Future of MMDS

enfant terrible

Does anyone have an idea what UPC's plans are for MMDS.

Is it likely it could be upgraded to supply HD or will sky be our only choice for HD.

How populated would an area have to be for UPC to lay cables.

hightower1

I think the future of MMDS will always follow the current hard cabled areas.
Tech developed there is 80% of the time is useful for MMDS. HD requires a lot of bandwidth and MMDS is more limited than any other transmission type.

I believe if you look at the mmds demographic not an awful lot of people in country areas have HD ready tv's nor really care about it. Stereotypical but unfortunately true. I believe adding additional services rather than augmenting existing services will be the immediate future.

The obvious additional service that would be more useful and have a larger uptake would be broadband. Which is possible over MMDS and UPC have expressed an interest in this. The only real issue being securing the frequencies needed.

The cost of laying fiber lines to an area, setting up a UBR and then running the coax lines to each house would be very high, made less viable by the way the countryside is layed out being difficult to isolate any faulty equipment and repair this. Also having a country side area covered by a tech would be very costly considering he may take 3 times longer to do a service at a particular address than the same length of time in a city.

In short I would imagine broadband is the next logical step of MMDS, HD compression would need to be a lot better to make it MMDS ready and that will take a number of years of HD dev in cabled areas first.

enfant terrible

hightower1 wrote: »

I think the future of MMDS will always follow the current hard cabled areas.
Tech developed there is 80% of the time is useful for MMDS. HD requires a lot of bandwidth and MMDS is more limited than any other transmission type.

I believe if you look at the mmds demographic not an awful lot of people in country areas have HD ready tv's nor really care about it. Stereotypical but unfortunately true. I believe adding additional services rather than augmenting existing services will be the immediate future.

The obvious additional service that would be more useful and have a larger uptake would be broadband. Which is possible over MMDS and UPC have expressed an interest in this. The only real issue being securing the frequencies needed.

The cost of laying fiber lines to an area, setting up a UBR and then running the coax lines to each house would be very high, made less viable by the way the countryside is layed out being difficult to isolate any faulty equipment and repair this. Also having a country side area covered by a tech would be very costly considering he may take 3 times longer to do a service at a particular address than the same length of time in a city.

In short I would imagine broadband is the next logical step of MMDS, HD compression would need to be a lot better to make it MMDS ready and that will take a number of years of HD dev in cabled areas first.

Found this trial from last year
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/11254/new-media/chorus-and-digiweb-join-forces-for-triple-play

Says it offers digital television, phone and 5.3mb broadband.

Do you think it would have the bandwidth for HD.

hightower1

I would imagine it would but whether it would be cost effective I dont think so.
If you were to put say 6 HD channels thats taking away bandwidth for 18 SD channels and thats a significant chunk of the line up.

So while its possible the majority of people would rather more SD than HD channels. The other alternative would be the use the bandwidth from the broadband aspect of the pack but then you start getting into chopping and changing , swapping out and in services on a medium which is difficult enough at the best of times.

Now in saying that when UPC were looking at this HD was still in dev so who knows what they are doing with this now. I haven't heard anything online about this since this first report. Is it dead in the water or just taking longer than usual? Who knows. I'd imagine only a very select number of people in UPC would know at this stage, product managers mostly. Its definitely another excellent avenue for UPC to look at and I have no doubt they eventually will but how long this will take is really in the lap of the gods.

bk

The only way UPC could do HD on MMDS, is if they also switch the SD channels to MPEG4. That would then give them enough capacity to do all the current SD channels, plus a few HD channels.

But in order to do that, they would have to send new MPEG4 capable HD boxes to every MMDS customer, even those who don't sign up to the new HD service.

That would require an awful lot of investment and risk on UPC's part. It seems unlikely while the future of the frequencies MMDS operate on are in question.

enfant terrible

bk wrote: »

The only way UPC could do HD on MMDS, is if they also switch the SD channels to MPEG4. That would then give them enough capacity to do all the current SD channels, plus a few HD channels.

But in order to do that, they would have to send new MPEG4 capable HD boxes to every MMDS customer, even those who don't sign up to the new HD service.

That would require an awful lot of investment and risk on UPC's part. It seems unlikely while the future of the frequencies MMDS operate on are in question.

I heard they have to replace all mmds boxes to upgrade to the new encryption scheme there using.

Hopefully the new ones are mpeg4 capable.

Bazzy

Currahee01 wrote: »

From what i can see on the web Sky does seem to be better, i know my brother had it in town and picture was slightly better than my ntl.

The broadband is indeed the biggest problem, i had wirless at one stage in the city centre and it was terrible!! i have a feeling i wont have a choice in wexford although i have to ask the neighbours if the hardline is possible. Do sky have a broaband service? i'm sure i heard that they do but cant seem to see it on their site.

I think you need to start a new thread for your query.

I think there is a great future for MMDS it is still a good technology with plenty of potential for expansion. yes some large investments will have to be made but we need to remember that UPC are owned by liberty global and there is no shortage of money on that front

It would certainly be interesting if UPC were to obtain rights for the sky channels and offer them plus more on MMDS it would certainly make for challenging times for sky in the market place.

MPEG4 would be the only way to go. But its not something I can see happening overnight.

bk

enfant terrible wrote: »

I heard they have to replace all mmds boxes to upgrade to the new encryption scheme there using.

I would have thought that they only need to replace the cards.

But if they do need to replace the boxes, then yes, an excellent time to rollout MPEG4 boxes, a lot more SD channels would be possible on the service as well as HD.

It could make MMDS feasible again, at the moment they are losing MMDS customers to Sky at a frightening pace.

enfant terrible

bk wrote: »

I would have thought that they only need to replace the cards.

But if they do need to replace the boxes, then yes, an excellent time to rollout MPEG4 boxes, a lot more SD channels would be possible on the service as well as HD.

It could make MMDS feasible again, at the moment they are losing MMDS customers to Sky at a frightening pace.

That's what my uncle told me, could be wrong.

Where did you read about losing the customers bk?

bk

enfant terrible wrote: »

Where did you read about losing the customers bk?

It is a noticeable trend in their quarterly statements over the years, for example:
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/upc-ireland-enjoys-16pc-revenue-boost-as-expected-1651905.html

So typically revenue is up as they get more analogue customers to sign up for digital, broadband and TV, but their core base on unique customers on the network is actually dropping.

Zardoz

bk wrote: »

But if they do need to replace the boxes, then yes, an excellent time to rollout MPEG4 boxes, a lot more SD channels would be possible on the service as well as HD.

The new box UPC will be using is the Sagem ITD 70.
http://www.sagem-communications.com/index.php?id=409&L=0
Its only Mpeg2 and pretty basic to be honest.