Latvia's IZZI promises 100 Mbps internet in 2009

IZZI, the Latvian cable television, internet and voice services provider, will be able to offer 100 Mbps internet speeds to its cable customers during 2009, according to Helmut Kohl, a representative of Contaq Latvian Cable, the company's new owner (a consortium of four investment funds).
Kohl said the planned upgrade of IZZI's cable network means it will decisively beat Lattelecom's DSL offering, which presently tops at 10 Mbps. Short of a major and expensive replacement of the entire copper-based infrastructure, coaxial cable linked to IZZI's fiber optic network in certain urban areas will be the fastest internet service in Latvia, he said. Such speeds can only be exceeded by upgrading to fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), which is being implemented on a very small scale in Latvia by Latvenergo and Lattelecom.
Kohl also said that IZZI was planning to participate in a forthcoming tender to provide digital terrestrial TV broadcast services to reach some 400 000 viewers in areas outside Latvia's larger cities where broadcast TV is the only service presently available.
Kohl said that if IZZI were awarded the deal, it had the money, know-how and other resources to start digital broadcasting within one year of the award. The digital TV tender is expected in November. The Contaq executive said that around 80 % of the necessary hardware and software resources needed for digital terrestrial broadcasting already existed to serve IZZI's digital cable TV network.
Kohl also said that IZZI hoped to expand its high-definition offerings on digital cable (currently limited to VOOM, an English language HD channel and an HD channel in Russian) next year and offer HD terrestrial broadcasts if given the chance. He cautioned, however, that there were no local HD offerings and those available in Europe in major languages were in English or German.
Commenting on possible competition between cable and IPTV, Kohl noted that some of the investors in the consortium behind the recent buy-out of IZZI (from Latvian stakeholders) were invested in IPTV.
Kohl sees IPTV as an outlet for specialized content and narrow audiences, citing a golf channel as an example, while more mainstream programming would be supplied on cable. The Contaq spokesman said he was not concerned that Lattelecom was offering timeshifted programming, since this was mainly locally produced, whereas timeshifting content such as feature films using the operator's platform was "a gray legal area" that could not be compared to recording shows on hard disk or tape while absent from home.

Bite doubles HSDPA speed in Latvia

Bite Latvija, the Latvian unit of the mobile services operator Bite Group, will soon boost the speed of its HSDPA mobile broadband service to 7.2 Mbps from the current 3.6 Mbps (both maximum speeds under optimal conditions). Next year, Bite will most likely jump the speed of its HSDPA service to 14.4 Mbps. At these speeds, the service will be a competitor to Lattelecom's DSL services, which have a maximum speed of 10 Mbps (in the HomeDSL plus IPTV package, with TV eating up some of the bandwidth when in use). Lattelecom has installed ADSL2+ DSLAMs that can deliver 24 Mbps under ideal conditions, but my sources say this is being saved for when Lattelecom launches some kind of HD TV service (probably video on demand).
My talk with Fred Hrenchuk, the recently appointed CEO of Bite Latvija is here:

Click To Play

Lattelecom launches IPTV

Lattelecom held a press conference on April 17 to announce its IPTV service. I got Gints Kiršteins, head of the Content Business Division of Lattelecom to talk about the new service.

Lattelecom looks to HD movies on demand

Lattelecom has yet to commercially launch the IPTV service about which I wrote a recent rant, but it is already looking beyond the first package of over-the-DSL link services to IP telephony, high-definition video on demand and surfing the internet on high-definition screens.
The real "killer app", although to a rather limited audience in Latvia at present, is the equivalent of an HD DVD player (for special programming and rental films). The company is already testing a second-generation decoder that can be connected to an HD capable TV.
By offering a "virtual" HD DVD player, Lattelecom offers a service where users do not have to choose sides in the ongoing HD DVD format wars. Regardless of whether the film is on HD DVD or Blu Ray, IPTV subscribers will be able to watch it.
The present new generation DSL modems to be installed with IPTV subscriptions have a port for IP phones. This means that Lattelecom may follow in the footsteps of Elion, the Estonian fixed-line operator, which has an IP telephony service with a globally portable number (in reality, an IP address for the phone) making it possible to call a user of the Elion service for local rates wherever in the world the phone is connected to the internet. A similar service by Lattelecom would make free or nearly free global voice possible.
The price of HD capable flat screens is falling in Latvia (as elsewhere), so as these are sold in increasing numbers, they can be used to surf the internet (both the current and the second-generation decoders can have keyboards attached). Presently, ordinary TV screen definition is considered inadequate for displaying many internet pages.

IPTV -- so far, 90 % f**ked

When you beta test something, obviously there us a curve of testers ranging from those whose experience is excellent to those whose experience is a catastrophe. At this stage of the game, perhaps those who uncover a clusterfuck may well be of more value than those, for whom all goes as expected. In my case I believe whatever is wrong, in the sense of bizarrely fucked up is individual to my connection.

I have Lattelecom's test mode IPTV hooked up on their new DSL modem connected to a Ruckus wireless IPTV setup (too much trouble dragging Ethernet cables through my kitchen and across the hall, so Lattelecom lent me their test equipment). After trial and error and some help from Lattelecom, I got the Ruckus connection to work and the IPTV menus actually showed up on my screen. But then

so here is the GOOD FUCKING NEWS...

the only thing that worked was video on demand. I actually started watching one of the test films and it looked great, 16:9 image, just like playing a DVD and I could wind it back and forth, stop it just like a DVD or video. If this works and looks this good for everyone, it will be a killer app for Lattelecom's IPTV. You can forget buying even a cheapo LVL 25 DVD player made by yaks on some Chinese steppe. Excellent -- at least the one time I tried it and didn't watch the whole movie because it was late -- I only disconnect the normal WiFi and do these experiments when everyone else has gone to bed and no one wants to watch "regular" TV.

