INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
Telcordia
(formerly Bell Communications Research, Inc.)
In the mid-1990s, worldwide telecommunications capacity was
expanding and broadening. Companies in a variety of industries began to develop
ways to take advantage of this expanded capacity. One of the emerging fields
was digital video, which offered the advantages of television for real-time
visual monitoring, along with the flexibility and speed of computing. Designers
envisioned a broad range of applications, including virtual meetings and
conferences, entertainment, education, telemedicine, and even home shopping.
However, there was one obstacle: each application might have its own protocols
and could malfunction on different hardware or software platforms.
Bell Communications Research, Inc. (Bellcore) planned to
develop the knowledge base, expertise, and tools to overcome this limitation.
Bellcore had shaped standards for other cyber technology and was active in
industry-led forums on digital video and interoperability. After the company’s
management indicated that it would fund part of the high-risk research, a
Bellcore team applied for and received a cost-shared award under the Advanced
Technology Program’s (ATP) 1995 “Digital Video over Information Networks”
focused program. The two-year project began in 1995.
By the end of the ATP-funded project, the company had
developed a prototype implementation of digital video protocols and had
transferred it to the product development side of the company. It had also
filed a patent for a router adapted for digital video delivery. However, this
technology did not prove economically viable in the
By 1998, industry forums on digital standards no longer
convened. In the next several years, Bellcore’s technology was superseded by
technologies from
Composite Performance Score
(based
on a four-star rating)
No
Stars
Research and data for Status Report 95-04-0029 were collected
during March–May 2005.
Networks
In the mid-1990s, computer users
anticipated the much-heralded information superhighway, a seamless flow of data
through a network or networks of computers. Companies were developing hardware
and software to make existing networks faster and more far-reaching in their
ability to load content. One of the emerging technologies was digital video,
whose applications ranged from video conferencing to home shopping to
entertainment, such as pay-per-view movies, sporting events, and concerts.
An easy-to-use and economical network that accommodated
video transmission was of great interest to video content providers, network
service providers, network and end-system suppliers, and end users. But none of
these stakeholders had the expertise or the means to resolve the issues that
impeded interoperability (that is, the ability of different programs to read
and write the same file formats and use the same protocols). Bell Communications Research, Inc.
(Bellcore), which had been created by the break-up of the
In 1994, Bellcore applied for and received a two-year award from ATP,
through the “Digital Video over Information Networks” focused program, to
develop technologies that would enable the interoperable use of competing
digital video standards. In its application, Bellcore said its project would
accelerate industry efforts to deploy digital video, foster the growth of the
information services industry, create new businesses and industries, and “bring
the digital information age into being.” Bellcore would make available to the
industry the results of its research in the form of testing and consulting
services and through the licensing of software tools designed to achieve
interoperability. Bellcore was not able to commit the resources required to
pursue the broad scope of its proposed project, but was eager to share costs to
accelerate the research and development.
Bellcore Envisions Experimental
Technologies
Bellcore wanted to foster interoperable digital video technologies and
stimulate the growth of video on demand. It planned to create the knowledge base, expertise, and tools
required to enable interoperability among video applications. Its research
would be in three related areas:
·
Experimental
software technologies that would enable different applications, network
architectures, and data to work together
·
Other
experimental software technologies that would resolve and integrate conflicting
control and signaling protocols
·
Experimental
technologies that would analyze the effects of ATM switching and routing of
video over networks with different operating systems and protocols
“The expertise and tools we
develop will enable low-cost, universal access to a video-rich information
infrastructure that supports a wealth of video applications,” Bellcore wrote in
its proposal. The tools would reduce the risk of market fragmentation and
costly investment in systems that could not work with other systems.
With many companies
vying to develop products that would implement the still-evolving digital
technology, speed-to-market was also important. Bellcore estimated that ATP
funding would shorten the time-to-market by one to two years and predicted that
it would be selling its products within one year after the project ended.
