The digital age in full furor

Cable networks are the owners of the future. After a process of technological convergence and services, it is a fact that cable television systems they have become powerful telecommunications networks.

Hand in hand with this development, television prepares for one of its greatest transformations in history. The usual and massive reception of television signals over IP, better known as IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), is forcing to rethink background the business models hitherto known in the television.

This technology will transform the television. Unlike the current situation, the provider will not broadcast its contents expecting the viewer to be connect, but the contents will arrive at the request of the customer. The key is in the personalization of the content for each client individually. This allows the development of the pay per view or pay per event or video on demand. The user shall have a receiver connected to his computer or to your TV and through a guide you can select the contents you want to view or download to store in the receiver and thus be able to visualize them as many times as you want (www.wikipedia.org).

The Spanish group Análisis and Foresight of Telecommunications (Gaptel) highlights four decisive aspects for the future of digital television: the transition to Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT), the evolution of the business of cable television operators and satellite in the new digital scenario, the irruption of the television over ADSL and IP networks, and the prospects of new services and formats such as television on mobile and high definition television. Digital video, television on IP and the packaging of services will play an important role in driving broadband penetration.

A good example of what is for happening in the field of communication as a result of the digitalization, offered by the music market through Internet, which tripled in the world in 2005. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reports that last year 2.8 million people bought 420 millions of songs online, representing 6% of music sales.

In the United States, European Union and Asia, these changes are now available to the citizen stream. In Latin America, its appropriation by the users are conditioned to a technological update that offer bandwidths that ensure faster connections.

Thanks to a broadband network very efficient, integrating traditional services of satellite communication and multimedia services, the operator Spanish satellites Hispasat tests to transmit high definition television (HDTV) over the Internet (over IP). However, the company Telefónica de España postponed until 2007 its HDTV broadcasts on IPTV due to lack of demand.

Recently, Telefónica signed an agreement with Lucent Technologies to drive development and worldwide coverage of television over IP. In fact Telefónica has already entered fully to market IPTV in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia and in Spain, where its subsidiary Imagenio has 250,000 subscribers.

IPTV is a reality in Europe, Asia and the US. In Hong Kong, for example, there are more than 350 thousand IPTV subscribers and 1.5 million VoD over IP subscribers. In the US there are about 250 IPTV communities and more than 300 thousand households have contracted the television service with companies Telephone. It is estimated that by the end of 2007, there will be everything the world about 27 million households with IPTV services and that 10% of Pay-TV in Europe will be IPTV in 2009.

IPTV had in 2004 a one% penetration of the Union market European, which moved 62 million euros. And it is estimated that in 2009, when it reaches 6%, will be 25,000 million.

Now, Telefónica de España competes with the North American Jump TV, the company so far most important in the online broadcasting of IPTV signals, which distributes 175 exclusive channels for IPTV between subscribers from more than 80 countries, and it has offices in four continents.

How to regulate new ones media
The emergence of new audiovisual media imposes the challenge on them regulatory bodies to modernise standards in order to adapt them to new challenges and technological contexts. Without However, the convergence of technology, consumer electronics and content industry has not been accompanied by a regulatory convergence. The proposals that have so far been made presented, they seem to satisfy no one, not even advertisers, neither to the spectators, nor to the media, because it tends to equate them with traditional means.

In the case of the European Union, it is criticized that the announced regulation makes the issuance more flexible of advertising and reduces the intervals without ads, although it is maintains a 35-minute cap for movies and shows informative; the three-hour advertising cap disappears daily; authorizes new advertising formulas such as the screen game, virtual and interactive; allows advertising indirect and product placement, provided that identify the beginning of the program and exclude it from information and children's programmes; subjects to the same rules to the new audiovisual media. The elimination of the European production quotas.

But the commercial chains private companies, on the other hand, ask for fewer advertising restrictions and limit competition from public broadcasters; insist that advertising must be free and everyone must choose how much they emit, as it happens in the radio and the press. Users reject the flexibility of advertising, although they accept as positive the obligation for product placements to identify themselves as such.

In turn, advertisers consider advertising regulation excessive. The new audiovisual media protest that the legislation does not distinguishes between traditional media and new media, which obliges to comply with the regulation designed for television open. The new media would like to be able to exploit issues up to now banned, like tobacco or alcohol and argue to their please the ability of users to choose what they see and the extensive production of highly segmented content.

