Matrioska

2008: The entire world is characterized by diffuse digital divide among dense populated areas and countryside areas. USA just redefined the standard to define a broadband connection and digital TV around the world is just a marginal phenomenon with 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 on 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 becoming true what was for so long been feared by a large share of 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 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 limitations in order to avoid the crash of there network that despite the overtime evolution, a part from improved peak speed, lack of capacity. Therefore Mobile TV is still confined to low quality contents, and often highly priced.

2014: The Internet players’ sees a great potential in exploiting the Internet TV users preferences, in terms of TV shows chosen, in order to create dating services for people. The system matches the preferences of people in order to create kind of social networks based on the TV shows watched by the users.

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 in the countryside areas the traditional TV and low quality Internet TV is still in use. The reasons didn’t change over time, the digital divide is the big issue with which all nations are confronted.