Bellcore expected to produce the
following:
·
Test
tools that the company would license for use in analyzing interoperability and
monitoring network performance
·
Testing
services that would help suppliers and users determine the interoperability of
their digital video products and would help them develop new applications
·
Consulting
services to analyze digital video equipment design, before it is
commercialized, to enable interoperability with existing products
·
Network
operations systems software to enable registration, initialization, and
downloads for a range of applications and services
·
Reference
implementation (described below) for video portions of the DSM-CC protocol for
licensing to industry
A reference (or sample)
implementation is a working example of a standard that shows how to implement
the standard. Developed concurrently with product specifications and
tests, a reference implementation verifies that the specification can be
implemented. The reference implementation enables validation of conformance
tests, serves as the standard against which other implementations can be
measured, and clarifies the intent of the specification where conformance tests
are inadequate.
To pursue a prototype that supported digital video and complied with DSM-CC, a company would have to either build or buy a reference implementation. Bellcore wanted to develop the reference implementation for the digital standards because “these standards were going to be the Holy Writ for the industry,” said David Waring, the Bellcore team leader.
In the
first year of the project, Bellcore built and demonstrated a reference, or
prototypical, implementation based on
two parts of DSM-CC, the user-to-user standard and the user-to-network
standard. These two standards were designed to control video reception by
clarifying aspects of broadband service delivery and by establishing protocols
for features normally found on videocassette recorders, such as fast-forward,
rewind, and pause, for all services delivered to the home. With protocols,
information appliances, such as a cable box, could access a variety of services
from a range of service providers. The content could be video, audio, Internet
web pages, interactive games, or as-yet-undeveloped possibilities. DSM-CC could
work with packet networks and with Internet protocols and could be used in
computers in video delivery, audio delivery, and with interactive content such
as computer games.
In the
second year of the project, Bellcore experimented with a fiber-based wide area
network (WAN) and ran digital video experiments on such issues as delay, packet
loss, and buffering. Bellcore undertook these experiments as part of a broad
effort to move the industry toward digital video without expecting to see a
direct commercial application. “This was the ‘R’ of R & D,” said Waring.
At the
same time, Bellcore released a “beta” version of the reference implementation,
and the research team transferred the technology to the product development
side of the company. The company readied its reference implementation for
market, and even though the standards were still evolving, they planned to
build in tracking of the standards’ development as part of the product. They
began marketing the reference implementation through trade shows, sent out an
initial mailing, and prepared a more extensive package in response to
expressions of interest.
Lack
of Scalability Dooms Technology
Bellcore expected that equipment manufacturers, primarily those who made set-top boxes (which controlled transmission and sat on top of the television), would be its primary market, but national and international telephone and cable carriers showed interest as well. The company received drafts of contracts from two companies. However, when the ATP-funded project ended, the company reported that technical and economic barriers were significant. The supporting technologies, such as streaming video, set-top boxes, encoding and decoding, and DSL (Digital Subscriber Line), were new and expensive. Software developers were using the new and expensive redundant array of independent disks (RAID) technology, which made digital software more fault-tolerant but added to its cost. Major telecommunications companies such as Verizon and British Telecom delivered their technology to 3,000 sample households, but could not cost-effectively scale it up to serve markets of 10,000 households or more.
Industry
Abandons Standards
In addition,
the industry wavered on what approach to take to distribute digital video.
During the ATP-funded project, the majority of the standards community thought
DSM-CC was the paradigm. The minority thought that the Internet was the model
to follow. The discussion among the standards forums became increasingly
contentious as proponents of these two viewpoints debated the best way to
deploy digital video technology.
“During
1997, major shifts in the industry have potentially lessened the impact of the
DAVIC DSM-CC approach for interactive digital video. The Internet, with its
underlying IP protocol, is being advocated by some as a complete alternative to
DSM-CC. This is now a major topic of debate and discussion, and already a
softening of interest in DSM-CC has been observed,” the company wrote in its
final report to ATP. Support for the DSM-CC standard waned, so that two years
after the end of the ATP-funded project, DSM-CC was effectively defunct. “Our
potential customers were watching the standards debate, and decided to wait a
while,” said Waring.
As a
result, Bellcore had no market for its reference implementation and its planned
consulting services. The company never sold a reference implementation.
Further, with the DSM-CC standards gone, it was not clear what would replace
them. The code developed under ATP funding has no value today, because software
technology has superseded Bellcore’s implementation.
