The future of media is just around the corner, and it ain’t the Internet. It’s a completely new viewing diagram where you pay for the experience and control, and you see whatever you want, whenever you want, on whatever device you want, anywhere in the world.
Picture This
It’s 9:20 Sunday morning. You are sitting on your couch and turn on your TV to see what’s happening. You want to watch soccer, but your team is playing in Brazil and last night’s game won’t be shown for hours. You could watch the new Monsters Inc. movie, but your cable company isn’t willing to pay the royalties until next year, even though your friends in Germany saw it last night. You know you can pick it up off the web, but you will have to wait hours for it to download. Besides, you would have to watch the movie on your computer, in your office (no couch), by yourself, without your kids. After nearly half a century, the broadcasters are still controlling what you can see, and when and where you see it.
Look What’s Coming
TV, cable, telephone and cell phone technologies already let you see, hear and call from anywhere to anyplace, anytime at all. People think these technologies are already “good enough" as separate islands – now if only they could be “bridged" together...
Connecting this diverse group of products and services will be no small task, but it is inevitable with the convergence of technology, an over-supply of bandwidth (which has driven traffic load utilization down from 10-15% to 2% for most networks) and the new “bridge" technologies now being developed. As the convergence of cell phones, digital TV, cable distribution and the Internet become increasingly common, coupled with a “super" PBX, they will morph into Enhanced Communications where family get-togethers, with unlimited numbers of participants, can be broadcast to every family members’ TV; where Internet video games and music merge into one stream of digital content enhanced with participants communicating from any part of the world; and where you really can order any movie in any language at any time on any communications device (Watch your favorite movie on your cell phone while riding the train home, perhaps?). The new “new" media will be delivered with the “bridged" distribution channels for multiple transport pipes and can be viewed on your TV, your PC, or your cell phone in one continually-widening, broadband open-pipe to your home, office, and throughout your enterprise.
What’s missing is a commercial platform – the “SuperPBX" – for controlling the transport pipes and software that will let you receive the applications and digital content, interacting with, and displayed on, any device. Your cell phone, even with 3G, won’t be powerful enough, your powerful terabyte router from Juniper or Cisco will not be able to receive the necessary data from the cable network to deliver the enhanced media products. The solution delivered by a new SuperPBX “bridge" platform creates a massive opportunity for innovation. A new industry, composed of next generation start-ups, media giants and major carrier suppliers, is emerging to deliver high traffic, Enhanced Communications products and services for that “bridged" platform. The platform itself could be advanced PBX, multi-channel wireless, video recorder, display cell phones or a global enhanced game. And what of the new “bridge" – the SuperPBX platform? Once the SuperPBX arrives, will we need our computers, TV’s and cell phones?
