Tech Primer

Triple Play

What is Triple Play technology?

In telecommunications, Triple Play service is a technology term for the provisioning of three services—high-speed Internet, television (video on demand or regular broadcasts) and telephone—over a single broadband connection. Triple Play focusses on a combined business model rather than on solving technical issues or creating a common standard. In addition to the video, voice and data, other services in Triple Play include high-speed interactive browsing and voice calls. For this to happen, each subscriber requires a minimum bandwidth of 18 Mbps to support these services. Today, Triple Play services are offered by cable television operators as well as by telecom operators.

How Triple Play is carried through?

For telephone local exchange carriers, Triple Play is delivered to its residential base using a combination of optical fibre and digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies (called fibre in the loop). This configuration uses fibre communications to reach distant locations, and uses DSL over an existing plain old telephone service (POTS) twisted pair cable as last mile access to the subscriber’s home. Cable television operators use a similar architecture called hybrid fibre coaxial to provide subscriber homes with broadband, but use the available coaxial cable rather than a twisted pair for the last mile transmission standard. Subscriber homes can be in a residential environment, multi-dwelling units, or even in business offices.

Using DSL over twisted pair, television content is delivered using IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) where the content is streamed to the subscriber in an MPEG-2 transport format. On an HFC network, television may be a mixture of analog and digital television signals. A set-top-box is used at the subscriber’s home to allow the subscriber to control viewing and order new video services such as movies on demand. Internet is delivered via ATM or DOCSIS, typically provided as a 10 Base-T Ethernet port to the subscriber. Voice can be delivered using a traditional (POTS) interface as part of the legacy telephone network, or can be delivered using Voice over IP (VoIP). In an HFC network, voice is delivered using VoIP.

What is the potential of Triple Play in India?

Triple play broadband holds immense potential for India. It offers a huge spectrum of services such as video conferencing, and can connect far-flung offices and facilitate distance education. Tele-medicine can bring medical attention to remote rural areas, video on demand can time-shift entertainment to suit our convenience, VoIP can bring telephony costs down even further, enterprises can access business applications centrally (thus increasing overall productivity), and online gaming and other applications or services can give birth to new domestic industries thanks to India’s entrepreneurial spirit.

What are the challenges associated with Triple Play?

The challenges in offering Triple Play are mostly associated with determining the right business model, back-end processes, customer care support, and economic environment rather than technology. For example, using the right billing platform to address a variety of subscriber demographics, or having the appropriate subscriber density to financially justify introduction of the service are just two of the factors that affect the decision to offer Triple Play service.

How are service providers gearing up to offer Triple Play?

There is a shift happening from single to triple play. All operators in India—Bharti, BSNL or Tata—have been offering only single-play service, that is, Internet access. But service providers have to move to offering triple-play service (voice, data and video), so apart from data, the service providers should also focus on voice and video. The three services make the entire offer a deadly combination, and make it necessary for subscribers to opt for broadband services. Care should be taken to ensure that the cost of triple-play service is within the reach of the common man.

On the whole, Triple Play services offer a lot to subscribers. It may be a challenge because service providers elsewhere are still struggling to make money on triple play; one of the issues is how to price it so that it appeals to a larger audience. The majority of the vendors worldwide support single-play service. To provide triple-play service they are working out modalities and are also working with partners. In order to provide one-stop solutions, infrastructure vendors have to tie up with content providers or content aggregators.

For further information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_play_(telecommunications