What are fiber communities doing with all that bandwidth? FTTH network providers are experimenting with selling security services, online storage, videoconferencing, targeted ads and much more.

“The killer app for us is that people want turnkey service.”

If anyone knows what applications fiber-to-the-home customers are looking for, it’s Glen Lang, CEO of Connexion Technologies. Connexion has built and operated fiber networks in nearly 30 housing developments in the Southeast, where it delivers services under contracts with homeowners’ associations.

Lang was speaking at Killer App Magazine’s panel at the Broadband Properties Summit in Dallas, Texas, where he shared the podium with Michael Johnston, VP of Information Technology at the Jackson Energy Authority; Paul Morris, executive director of the UTOPIA consortium; and Lars Krumme, executive vice president of HomeMovie.com.

Lang explained, “When we built our network, we didn’t know what the killer app would be, and we still don’t.” Rather than a single application, it seems that Connexion’s customers want bundles and support – “a single number to call to solve their problem.” Connexion has obliged by expanding its service bundle from the standard voice-video-data triple play to include security, access control, concierge services and in-home network maintenance.

Glen Lang and Paul Morris at the Broadband Summit

Connexion’s next project will be targeted advertising for local TV. Television programs downloaded from satellite allow two to three minutes of each hour for locally inserted ads. Usually, everyone in the service area receives the same advertisements – but because Connexion has individually addressable set-top boxes, it has the capability of sending custom ads to each box.

“Let’s say the whole family’s watching the Super Bowl on their own TVs,” Lang said. “Well, at 2:05 Grandma might get a Geritol ad, while the kids might get a Toys R Us ad, and Dad might see a Mercedes Benz ad….Now all of a sudden the local pizza place can do targeted local TV advertising. We think this will be the killer app for us going forward.” Targeted advertising isn't feasible without a large enough subscriber base, but Connexion expects to reach the critical threshold sometime next year.

The Motivating Factor

For Connexion, which is the exclusive network provider in its developments, new applications are a means to increase average revenue per customer. But for Jackson Energy Authority, which competes with other network providers, new applications can also help attract new customers.

A public utility in Jackson, Tennessee with 12,600 customers on its FTTH network, Jackson Energy is actively seeking the next killer app, according to Johnston. Power users who are sophisticated about high bandwidths are already JEA customers. Now the authority is looking for applications that might be motivating factors to win over the less-sophisticated users.

One application that has been popular is live remote local programming, especially streaming and TV coverage of high school football games. According to Johnston, “This immediately drew a lot of consumers to the network to watch.” Jackson Energy also offers offsite storage and co-location services to small businesses, which pay anywhere from $50 to $100 per month to store their data in a secure facility.

Johnston also said several local companies had begun leveraging Jackson Energy’s fiber network to offer remote computing solutions for small businesses. “Instead of having to worry about buying thousand-dollar computers and updating them all the time, for $10 per month per user at your office they’ll provide all the applications that you’ll need,” Johnston said.

Videoconferencing Unbound

At UTOPIA, a consortium of thirteen Utah cities that is creating a fiber-based “multilane freeway to the doorstep,” executive director Paul Morris is frustrated because so many applications are written for the lowest common broadband denominator and don’t take advantage of fiber’s enormous speed.

“The assumption when they wrote the software was that people wouldn’t have the upload speed, so it stops at 700 Kbps. But when they found out what people have in places like UTOPIA, they decided to start working on a version that will go up and up.”

Morris demoed a desktop videoconferencing application called VSee, which he has been using to communicate with other FTTH network executives. He explained that the software was initially written with its upload capabilities capped: “The assumption when they wrote the software was that people wouldn’t have the upload speed, so it stops at 700 Kbps. But when they found out what people have in places like UTOPIA, they decided to start working on a version that will go up and up.”

Morris introduced Dr. Milton Chen, VSee’s inventor and the CTO of VSee Lab, who told the audience that the new fiber-friendly version of VSee will produce “full-screen gorgeous video” like that found on high-end videoconferencing systems.

Morris also demonstrated Slingbox, a television place-shifting device made by Sling Media, which sends television signals to a PC over the Internet. He talked about calling Slingbox’s help line and asking what customers had the most trouble with. The immediate answer: unreliable upload speeds.

“When Slingbox figures out that people have fiber, they’ll change their software to leverage the available bandwidth,” Morris said. “I have HD channels I can’t get through there because it doesn’t have the streaming capacity.”

In the future, Morris said, FTTH customers should be able to use applications like the immersive technologies being developed at the University of Southern California’s Integrated Media Systems Center: 3D face modeling and animation, “immersivision” panoramic video technology and immersive audio. Immersive experiences require bandwidths of 70 to 140 Mbps, according to Morris, but concerts transmitted using this technology are so realistic that test audiences say they would pay to attend them.
 

The Application Provider’s View

HomeMovie.com’s Lars Krumme introduced his video editing, sharing and archiving platform, which differs from other available services in its emphasis on long-form videos. (You can read more about HomeMovie.com here.)

Why would a network operator want to partner with HomeMovie.com? Krumme had a list of answers:

• Reselling the service can generate additional revenue quickly, since HomeMovie.com is designed to be easily deployed with the network provider’s brand.
• Storing their videos at the site makes customers reluctant to leave the network, thus reducing customer churn.
• HomeMovie.com offers flexible financial options, ranging from simple revenue sharing to pay-per-use to fixed fees for deploying across an entire network.