The MoPR Blog

Internet protocol television (IPTV) is booming everywhere it seems. Everywhere but in North America.

IPTV is not to be confused with Internet TV, which is usually quick to produce and lacks any form of comprehensive monitoring to ensure optimal picture quality (YouTube anyone?). IPTV is not the only way to deliver TV, but it’s the preferred method for phone companies looking to get into the television business. In a nutshell, IPTV is very bandwidth thrifty and can support exceptional picture quality, making it ideal for telcos looking to deliver quality High Definition (HD) and Video-On-Demand (VOD) programming.

Despite the horsepower that AT&T has, its U-verse IPTV offering has generated fairly tepid subscription numbers here in the U.S. While small U.S. telcos are having more success signing on IPTV subscribers – from a percentage of their customers stand point – the total number of IPTV subs is small in the U.S. Wait you say, what about Verizon’s vaunted FiOS service? While it’s indeed TV delivered by a telco, it’s not delivered via IPTV. It’s cable in the guise of telco.

Where IPTV lacks in usage in North America it makes up for it in Europe and Asia.

A recent report by Screen Digest finds that IPTV will claim 10% of the pay-TV market in the European Union as soon as 2009. This means that there will be a remarkable 8.7 million IPTV subscribers in the EU (currently ranked No.1 in the IPTV market), which translates to an approximate 658,000 increase from the previous year. And if you think that number is large, just wait until Asia takes over the first place spot, as it is predicted to later this year.

Enter new solutions from two of our clients – who are not waiting for North America to play catch up. In a continually growing industry, it’s important to remain ahead of the curve. The more IPTV offers the greater the chance for glitches and errors in the delivery.

Companies such as Mixed Signals and RGB Networks have taken this opportunity to expand both of their product lines in order to accompany this industry shift.

Mixed Signals recently came out with an IP Stats enhancement to their groundbreaking Sentry solution aimed specifically at IPTV service providers and their unique needs. Using Sentry’s new IP Stats feature, service providers can perform root cause analysis on the IP network to both monitor the health of the network over time as well as alert service providers when there is excess time taken for a single packet to arrive, thus causing a delay. The upswing is that subscribers will enjoy glitch-free TV service from their telco.

RGB Networks released a product called the Modular Video Processor (MVP) that is touted as a complete IPTV solution, especially if you are interested in advertising on your IPTV networks. The MVP seamlessly inserts ads into video streams enabling telcos to capitalize on advertising revenues.

While most viewers are allergic to advertising, it’s a multi-billion dollar business and the revenue it generates can help telco IPTV service providers bankroll their operations, and maybe, just maybe, keep their monthly subscription rates down. Now that’s something viewers can enjoy, in addition to crystal clear pictures.

The tools for better IPTV delivery are there – Mixed Signals and RGB Networks are ahead of the curve and ready.

We’ve been telling our clients for years that they need to be blogging, have a strong online presence and use online tools to spread the word about their product, strengthen their brand, and achieve the corporate transparency that is expected by customers and partners in today’s business climate.

A new report from Universal McCann proves the very message we’ve been shouting from the mountaintops: If you don’t have some sort of social media strategy, your brand and message will get lost.

Need some proof? A compelling paragraph from the report says:

Contributing to the internet has never been as accessible and less technical. Innovations in web development, computing technology and the proliferation of broadband have come together to drive monumental consumer take up. This is why the phenomenon of social media is important now – it has the potential to impact on all our media consumption therefore shifting the emphasis from professional content producers to the consumer.

So, I’m guessing half of the readers of this post are thinking to themselves, “Great, then we’re covered. We have a blog and we understand the value of online communities.”

The other half? Read on.

The report, “Power to the people: Social Media Tracker” has some compelling stats and lays it out on just how much people [e.g., YOUR customers and potential customers] are using social media to find information:

• 57% have joined a social network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content
• 55% of users have uploaded photos
• 22% of users have uploaded videos

Also according to the report, the role for advertisers and brands has never had so much potential – branded applications, content and services all offer huge promise for grand results and return on investment in social media.

And what about blogs – the red-headed stepchildren of traditional mainstream media (MSM)? The report claims blogs are a “mainstream media world-wide and as a collective rival any traditional media.”

Wow.

That’s why most traditional print publications – many struggling to stay alive with sagging circulation numbers and a slumping economy – are finally offering complementary and exclusive online content.

And television is included in this mix, too.

Smarter networks with television shows such as Lost and American Idol have poured money into building and maintaining active online communities; offering sneak peaks and exclusive features for online viewers along with various opportunities to interact within the community with like mined fans.

The report also proves why the PR community takes bloggers more seriously. We plan entire programs to ensure we are communicating effectively with them. We read their work and engage in interactive exchanges with them. We pitch them exclusive content and offer them breaking news on a level playing field with the industry and business publications. And at the end of the day, it’s why we consider a client mention in a blog post often times just as valuable as a mention in a traditional mainstream media outlet.

Sure, getting a client on the cover of Time is still a fantastic win. But at the same time consistent, accurate coverage in a blog that has a pure, core readership made up of the same audience our client is trying to reach should also be considered a homerun.

If that’s not enough to convince you to jump into the social media fray, here’s one last stat:

Social media impacts your brand’s reputation – and so does NOT having conversations with your customers, partners and employees.

• 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog
• 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs

So, you DO have a blog right? Your CEO or executive team is blogging about new products, issues and trends in your industry, and making themselves available to an audience that expects to have a two-way conversation.

They’re not?

Then we need to talk. Give us a call or drop us an email. We can help you.

