Can it be done? That’s a question that I’m sure gets asked a lot in our industry. We see or hear a news item or claim and we ask “the question”. Part of the prevalence of this favorite question is the cynicism bred of years of hype, of course, but part is also a reflection of the fact that the industry is getting a lot more complicated and it’s actually hard sometimes to decide whether a particular notion is practical or simply nonsense. Let’s look at some recent examples to see what I mean.
We’re hearing constantly that OTT video is going to destroy channelized TV viewing, and the Aereo court victory (for now, at least) seems to fuel this issue. Can it be done? The problem in my view lies not with distribution but with production. To the extent that this sort of thing is a gnat buzzing around the head of network TV it’s tolerable, but if it gets annoying enough it gets swatted. How? If too much third-party exploiting of over-the-air is happening, you get people who pull their broadcasting. News Corp has already threatened to go pure cable delivery, which would make their channels immune.
The problem with the OTT model isn’t obtuse legal rights questions, it’s simple economics. If you can’t produce content you can’t distribute it, no matter what technology you have. The online ad market’s pricing model for video doesn’t return nearly enough to fund content development, even if you assumed that all the video went online. We have a lot of economic hurdles to jump here before we get anywhere close to killing off TV. Can it be done? Not under currently foreseeable circumstances.
We also hear that Huawei is going to take over the industry, becoming not only the number one in network equipment but perhaps becoming the only truly safe and profitable player. Yet Huawei is widely regarded as a threat because of their links to the Chinese government, and they’re barred from contracts in at least some countries and situations. They want to refurbish their image and own the network market. Can it be done? Here we have a conclusive answer, I think, which is “Darn straight it can!”
Huawei was at one time a price-leader player, but that time has passed. In some of the most critical elements of network evolution, Huawei is not only embracing technology advance and differentiation, they’re leading it. Some of my recent exposure to their work in the standards area has showed me that they’re taking advanced network technology a lot more seriously than other network vendors considered leading-edge. Where they are particularly strong is in their conception of how IT will integrate with the network—the “metro cloud” or “carrier cloud”. I can safely say that there’s nobody out there doing better work, nobody being more aggressive in exploring all the nuances of how IT and network equipment cooperate in creating services.
In terms of overcoming a fear of China spying or malice delivered through Huawei equipment, I think their current consumer-level thrust is the smart way to go. Much of our technology, including cherished Apple gadgets are built in China today. Are they being built with spy cameras included? Huawei can make consumer technology at a good price, spread it out under their own name, and make themselves a positive image. If your company fears Huawei, then fix your own problems and you don’t need to worry. If you don’t want to do that, then be prepared to be run over.
The last of my items is the idea that mobile broadband will displace fixed broadband. People, even years ago, were saying that it was just a matter of time before we tossed the whole wireline thing in favor of wireless everywhere, even to TVs. No more local loops, tethered devices. Freedom! Can it be done? Here, there’s not a pat answer because there are two ways of looking at things.
Mobile broadband is point-of-activity empowerment, as I’ve noted before. It changes behaviors by making it possible to interact with information and entertainment on our own terms. We don’t sit at a computer to see something or look something up, we just whip out the old smartphone and go at it. That changes how we consume information, so it changes behavior. We’re creating a consumer class for a new kind of consumption. And if we have enough people doing that, we necessarily enrich the wireless broadband distribution model to the point where it would indeed be possible to access everything wirelessly and forget tethering.
The thing is, getting to that enhanced broadband distribution model means getting to smaller cells at much higher densities. So what we end up with isn’t an elimination of wireline but a proliferation of micro-, pico-, and femtocells. All these things need backhaul. Logically we’d have such a backhaul-and-ittybittycell point in every home. Logically it would look like the current wireline broadband and WiFi picture. So yes, we’re moving to an untethered world but no, that’s not going to pull the cable companies or telcos out of the wireline broadband business. Our wireless connections will be built on our own wireline connections, just as they increasingly are today.
There’s another point here, of course. There are a lot of exciting things happening in tech and networking today. All of them have a grain of reality, nearly all are being hyped mercilessly, and so while we can’t say that a given thing is “false” or will “never happen” we can assign many of the things to the same level of probability as flying over the Empire State Building by standing on 34th Street and flapping our arms really hard. And if we can’t pick out the exaggeration from the reality, we can’t support real planning, real spending, and real opportunity. We need to exercise some sanity here. Can it be done?