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BTC Broadband sees its role as a technology leader dedicated to providing leading edge services to its community. Aggressively pursuing that path, it has launched one of the first 100%, MPEG4-based, subscription video services in the USA. The CEO of BTC, Lynn Pike, gave the Viodi View some valuable insights into the development and launch of BTC TV.

Viodi View asked Lynn what drove BTC to pioneer such an early push to MPEG4. The answers were clear. Taking a strong position against competition from Cox required a high level of video service, and going the MPEG2 route would require upgrading to MPEG 4 before achieving pay off of the MPEG2 gear.

I also wanted to know how long the process took. Lynn confided that "It took us almost 24 months, primarily due to the middleware and STB development. If we were to start today I would estimate only 12-18 months with the gating item being content contracts." Content availability will only improve as and when more MPEG4 oriented turnkey providers hit the market.

BTC teamed with Conklin-Intracom to build the infrastructure, and launched with over 145 basic and premium channels. Added features, including various flavors of PVR, network and STB based, will begin rolling out in December.

Lynn also offered some advice to other IOCs heading down this road. "Always allow more time than expected." Product roadmaps and delivery dates are still uncertain at this stage of any technology roll out and vendor support is critical.

"Twenty to thirty year old copper OSP is great for voice frequency, fair for DSL and really unfriendly to IPTV data rates. Figure on cleaning up 25 -30% of your pairs before you can deploy TV. You will find corrosion, bridge taps, load coils, moisture in splice closures, poor splice connections, and woe to you if you have paper cable …. Shorten your loops to under 9000′ – 5000′ is better."

So, how about the future? In answer to questions of bandwidth availability and consumption in the longer term, Lynn noted some concerns. He strongly supported increased fiber deployment. "….build green fields with fiber, overbuild with fiber while settlements are still available…." and looks forward to vendors expanding the bandwidth capacity of copper. "We will need 30 to 40 megs for HD, VOD and multiple streams."

Viodi will keep up with BTC’s progress, and give readers insight into the successes and roadblocks that BTC will encounter on their way to offering PVRs, HD and other video services to their community.