The Canadian incumbent is adding video-over-DSL to its satellite and fibre offers, with 200 channels of broadcast TV on the roadmap. Its Toronto trial has already brought important insights on how to maximise in-home bandwidth

Modem lessons

Phase two will also take account of lessons learned during the first eight months of the trial, the most important of which is to install the modem as close to the customer drop (point of DSL entry into the home) as possible. Bell Canada has found that it can increase bandwidth as much as 2Mbps by using a single filter near to the residential gateway device rather than using a distributed filter design.

The incumbent telecoms company will need to maximize its available bandwidth. During the Toronto trials it is running four simultaneous streams of standard-definition TV but HDTV is on the roadmap and indeed, Martin Cullum, the company’s general manager for technology development, video networks, believes he may have to offer two streams of HD and three streams of SD simultaneously as a benchmark service.

“There is not much HDTV content out there so if you have invested in the HDTV format you will probably want to record the programmes on a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) and watch them later if you are going to miss them. We need the bandwidth to let viewers record and watch HDTV [on different channels] too.”

HD demonstrations

Cullum has been watching “some great demonstrations” of HDTV in Bell’s laboratories at 8Mbps, which would put the total video requirement of a five HD/SD stream home around the 20-21Mbps mark. But he is very confident Bell Canada will have the capacity to offer this to all users.

The telco is halfway through a network upgrade that is pushing fibre down to the 450 home mark in metropolitan areas and putting 80 per cent of its customers on copper runs of no more than 1km. At these distances the company can achieve its target bit rate of 26Mbps per home with ADSL2+. For the 20 per cent of homes falling beyond 1km, bonded solutions are being considered.

While Bell Canada is coming to market later than most major incumbent telcos with a video-over-DSL service, the company has a significant headstart on most of its peers when it comes to video, with two existing TV services already running successfully. Besides the Bell ExpressVu direct-to-home satellite service, the company has already moved into wired video with its MPEG-2 ATM solution that runs over fibre to Multiple Dwelling Units in Toronto and Montreal. Launched commercially in 2003, this took advantage of the fact that developers building on downtown railways property wanted high capacity telecoms services for their upmarket condominiums. Bell obliged with an early triple-play offer. The ATM video network uses fibre to the building, then VDSL over twisted pair from the basement to the apartments, where Motorola-Next Level set-top boxes support three simultaneous TV feeds (thanks to their three tuners), with video distributed around the homes in analogue RF over coax.

Multiple networks

Satellite was ruled out of the new build apartments due to aesthetic and line-of-sight considerations, providing Bell Canada with an early indication of the value of using multiple television networks. According to Martin Cullum, the company’s video philosophy is now to be platformagnostic and the decision to exploit DSL to expand its reach fits neatly into that.

“We want to offer the same service on DSL as satellite and essentially the philosophy is that you get Bell TV, so if you are a satellite customer today and you happen to move home and can’t get satellite due to line-of-sight issues, you can still get Bell TV from an alternative distribution method.”

For Bell Canada, DSL represents more than geographic penetration however. In Cullum’s view, it also provides a new and compelling version of television and when he references the importance of on-demand content, the evolution of enhanced video search engines, voice services on the television (like caller alert and caller ID), and the ability to programme PVRs from PCs and mobile phones, it becomes clear that cross-bundling satellite TV with high-speed broadband and telephony is not enough for Bell Canada.

Separate infrastructure

Cullum says he would be interested in practical solutions that could unite Bell’s satellite and proposed DSL video networks, taking into account the existing set-top box and middleware platforms used for the DTH service. In the meantime, the company’s three video networks will be operated distinctly from each other, albeit running out of the same Toronto headend - the site of the existing satellite uplink where today the equipment resides to receive, aggregate, process and transmit 400 broadcast TV channels including around 25 in high-definition. The satellite video is encoded in MPEG-2 Variable Bit Rate (VBR) for both SD and HD and these same outputs are also routed into Bell’s ATM wired networks in Toronto and Montreal. With the next phase of the video-over-DSL trial, a new rack of MPEG-4 Part 10 standard-definition encoders will be installed, operating in Constant Bit Rate.

Common headend

According to Cullum, the introduction of HDTV on the DSL network will provide the first opportunity to think about rationalising the encoding requirements across its multiple platforms. The company is anticipating an HD MPEG-4 Part 10 encoder solution that will support simultaneous VBR and CBR outputs from the input feed, and this will make it practical to combine the logical headend for HDTV on DSL, satellite and ATM. Bell Canada intends to match the channel offer found on satellite on its DSL network - in terms of content if not numbers. As Cullum points out, the 400 figure on DTH includes French and English language versions of channels to cater for different regions of Canada, while the platform supports a host of regional services that duplicate each other and are relevant only to particular viewers. When these are removed (due to the service provider’s ability to target the right programmes to the right region), Cullum estimates a broadcast TV channel count in the region of 200. Market research conducted on behalf of Bell Canada has shown that 80 per cent of its customers are only interested in a video bundle if the television service is delivered by them, and the company is keen to exploit its position of trust. Cullum believes it is essential that as the company deploys IPTV, it does not threaten the traditional comfort zones customers have built around their television, and in the medium-term that implies the use of IP video over coax in the home.

“Using coax networking legitimises the service in the eyes of the consumer,” explains Cullum. “They think ‘I’m still using coax into the back of the set-top box so it must be real’. If we introduce new gadgets it could destabilise people’s comfort levels.”

Lesson from DTH:

avoid self-installation One of the most important lessons Bell Canada will be taking from satellite into IPTV is to avoid self-installation. According to Martin Cullum, general manager for technology development, video networks, at the company, “On satellite we worked with our dealers to quickly introduce a self-installation programme but we created more troubles and dissatisfied customers than it was worth and have gone back to a full installation model. It is cheaper to spend the money up front on installation than to have your customers on the telephone. You have to train people to sort through their troubles and have to send a truck anyway to fix the problem, and it is better to have a happy customer the first time you touch them. One thing I have taken from satellite is a determination to do installation properly.” Bell Canada will also be using its existing call centres and experienced customer care staff.