Digital jump task earring
The European Union set 2012 as the deadline year for that all countries turn off analogue systems and emit digital. Spain, Austria and Germany will do so in 2010, Sweden in 2008, Italy and Finland plan analog blackout between 2006 and 2008; Belgium, Slovenia, Slovakia, Greece, Hungary and the United Kingdom, in 2012.

However, you have to keep in says that in most countries they have been received for a long time some years DTV signals through cable services and satellite, and that what is about to be implemented is the digital terrestrial and free-to-air television.

The decision to adopt a Digital standard is preceded in some countries by fear of the current free-to-air television channels that the new technology brings with it new operators, who will challenge them the advertising guideline.

In the United States, the FCC set December 2006 as a deadline for analogue blackout or when 85% of households can receive the digital terrestrial signal. In Latin America, although the industry is under pressure, the States, due to the economic conditions of the region, they are taken your time to make the digital leap. However, in Mexico some cable operators are already offering video games, video on demand and telephony over IP.

In South America, Brazil holds the technological leadership. He was the first to make broadcasts. regular HDTV and the first to adopt a digital standard, which turned out to be a hybrid of the Japanese ISDB, with adaptations own, above the North American standard (ATSC) and the European (DVB).

Adoption by the Brazilian government of the Japanese digital pattern has been sued for alleged illegality before the Public Prosecutor's Office of Minas de Gerais, because that decision was not the result of a process of analysis, studies and negotiations throughout the country; because that decision had to be taken by law not by decree, and also because the Japanese decoder (ISDB) is 18% more expensive than the North American (ATSC) and the European (DVB).

The Brazil-Japan agreement is accompanied by commitments in terms of investment and Brazil's access to the Japanese market. It is estimated that the business of DTV in Brazil is approximately 15 billion dollars, only for the sale of adapters, appliances and the installation of all the necessary infrastructure for its 190 million inhabitants and about 70 million televisions.

It remains to be defined whether the The Brazilian standard will also be adopted by Argentina. By soon, the government of President Néstor Kichner decided reconsider the determination of the government of Carlos Menen to favor of the American standard. And the Chilean government, which announced a decision for the month of December, stated that, whatever standard is adopted, you should have in account the decisions made in this matter by its neighbors of the Southern Cone.

The big ones come out of shopping
Parallel to the development and massification of the new technologies, a process of concentration that I was announcing. In Colombia, Telecom, which until a few years ago it was one of the largest companies state and that was recently privatized and acquired by Telefónica de España, has just been authorised by the Commission National Television to operate a DTH service similar to that of that already offers in Peru, Chile, Argentina and soon in Brazil. And the Mexican Telmex is also shopping in Colombia. It is currently refining the terms of the acquisition of two cable operators: Superview (Bogotá) and Cable Pacific (national license).

For its part this year complete the mergers between two large ones: PanAmSat-Intelsat and SesGlobal-NewSkies. This wave of acquisitions seeks to increase capabilities and coverage. Intelsat is the largest operator important of Latin America. It has eleven satellites with total footprint and others with partial coverage in the region. The merger with PanAmSat will increase its hegemony, with 15 satellites focused on the subcontinent, and will force the rest to rethink their strategies. (www.convergencialatina.com).

All this occurs at the gates that the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia be ratified and the United States, in which changes in the legislation to release, inter alia, the amount of cable licenses, which to date is conditioned by the number of inhabitants.

Peru is also awaiting the signing of the FTA with the United States. For now, your study and Colombia's are suspended in the Congress of the States United, which went into recess until November 7, when hold elections to renew the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate. This could bring complications for the adoption of these treaties, given that he believes Democrats will take control of the House. To the Democratic Senator Ken Salazar said nafta with Peru it will be debated before that of Colombia. And that the The latter debate will take even longer.

In mid-October, the presidents of both countries, Alan Garcia and George W. Bush, provided the opinion with a joint statement in which ratify the purpose of seeking equity in the benefits for the parties to the negotiation.

In both countries they have been initiated digital TV broadcast tests, and everything seems indicate that it will be the North American ATSC standard that will be it will impose both in Peru and in Colombia.