It’s been almost a year since Vodafone in Germany stopped trying to sell its disastrous IPTV service, based upon Alcatel’s aging OMP middleware, up against the radically more successful Deutsche Telekom T-Entertain based on Microsoft Mediaroom. But now Vodafone is emerging with a brand new service, which it only allows hints at in a German release it authorized from supplier NDS.
The new service looks like a weird hybrid which will allow a cable or satellite TV subscription to be extended using an NDS designed set top, which also allows HD Over The Top video and IP based VoD over the public internet.
But questions remain. The release talks about the TV service being delivered only over broadband lines owned by Arcor, the ISP which Vodafone owns there, and this may be because there is no real network neutrality law in Germany, despite a European directive on the subject ‘ we wouldn’t be at all surprised if a Deutsche Telekom broadband lines had deep packet inspection used on them deny the timely arrival of any large body of video packets on its own network. It has exhibited all the trappings of abuse of dominant position in the past and been a consistent thorn in the European Commission’s side.
But then there is the issue of how can a set top box attach to either digital satellite or cable without access to the Conditional Access decryption codes. Is this a hybrid in the sense that a CI module has to be used? (unbundled decryption module) or is the device designed to pick up customers who are purely on analog cable and satellite systems, although these streams too are encrypted. NDS failed to come back with any clarification prior to us writing this up, so we will continue to seek clarification.
The service is being called ‘Vodafone Connected Home’ and as far as we can see will replace its OMP based IPTV system entirely and doesn’t use any of the architecture that was put in place for that. The NDS release talks about service delivery not only being to TV sets through a set top, but also PCs, mobile phones, the Sony PlayStation and Tablets. The system certainly runs NDS MediaHighway middleware, uses its VideoGuard conditional access and also uses the NDS XTV DVR technology.
It says that while web-based added-value services are provided such as Internet streamed channels, video-on-demand content, widgets and other apps on the Vodafone DSL connection , viewers can continue to use their existing TV connection – whether digital or analog cable or satellite.
The DVR comes with a 320 GB hard drive and can integrate VoD offerings from the cable or satellite TV service and its electronic program guide (EPG).
Pay TV EPGs are encrypted, so to get either Sky Germany or Kabel Deutschland to allow its EPG to be decoded and then mixed with OTT EPG data would be virtually impossible, so we have real reservations that this is actually happening unless those suppliers are powerless in the equation.
Broadband TV News added the fact that NDS has acted as systems integrator on the entire project, something we have come across only once or twice in the past and never before for a telco. The DVR hardware it has supplied has been built by Sagemcom. The idea is that the customer is largely unaware of how the content is being delivered to its TV, from Vodafone, over the internet, from his or her cable supplier or from VoD on a protected network. There is also a suggestion that the cable tuner is only analog, but this still doesn’t get us round the fact that even analog cable is encrypted.
So far Vodafone has tried OMP IPTV in Germany and now dropped it, and Mediaroom IPTV in Portugal, as each subsidiary has been given free rein to decide its own TV fate. In Spain and Italy Vodafone owns a substantial ISP business, which it bought from Tele2, while in its native UK it has a wholesale broadband agreement with British Telecom. So far it has had no TV service and therefore no Quad play option in any of those three countries, despite them being its largest territories after Germany. So there’s a lot at stake if NDS manages to develop technology which gives it a viable OTT pay TV strategy in Germany ‘ it might duplicate it across multiple territories overnight.
Pricing will be a critical issue for Vodafone in Germany as it was for the incumbent Deutsche Telekom. When DT first brought out IPTV is was massively overpriced and it sold almost no subscriptions and it has only been after at least two downward price revisions that IPTV has taken off in Germany, where it now has over 1 million subscribers. A price of €10 a month has been suggested for the Vodafone service, which is what the Telecom Italia Alice service was charging before it gave up the ghost and sold the operation to Telefonica.