Hewlett-Packard’s CoolTown

I’ve got weather on the mind. One reason for this has been my dramatic shift in location and climate in the last few years. I grew up in San Diego (warm nearly year round), but recently relocated to Northern Idaho (cold nearly year round). But the reason that the topic of weather has so firmly planted itself at the forefront of my brain of late is that we’ve been experiencing the strangest winter ever, with extreme conditions affecting pretty much everything I do. From Easter Egg hunts in the snow and wind and rain taking my power out while I try to work from home to having to sit in the snow while watching my son’s soccer game, weather has worked its way into my consciousness far too many times to count this year.

The area that I live in has experienced record snow fall this winter. Not a 10 year record, or even a 25 year record; but rather an “as long as we’ve been counting” record. It snowed here yesterday – - the 23rd of April, and that just seems silly.

Mobile technologies are most effective when they enhance the way we live and enjoy our lives. I think the weather has a lot of bearing on how I live and enjoy my life, and there are most definitely ways that mobile technology can present information to us that could improve our planning, comfort, and even our safety in regards to the weather.

In the early 90’s I had the privilege of doing PR for Hewlett-Packard’s CoolTown – a division of HP where engineers and marketing folks worked together to build, implement and bring to life the technology of the future being conceptualized and developed in the HP labs. The focus of HP’s CoolTown was applying Web-based technology to systems and services that would support the users of wireless, handheld devices (from watches, phones and PDAs to RFID tags and tiny Internet-connected sensors) interacting with their environment, from anywhere they may be.

One piece of technology from CoolTown that really resonated with me was a demo they ran with a group of school children in Helsinki, Finland. Helsinki is known for its high adoption rate and use of mobile technology and in this demo they used mobile technology to prevent school children from waiting out in extreme weather elements for their school bus to arrive. They used mobile devices and sensors on the buses to send real time alerts to the children inside their homes as the bus approached the point in its route where they needed to leave their home to reach the bus stop just in time for the bus to arrive. No more waiting outside!

Another CoolTown weather-related demo featured an alarm clock that was Internet enabled and knew the route you took to work in the morning and how long it took you to get to work, via that specific route, in perfect weather and traffic conditions. Assuming the weather was good and there were no traffic delays, the alarm clock would awake you at the pre-programmed time. However, the alarm clock would continuously scan the weather and traffic reports related to your trip and would then adjust and readjust your wake-up time accordingly.

I imagine how this last one could play out from a mobile device in my own life. In the morning my iPhone alarm would wake me up on time when the weather is good, since I work from my home office most of the time and have zero commute time. But, it would let me sleep in 45 minutes longer on days when the school district calls for a snow day, meaning school is cancelled and I don’t have to wake up my boys and ready them for school. That service alone would have saved me from waking up needlessly early during our 11 snow days when school was cancelled this winter.

While today’s mobile weather apps may not be as advanced as the ones I experienced in CoolTown nearly 10-years ago (although no doubt they are possible), there is a wealth of weather-related information available to all of us from our mobile phones that we can use today to help plan for the best (and the worst) the elements have to offer us.

If you are fortunate enough to be a member of the iPhone toting brigade, then you have been blessed with the elegant weather channel that comes standard with the device. The iPhone weather application leverages data from Yahoo weather, and presents it in Apple’s signature simplicity. I use it daily not only to check my own weather forecast (which is nearly always dismal it seems), but to check the weather for locations I am traveling to or where friends and family are located.

For the rest of you, here are a few basic mobile weather apps to consider:

WeatherTAP
No more weather surprises with WeatherTAP, the fastest weather on the web. With weatherTAP, you get the quickest, most current NEXRAD radar and a complete aviation weather package. There’s detailed lightning data as well as high-resolution East (GOES-12) and West (GOES-10) satellite images. Plus, you get forums, up-to-date forecasts, surface data, and colorized, animated maps: local, state, regional, and national coverage.
WeatherTAP continually monitors their data streams, processes images and makes them available online within seconds. No delays. No old images with new time stamps. With a WeatherTAP subscription you get the quickest, most current, accurate radar and weather available.
COST: $6.95 per month

The Weather Channel
Not really an app, but rather a site enhanced for mobile access. Go to weather.com on your phone. It’s fast! It’s free! All you need is a mobile phone with Wireless Internet capability to access severe weather warnings, forecasts and radar maps for your city, and thousands of cities worldwide. It’s weather anytime, anywhere from the leader in Wireless Weather.
COST: Free

WeatherBug Mobile
Offers Mobile Alerts (Stay informed with severe weather alerts and forecasts text messaged to your mobile phone), Mobile Weather interactive features (live local weather with full interactive features like radar maps, cameras and more, for your mobile phone), and Mobile on Demand (Instant Weather for when you need it most, for any U.S. ZIP Code).
COST: Alerts $2.99/month, Mobile Weather on Demand $0.75 per message.

AccuWeather.com WHERE Widget
AccuWeather.com is now available on WHERE, a collection of location enabled widgets for your mobile phone. The AccuWeather.com WHERE Widget gives you a forecast of the weather around your exact location. Get detailed location-based weather data, see your 2-day forecast, find wind, humidity, pressure & visibility conditions.
COST: $2.99/month (available on select carriers)

PocketWeather
(for Windows Mobile users) Get world wide weather reports directly to your Windows Mobile device anytime! The best weather tracking solution for Windows Mobile devices, featuring a robust weather engine wrapped with a stylish and simple to use user interface.
Cost: one time fee $14.95

Are there other mobile weather apps that you love to use? Let us know which ones you think are indispensable in the comments section. (Melissa Burns)