Live Sporting Events Broadcast in HD Spur Growth in the U.S. Fiber-based Broadcast Video Transport Services Market, Finds Frost & Sullivan

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 2 /PRNewswire/ -- During 2008, the U.S. fiber-based broadcast video transport services market took a giant leap forward, following the widespread adoption of the high-definition (HD) format, particularly in the live sporting events space. Major broadcasters had converted to 100 percent HD coverage of games. In 2009, for the second consecutive time, all FOX NFL and CBS NFL were and are continuing to be produced in HD. With ESPN, NBC, and NFL Network continuing their HD coverage, this will be the second 100 percent HD NFL season. ESPN holds the longest streak of producing all of its games in HD, having produced each one of its games in HD since the 2003 season.

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New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.ipcommunications.frost.com), U.S. Fiber-based Broadcast Video Transport Services Market, finds that the market earned revenues of over revenues in excess of $235 million in 2009, and estimates this to reach $440 million in 2014.

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"Given the push to HDTV, fiber emerges as the choice for transporting uncompressed video from live events to NOC, or between production houses, which prefer uncompressed video to avoid the deterioration of signal quality caused by compression," says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Roopashree H. "Once these production houses have the master copy of the video ready, the video can be compressed before transmitting it to video headends of Telcos, cable MSOs., mobile service providers, and ISPs."

The media and entertainment vertical end users are fixated on paying a usage-based fee to satellite operators, and demand the same kind of pricing model from terrestrial network service providers. Satellite operators lease their bandwidth in denominations of per minute, per hour, per week, per month, and annual fees. This offers tremendous flexibility to choose the type of service that best suits their bandwidth needs and budget. With the exception of Level 3, no other service provider has been able to replicate this type of service offering and pricing model.

Broadcasters and content creators prefer to purchase service by the hour, the half hour, or even smaller increments. This helps the media end users save on the cost of bandwidth, and allows the network provider to reallocate the available bandwidth to more media end users. Service providers are encouraged to devise service offerings that can be dynamically provisioned for durations/time period requested by the end users.

As leading communication service providers transform their backbone networks to next-generation networks such as Internet protocol/multiprotocol label switching (IP/MPLS), video transport over fiber is gaining widespread adoption. Fiber transport networks offer the ability to carry large amounts of bandwidth, with excellent quality of service offered by the MPLS networks. Different types of content, including secure digital (SD), HD, and compressed/uncompressed, can be carried on fiber networks cost-effectively.

"In the past, terrestrial and satellite were often viewed as competitive technologies, which could be substituted for the other. Recently, the complementary aspects of the two are being better understood and marketed to end-users as a whole," says Roopashree. "By developing hybrid systems that combine the strengths of the two technologies, market penetration can be increased, thereby benefiting both the satellite and terrestrial network operators."

As satellite operators experience loss in market share to terrestrial network service providers, specifically, for point-to-point connectivity, hybrid services are gaining traction in the market.

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U.S. Fiber-based Broadcast Video Transport Services Market

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan