Telecom and IT News

How OTT is changing Media content delivery

August 15, 2016 / in Articles / by

Online video entertainment has created a huge impact to traditional media companies that didn’t believe in the huge opportunities that video-on-demand services where going to bring. They refused to acknowledge the market opportunities beyond traditional pay-TV services. This change has become a global phenomenon. The impact and implications are enormous.

But, what are Over-the-top services? Over-the-top, or OTT, is the term used for the delivery of film and TV content via the Internet, without requiring users to subscribe to a traditional cable or satellite pay-TV service like a Comcast or Time Warner Cable. OTT can be divided into three different revenue models:

  • SVOD: Subscription-based model, such as the well-known Netflix or Hulu
  • AVOD: Free and Ad-based services such as Cracked and Hulu
  • TVOD: Transactional services such as Itunes

 

SVOD will become the region’s largest OTT revenue source in 2018. AVOD is expected to surpass SVOD in 2020, due to the rapid expansion in mobile advertising.

In Western European countries, over-the-top (OTT) television and video revenues will more than double in the 5 coming years. This growth rates will vary a lot, depending on the country. OTT adoption is high in UK, the Netherlands and specially Sweden, were in the south (Spain, Portugal) it hasn’t make a difference, yet. This is mainly because these countries report a huge presence of piracy content.

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OTT TV and video revenues in Western Europe will be increased, between 2015 and 2021, in $8.25 billion. The UK will be the marked leader, with $2.30 billion, followed by Germany ($1.34 billion), France ($1.13 billion) and Italy ($0.99 billion)

However, growth will be tied to distribution. As internet-connected TVs become more and more popular, so will be OTT video services.

Traditional cable and satellite services are taking action to face these market changes. As an example, Time Warner has just taken 10% of Hulu stakes, one of the main OTT players.

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If you are going to Rio Olympics and don’t have any mobile data tariff “Don’t risk your money”

August 8, 2016 / in olympic games / by

This summer the Olympic games in Rio are planning to be exciting, not just for the tournaments but for all the sport fans that are going to be filling up the big city of Rio. That’s why they should be assured of what are going to be paying off for this holidays. The main concern? “Roaming mobile phone charges” which can be expected to be around $3,000 to $4,000.
América Móvil for instance, is a sponsor and official supplier of mobile services in Rio. For this event, the group will have a ‘backbone’ 374km fiber optic.  With other networks such as Vodafone customers will be satisfied that the teleco’s $5/day roaming deal will still work all around the country and during all year after the Olympics.

In the case of company Optus when travels to Brazil normally the cost for customers will be at $2/minute to make calls, $1 per SMS and $1 per MB. However, during the period of August 1st and September 28th 2016, this tariff will change to $10/day for the Travel Pack which will cover the Olympic host country as well. This means users will get unlimited local and international calls plus unlimited SMS whilst visiting the country for $10/day. Adding also a daily data allowance of 50MB, letting customers use it at their leisure across multiple days.

T-Mobile goes all in for the games. The carrier said “domestic customers traveling to the games will have access to unlimited “high-speed” data in Brazil throughout August, though with the fine print stating “primary usage must occur on the U.S. Sprint network” and “service may be terminated or restricted for excessive international use.”

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Also, customers must be on the Sprint Open World plan, which is available at no charge for postpaid customers, and have a roaming capable device. Those users also will have access to the plan’s regular unlimited calling and text messaging features, with the data bonus over the standard 1 gigabyte of unthrottled usage.

On the other hand, another option for sports fans would be thinking of buying a Brazilian SIM card instead. This wouldn´t been allowed before programing the Olympic Games in Brazil, only residents were allowed to buy and register local SIM cards, basically the people who have a Brazilian CPF (the country´s version of a tax file number). Although that is possible now, the best option regardless a SIM card would be the TIM Visitor Prepaid ´chip´, which is fully designed for international visitors.

Therefore, if you are attending the games in Rio make sure you get an add-on roaming tariff, otherwise you will be overcharged and that could cost you at least $3,000 easily. Bear this in mind and enjoy the Olympics without paying too much.

Connected cars, with more cell service connections than mobile phones

July 25, 2016 / in Articles / by

Cars are getting more and more connected. In the first quarter of 2016, more cars were added to mobile networks in the American market than smartphones.

More than a third of new connections were in cars, followed by 31% in mobiles. Finally, tablets constituted 23 percent of connections while M2M (machine to machine) was just 14 percent. Connected cars are becoming more and more widespread in the last few years with many users connecting their vehicles to a cell service.

As an example, US telecommunications company, AT&T has eight million cars on its network, probably the highest of any mobile operator in the world, states Chetan Sharma report. AT&T mobile car’s solutions is appealing automobile manufacturers, to the point that they have sealed deals with 9 out of 15 US car companies.

 

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One of the projects to improve cars convenience was started on 2015 by a University of Texas engineering student, Nancy Rodriguez, who was also an intern at AT&T Plano Foundry. After watching some tragic news about children left by accident in hot cars, she decided to build a product that detects living creatures on automobiles and triggers an alarm in certain situations. This prototype has been continued by AT&T and will probably be commercialized in some cars next year.

Despite the advantages of having a connected car (to detect other cars, or to track your way to a destination), many consumers aren’t aware their car is connected. 4 out of 10 don’t realize the cars they owned already had connectivity features on board. On the other hand, the rest said that connected features influenced their decision to buy a certain car.

 

The best tips to protect your smartphone

July 21, 2016 / in Articles / by

Smartphones need protection today, good maintenance and good use. These are essential tasks we must take to avoid irreparable damage to our phone.

 

There are different ways where mobiles can be hacked by true professionals who are dedicated to stealing information to access personal information such as bank details. Hackers can infect your device remotely, by malware or via Wi-Fi networks that are not secure. This is especially true for operating systems such as Android. To prevent this from happening, you can perform various actions, but first you must learn to recognize when your phone has been hacked:

 

  • If your device’s battery runs out quickly.

 

  • If apps are opened automatically.

 

  • If you get unexpected invoices charges.

 

And these are the actions to prevent and avoid future problems:

 

  • Block your mobile with passwords, if they are numbers, avoid tapping the same ones that you use in your bank. For other passwords, you should use capital letters, numbers and a word that no one can decipher, the more complicated the better. Try to change these passwords from time to time.

 

  • Never give anyone any of your passwords. You never know where this password can end up.

 

  • Back Up! Remember to create backups. Transports your data to another device, computer, hard disk, Tablet, but always have a copy, so you will never lose information in case of theft or hacking your mobile phone.

 

  • Use apps like FindMyIphone or alternatives for Android to protect your cell phone. These apps let you remotely locate and control your phone and even reset the entire device if this is necessary.

 

  • Keep away from some public networks without security codes (those you don’t know), because they provide easy access to hackers. Be also careful when using your Bluetooth. Always select the invisible mode so that other users cannot detect you.

 

  • Don’t click on links from unknown SMS. These links might be malware. Also avoid downloading Apps, via SMS, that can also introduce malware to your device.

 

Finally, update your software as often as you can, because it restores and corrects errors that have occurred on the device and prevents the mobile from new malware.

 

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