FiOS Paradise is in the Entropics – IP Business Magazine
October 1, 2008
FiOS is a whole new entertainment experience thanks in large part to fiber, but also Entropic.
Entropic Communications, a pure play in HD video and connected home entertainment is the secret sauce inside the Actiontec in-home device that powers FiOS. The Actiontec device is a gateway that gives access to the home network and the ability to manage diagnostics in each room and basically see everything going on in the home network. That type of control may be too much for some people at this point, but for others it is a wonderful new development. It creates a new level of utility and helps ensure a quality end user experience in ways never before imagined.
The new services rolling out with FiOS that are made possible by the Entropic-Actiontec relationship are improved entertainment services including VoDVR, wireless distribution in the home and remote management for all of it.
A key element to the success of FiOS is the integration and interoperability of video and data systems using the MoCA standard for wired and wireless in-home local area networks. The standard was created and is being driven through the industry by the Multi-Media over COAX Alliance. Formed in 2004, MoCA currently has 58 members and they include Actiontec, Entropic Communications, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cox, many hardware vendors and several others.
The players involved obviously have a lot to gain by putting on the full-court press with standards and adoption. They get to define the market, set the specs and make the rules. Control rests in the hands of those who create, but also the responsibility to ensure it works. From this a new world order in networking will potentially be developed.
As much as fiber to the home and Entropic's advanced capabilities and technology bring, not much of this would be happening without access to the existing in-home coax cable network. The near-term success of FiOS is hinged on that as much as anything else at the moment.
The benefits of coax are its gigabit line rates, broadcast HD TV quality and that it is universal — especially in that it is universally accessible in the homes where it already is. The irony is that it is the very same coax that the cable company installed years ago that the "telephone" company is now going to come in and use to help displace them.
As John Graham, VP of Marketing for Entropic, sees it, "DOCSIS and ADSL networks will be strained by the new video applications that are due to come out once the FiOS installations are complete. Physics will be the determining factor. It will be a different kind of video with different uses than ever before seen. There will not need to be any tough marketing or hard selling of the services when what the applications people want simply cannot be accessed on certain networks, but can be on one."
It's sort of like EZPass. Those who need it or want it bad enough will get it and pay for it whereas those who don't just move over and continue to wait in the slow cash line. What is obvious is that the difference can be seen. No words are needed to explain it to the user.
With 24 percent penetration rates in the markets where they are already in (for the FiOS Internet service) they are moving past the inflection point of service adoption. As that rate increases and FiOS enters more markets we will begin to magically see new services being introduced by big name video content owners that have never existed before.
Just as the BBC launched its iPlayer in the UK we may very well see ABC, NBC, CBS and others do the same. Will it be because they were waiting for FiOS to be available thus making their video practicably accessible, or will the advent of the new high-speed network open their minds to the fact that they can make their video libraries accessible over IP?
Which came first, the network, or the application? What is a letter without the Post Office? What is email without the Internet? What will video app XYZ be without FiOS? We shall see. Paradise awaits those who believe.
Hunter Newby was a monthly contributor to IP Business magazine at the time of this writing.