Shortly
after the ATP-funded project ended in 1997, Science Applications International Corporation acquired Bellcore and
changed its name to Telcordia, with the mission of providing operations and
support systems and intelligent network systems to telecommunications
operators. Although Telcordia retained the digital video knowledge it
gained during the project, video on demand in the
The significant barrier in
the
Although the technology never found a market, Waring says the project was worthwhile. Through ATP’s digital video focused program, Bellcore participated in workshops and shared its research experiences with five other ATP awardees. Without ATP funding, Bellcore would not have undertaken this project and would not have developed that knowledge, according to Waring. The award meant that Bellcore could perform a new service and add to its core competency in digital video interoperability services, Waring said. In addition, it holds a patent on a router developed during the project.
Bellcore had been responsible for synchronous data transmission on optical media (Sonet) and ATM standards and had shaped the DSL standards. “We attempted to do that for digital video and failed,” Waring said. “Betting on standards is risky business.”
Since 2003, telecommunication industry leaders have been taking a second look at digital video, now called Internet protocol television (IPTV). Telcordia is working with SBC Communications and Verizon to deliver a video-on-demand service. Waring sits on an IPTV task force, with plans to sell Telcordia’s future products to Verizon, BellSouth, and other companies. Cable and telecommunications companies are vying for “triple-play” contracts to provide bundled telephone, television, and high-speed Internet service to households.
Conclusion
The drive for a national information infrastructure was
proceeding quickly in the 1990s; every few months, more bandwidth was added,
which allowed more features to be added as well. Bell Communications Research
(Bellcore) was actively shaping the standards for compatibility on computer
networks. The company saw the need for a model that demonstrated the digital
video transmission standard and that provided a method to test components’ compatibility.
To do this, Bellcore needed to develop the knowledge base, tools, and services
quickly, but was unable to obtain full funding from internal sources. Bellcore
applied for and received a cost-shared ATP award under the “Digital Video over
Information Networks” focused program to proceed with its development.
During the project, Bellcore developed a prototypical demonstration, or reference implementation, of digital video based on Digital Storage Media-Command and Control (DSM-CC) standards. However, digital video on demand did not prove to be economically viable at that time. Although it could be delivered to small markets, scaling up to larger markets was too expensive, primarily because the technologies needed to support digital video were themselves new and expensive. In addition, the standards debate stalled as members of forums concerned with defining the standard failed to agree on the best way to deploy the technology. The Internet's promise of being better able to deliver video in a cost-effective format that satisfied consumers’ demands also stalled Bellcore's technology. Ultimately, work on the DSM-CC standard was abandoned, with the result that Bellcore’s reference implementation never sold. The company obtained a patent for a router, published an article, and made a presentation on the ATP-funded technology.
Since 2003, prospects for digital video in the
Project
Title: Digital Video Networking Services (Interoperability Tools
for Digital Video Systems)
Project: To develop the knowledge base, expertise, and cross-industry
tools to enable interoperability of digital video systems.
Duration: 11/1/1995–12/21/1997
ATP
Number: 95-04-0029
Funding**
(in thousands):
|
ATP Final Cost: |
$ 1,091 |
97.2% |
|
Participant Final Cost: |
31 |
2.8% |
|
Total: |
$ 1,122 |
|
Accomplishments: With ATP funding, Bell Communications Research, Inc.
(Bellcore) accomplished the following:
·
Developed
a reference implementation software for digital video over networks
Received the following patent for technologies related to the ATP-funded
project:
·
“XDSL-based
internet access router”
(No. 6,493,348: filed December 2, 1998; granted December 10, 2002)
Commercialization Status: Bellcore’s proposed technology was
based on the assumption that a vibrant market for digital video products and
services would develop and that an international interoperability standard
would be agreed upon. When the market for digital video emerged, standards
other than Bellcore’s interoperability standard were adopted. Therefore, the product
that emerged from this project, a reference implementation for the standard,
was never sold.
Outlook: The outlook for this technology is
weak, because there is no longer a need for the technology. Although there is renewed interest in digital
video, other technologies have superseded the technology developed by Bellcore.
Composite Performance Score: No Stars
Focused
Program: Digital
Video over Information Networks, 1995
Company:
Telcordia
Room 1A170B
Contact: David Waring
Phone: (973) 829-4850
Publication:
·
Presentation:
·
National
Association of Broadcasters’ Trade Show,
** As of December 9, 1997, large single
applicant firms are required to pay 60% of all ATP project costs. Prior to this date, single applicant firms,
regardless of size, were required to pay indirect costs.
Research and
data for Status Report 95-04-0029 were collected during March–May 2005.