Strategy Paper for Overcoming DTAG Market and Technology
Advantage
This paper was created for a venture capital company and
subsequently used to target cable accessible markets in
Germany. The paper has been parsed in this forum to
separately cover Digital TV, Broadband Data, Video on
Demand, Telephony, Interactive TV, Gaming and Colocation.
DIGITAL TV
Digital TV is an already established fact of life in the 6
DTAG cable regions. The issue is the way the network is
designed, i.e. a 500MHZ system. The current system is
excellent for providing Digital TV systems, however there
are two serious future downsides.
1. This 500MHZ system is unique. Therefore much of the
equipment used in this system is only used for this system.
Upside – Equipment custom made to work quite well in the
system. Downside – Escalating maintenance costs.
2. The bandwidth available on the current system is
insufficient without a tremendous amount of reengineering
and unique customization.
3. Upside – If not expanding services nothing need be done.
4. Downside – If expanding offerings, system should be
upgraded in order to remain cost effective in equipment
acquisition and operational maintenance costs. This
entails either mitigating risk by expanding to a system to
840MHZ or increasing risk by using new bleeding edge
bandwidth optimization technology.
As much as possible, the enterprise should try to use COTS
(Commercial Off the Shelf) systems which are used by other
enterprises in order to lower the cost of doing business,
keep maintenance costs in line with/or lower than industry
standard, and to insure the availability of competitively
priced parts over the lifespan of the systems. Using
standardized (COTS) equipment has been proven to lower
acquisition and maintenance costs over the lifespan of the
systems. The current 500MHZ system does not allow this to
be an option.
Our suggestion is to upgrade the enterprise to an 800MHZ
(840MHZ) system that uses standardized equipment. An
800MHZ system allows the addition of services, the ability
operate under common degraded conditions while still
maintaining high quality signals, use of existing proven
architectures, future expandability, flexibility in
offerings and services, etc. The upgrade can be
partially financed by partnership agreements with the Level
4 operators in non-high density metropolitan areas. The
dense populations of Munich, Berlin and a few other cities
can more than justify the financial outlay needed to
upgrade systems. Conversely, some sparsely populated and
rural areas of the former East Germany cannot sustain a
cost efficient upgrade in the short term. We suggest
either a contracted operations/management agreement with
the Level 4 operators to help finance this part of the
system, or a very extended "lease" with the Level 4
operators. In the absence of L4 operators, We would make a
very strong case for introducing services slowly and using
other technologies such as point-to-point, wireless and
satellite in those regions. Upside – Common equipment,
common architectures, fault resiliency, lower continuing
costs, expandability, usage flexibility, availability of
resources. Downside – Higher initial costs.
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Sean DAniell is a internationally seasoned I.T. executive
with highly effective technology and organizational
management experience that increases profitability. Mr.
DAniell has extensive experience in creating, managing and
guiding thriving, successful startup and Fortune 500
technology departments.
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