Satellite for the TV.

Cable broadband has a special method for VOIP that should give landline quality.

If you do DSL / LLU ANYWAY, outside of the fibre fed apartment block then DSLAMs in the basement just looks like another exchange to your management & billing system.

If you are a Cable company anyway, then the Fibre fed basement wants Cable gear (CMTS). It just looks like another headend.

The backend management, provsioning of modems and billing SW can be quite different for DSL and Cable.

You can't feed a street with Satellite on Coax, the signal loss is too high, only 50m without an expensive repeater. Infact a lot of cable systems worldwide only run up to 560Mhz so as to have longer runs without repeaters. I don't know max freq. UPC uses. Cable is quite a good way to do phone, broadband & TV giving quite good contention and speed if each street is a separate data node. So you only need fibre to each street.

DSL will never compete on TV. So for less dense urban and rural, TV by dish and phone/broadband by copper pair (up to 12km is possible from exchange @ 512k, 20Mbps @1km).

But DSL can't compete with Fixed Wireless on rural and range. Fixed wireless COULD to 50km, though mostly 20km is reasonablr rural cell radius.

bk

watty wrote:

Like high latency on Satellite, a much larger delay on channel change than cable/satellite/DTT is inherent. The command must go back to the server, not just your set box. The IPTV needs also a larger buffer than Broadcast systems.

It has been improved, but inherently it's poor.

While I'm not trying to defend Smart, when done right, as it seems to be in my development, there is no noticeable difference in channel change time between IPTV and anything else, in fact I find it as fast as surfing up and down analog channels directlt on the TV!!!

BTW watty, the following was posted on the Smart forum today:
http://support.smarttelecom.ie/forums/showpost.php?p=12932&postcount=6

Smart Telecom are currently in discussions with Sky in relation to the addition of their "Sky Basics" suite of channels (includes Sky One, Sky News etc.). The fact that these channels have become available to us and other operators is welcomed by Smart Telecom and something we have fought hard for. We anticipate these Sky Basics channels will be added to our line-up when we launch our new product offering to the market on November 1st. We will provide customers with further updates closer the time. Watch this space!

So it looks like they will be improving their channel lineup.

Also I saw this info posted there on how to improve channel change performance:

While you're in the modem settings, there is one thing you can do to improve the channel change performance on the modems.
Instead of the ATM Traffic Class: VBR, Peak Cell Rate: 3000, everything else set to 0 you said, can you change it to:

ATM Traffic Class: VBR-rt
Peak Cell Rate: 2800
Burst Tolerance: 0
Min Cell Rate: 0
Max Burst Size: 1200
Sustain: 2000

bungholio

Magnet FTTH is all switched, they use asr's or advanced services routers to control the tripple play, this alloys the development to enable for instance ntl to offer their service and internet as well as magnet, 1ms ping times all the way accross the magnet core network and a constant 2 or 3ms ping time to ns1.tinet.ie

I also agree there is no delay when changing the channel up and down on magnet either, the menu itself is slow if you want to browse it, I have 2 magnet TV boxes for multiroom, and my internet speed does not get affected having more of these, I assume they are using catv receivers somewhere down the line here to break up the cat5 cable runs who knows

bk

bungholio wrote:

Magnet FTTH is all switched, they use asr's or advanced services routers to control the tripple play, this alloys the development to enable for instance ntl to offer their service and internet as well as magnet, 1ms ping times all the way accross the magnet core network and a constant 2 or 3ms ping time to ns1.tinet.ie

This sounds like a much better and more flexible setup then Smarts.

For instance in my 110 apartment development, if they use 2.5GB GEPON that I believe they use, they that would be 22MB per apartment dedicated over a switched network. However because they use DSLAMs with modems that seem to sync at only 13mb, then you are bottlenecked at that speed.

If Smart upgrade to 10GB GEPON as they are rumored to be doing, then they could automatically offer 90MB per apartment, more then enough for multi stream HD. However because they are using telco gear, they can't unless they replace it with VDSL DSLAMs and modems, a costly change and it still wouldn't give you 90MB.

The Magnet setup sounds far more sensible and flexible and has the benefit that Magnet could easily be changed for NTL or a satellite setup in the development, if Magnet didn't deliver the quality of service, something that is proving a major hassle for many in Smart developments due to poor quality.

I'd say because of all the problems developers and management companies are having with Smart, that they won't be getting anymore new developments, with them going Magnet instead. Perhaps that is why they are going TV over LLU DSL after Magnet have stopped, it is the only way they can grow their business. Word tends to spread fast amongst developers.

watty

Fibre to home (no DSL or cable) can do good IPTV without delay. However in Ireland that is an elite few users unlike Kenya (They'll dig a trench and put fibre in it just for you, digging is cheap there, though the person on an "average wage" may not be able to afford it) or Japan.

The delay on IPTV issue I was alluding to is a problem for head end fed cable or exchange fed DSL.