AND THE F**KED UP PART...

Check this video.



I shot this on my Nokia N-80, ghastly quality. The problem is most likely with my particular DSL connection. The multicast simply doesn't work. Kind Kristine of Lattelecom said to wait and the picture might pop up. It hasn't over the past 30 minutes, so it never will.

Nice try. Maybe it will get fixed, maybe not...
I certainly hope it works for most customers when this is commercially launched at the end of the month or whenever.
What upsets me most is that my DSL internet works only via a direct ethernet to my desktop computer. I plug the same m-f**king cable into a DLink DI-524 and even though I get onto thw WiFi network, I got no internet connection. The IP-non-TV runs nicely over the Ruckus gadgets. This is as f**ked up as it gets...

IZZI gets the jump on HDTV

IZZI, the multi-services provider (internet, cable TV, wireless internet and mobile) has indicated it will make an announcement about High Definition TV (HDTV) on March 1. This means that the (not by so much) underdog has gotten the jump on market leader Baltcom TV and Lattelecom, which has yet to launch its IPTV for ordinary TV receivers service.
Two questions come to mind. First, what technology will be used to deliver the HDTV signal and in what parts of the IZZI network. Second, what HDTV channels will be available? I may be wrong here, but there aren't too many HDTV channels in Europe. There is one that is more or less a demo channel showing fluffy animals (count the hairs on their fur) and tropical fish (check out the facets of their scales).
To deliver HDTV apparently requires quite a few megabits, possibly the maximum that IZZI can deliver over cable. Here, Baltcom with its optical network in parts of Riga is perhaps better positioned. We shall see what IZZI has to say on March 1 and wait for Baltcom's countermove. Maybe that will be to do nothing until there is substantially more than fuzzybears and fish to show. That would be a step away from quantity (100 + digital channels) in favor of packaged quality (an HDTV offering with a few good channels, not the Poodle Channel and 99 others).
Anyway, IPTV (HD or otherwise) is hot, witness the bidding war for Tandberg Television between Ericsson and Arris Group of the US.

Various good things coming in April?

It looks like April will be the launch date for Lattelecom's IPTV service for viewers with ordinary TV sets (Lattelecom's TV offerings, both free and paid, can be currently beviewed on PCs) with decoders. It appears some 40 channels will be offered. April will also likely see an upgrade of more of the HomeDSL network to 10 Mbps (currently, the maximum speed of the Mājas komplekts/Home package is 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps broadband is available only in some areas of Riga). Lattelecom's IPTV service will be like digital cable TV, with soundtrack language choice and some kind of video-on-demand, including the option to record and view programs later using centralized servers.
The Lattelecom website in both Latvian and English contains a cryptic reference to "the autumn", which apparently was last autumn when the launch of IPTV was delayed. One reason: the HomeDSL offering with free national calling created such a rush of orders that there would have been no technical capacity for delivering and installing IPTV decoders.

Look out Latvian cable operators

Had dinner with a couple of mid-level honchos here in Cannes. The upshot of it is that cable operators in Latvia have to start preparing to switch platforms, at least for their premium customers, who will want, say, Baltkom TV and IZZI to deliver HD TV when it is available. Also, as the price of flat-screen, HD ready TVs drops (and credit to buy these, say LVL 750, toys is easy to get). there will be a ready market for anyone who can deliver, meaning -- Lattelekom (if they push ADSL2+ to the max or run fiber to the curb and gigabit Ethernet), Latvenergo (for their fiber to the home customers) and the satellite people (VIASAT, LVL 5 HD Digital Dishes in late 2007, anyone). IPTV is the only alternative, providing you can deliver reliable last-mile bandwidth, which you may not be able to do with several HD channels over MMDS or coaxial cable. So time to think of the near future. Did I say Cisco? Worth considering...
Not writing in my usual typestyle because Firefox access to Blogger is AFU (all f**ked up).

The mailman might bring IPTV in Latvia

It doesn't sound credible with the Latvian Post Office in the middle of a huge clusterfuck regarding delivery of newspapers and periodicals , but Lattelecom's upcoming IPTV on regular television sets service may be delivered as a do-it-yourself kit. The kit will include a Motorola decoder and, probably, a new DSL modem with extra Ethernet ports for attaching the decoder plus software or some gadget to split the signal between ordinary broadband and the IPTV bitstream.
This should be on the market by the end of Q1 2007 and one option will be to have it delivered by mail, once the customer has signed a contract to either lease or buy the decoder and the service. Several thousand Lattelecom DSL connections were sold as do-it-yourself kits at supermarkets, and this was apparently a success. However, the decoder will, initially, be a high price-tag item that one is unlikely to put in a shopping cart (the DSL kit was around LVL 25) so it may be delivered by a mail babushka or more likely, a courier service like DHL.

The Venice Project - not news in Riga :)

Bloggers have been peeking at The Venice Project and, among other things, noting that it offers some kind of social networking tool (chat or whatever) while watch the TV streams. This is nothing new and has been offered for some time now by Lattelecom's IPTV service available (to customers) through the Apollo internet service. Users can chat in a rolling window as they watch shows. Whether this is a good or necessary thing, you can (if you read Latvian) judge for yourself. Mostly, it seems to be cryptic chatter between teenie-boppers (the few times I have looked at it, Lattelecom IP TV doesn't work on Macs :( :( ) .
I wish both original Skypies success. but to add chat to video streams is nothing new. The screenshots, however, don't look bad :).