Telephone companies were providing video service to almost 2.7 million customers as of year-end 2006, according to Emerging Media Dynamics.
Most are served through telephone company partnerships with direct broadcast satellite companies, although Verizon reported some 200,000 customers for its FiOS TV service delivered via fiber-to-the-home, at end of the year.
The total telco video customer count grew 76 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the fourth quarter of 2006.
Video has become the primary driver of U.S. Internet traffic. The monthly volume of Internet traffic grew by 35 percent between December 2005 and December 2006, according to the University of Minnesota’s Digital Technology Center.
Experts are divided as to whether the Internet will be able to accommodate the growing level of traffic. Many believe network neutrality rules, if adopted, would pre-empt the use of bandwidth management techniques that could assure quality in the increasingly congested network.
Revenue generated from mobile video services around the world is expected to skyrocket from $46.2 million in 2005 to $5.6 billion in 2009, a 2,000 percent jump in five years, according to Infonetics Research.
Mobile operators are expanding the bandwidth of their existing third-generation networks and deploying new mobile video service delivery platforms–steps that pave the way to offer the same content offered by wireline service providers.
A new study from the market research firm Kagan Research, The State of DBS (8th Edition), estimates direct broadcast satellite’s current market share of 29 percent is nearing steady-state in terms of the multichannel market. As telcos come online with their video products the effect is expected to be similar to that of the past 10 years, with the new platform driving deeper multichannel penetration and expanding the market.
The primary effect, however, will be to diminish cable’s share further, to 61 percent from almost 70 percent, while increasing the number of multichannel homes by nearly 20 million.
