Matrioska

Matrioska is a scenario who is son of many previous choices which strongly -negatively- conditions the evolution of the TV sector. The digital divide in this scenario stays high overtime and the content distribution is mainly for free.

2008: The entire world is characterized by diffuse digital divide among dense populated areas and countryside areas. USA just redefined the standard for broadband connections. The digital TV around the world is just a marginal phenomenon with only a high visibility on the medias. The global economy gives sign of recession, increasing oil price and a credit crunch caused by the subprime crises.

2009: The oil crises continues, leading the price of oil at 250 $ a barrel. The global economy is in recession, causing a period of difficulties on investments. Hence, investors in new telecommunications infrastructures concentrate their efforts only in areas where high profitability is guaranteed (e.g. metropolitan areas). Major Internet players, such as Google and Microsoft profiting of their high liquidity begin to vigorously invest in advertising companies, which are seen as one of the major source of revenues for the upcoming years. Obama has just won the US presidential elections, bringing fresh air after two mandates of G.W. Bush. IPTV and Internet TV are slowly enlarging their customer base around the world, however the digital divide among urban areas and countryside is still high at global level. The Copenaghen conference concerning the environment, will see the birth of a new protocol containing more strict limit concerning pollutions, and this will see the support of all the major countries around the world, as a result of an increasing shared concern about natural catastrophes among the global population.

2010: After the acquisition of quite few advertising agencies, the bargaining power of Google and Microsoft – in the advertising industry - has become really strong. This allows them to make deals with content producer in order to start propose globally copyrighted contents free of charges, on Internet TV covering the costs and profiting from advertisements. This move comes completely unexpected for IPTV industry players, who based their business plans almost entirely on these service revenues. This move suddenly create an increase of demand for broadband services around the world, however the networks’ capacity is way lower than the capacity available, this will cause the introduction of band limits in the areas where the infrastructure is weak.

2011: The TV’s manufacturer unveil a new technology, which allows through touch screens to interact with products displayed (e.g. furniture’s, cars, clothes, etc.) in order to have the so called “Interactive advertisements”, where the viewer can just click on the images he sees and watch an advertisement about the product combined with useful information. Again, the limit on the diffusion of this technology is on the broadband, reducing the availability only to few areas. Following this new technology’s wave in the advertising, which generates higher revenues from advertisements, broadcast companies introduce HD freely available on Internet TV.

2012 The world is hit by a wave of natural disasters, in prevalence flooding, that made true what was for so long been feared by a large share of the global population. Worldwide the financials capitals are redirected on rebuilding the areas hit by the flooding. The global population lives with an increasing fear for natural disasters, and politicians try to control it by promptly enacting environmental programs. The new imposed environmental limit slow down the industry of television, looking for the raise of new technologies that can be sustainable over time.

2013: The new technologies deployed in the post-disaster reconstruction offer higher transmission capacity, which favor the diffusion of Internet TV in areas previously not reached, however the world is distant from being fully connected. The mobile companies keep on applying band restrictions in order to avoid the crash of their networks that despite the overtime evolution lack of capacity even if they improved the peak speed. Therefore Mobile TV is still confined to low quality contents, and often highly priced.

2014: The Internet players’ launch a new service aimed to exploit the Internet TV users preferences, in order to create social networking and dating services for people. The system matches the people who watch the same kind of shows and allow them to easily get in contacts.

2015: The Television in these days presents two opposite faces: a quite developed Internet TV available in large cities, where the broadband infrastructure is widely available. Whereas the areas serviced only by narrowband infrastructure, typically countryside and poor areas still rely on traditional TV and low quality Internet TV, which doesn’t broadcast copyrighted contents since the quality is too low and is not interesting enough for advertisements business.

Go Back to The future of television 2015