Cable TV Entering into IP World
Hyeongseok Kim
Team Lead/Android Device Team., Altimedia Corp.
The Korean cable broadcasting market reached a major inflection point with the emergence of IPTV in 2008. IPTV has encroached on the cable broadcasting market with its abundant financial power as a telecommunication service provider, combined packages with mobile, and technical advantages of IP as a weapon. Compared to cable broadcasting, which could not exceed regional limitations, IPTV's growth was drastic due to its nationwide coverage. The number of subscribers of the big 3 telecommunication operators surpassed all cable TV subscribers in just 10 years.
Broadcasting service through RF was not only inconvenient to drag cables into the house, but also had no advantages in various aspects such as the cost of network construction, its operation/maintenance and cost of device as well. In addition, as the broadcasting technology gradually accelerated its transition to Android, Web, and OTT, cable service was behind compared to IPTV, which could directly access to servers. Also, the investment efficiency in cable infrastructure began to gradually decrease too. From this background, diverse efforts to adopt IP technology into the cable have been tried.
As media services began to be provided to mobile devices in the early 2010s, the cable broadcasting industry planned in-house multi-screen services. The equipment so-called media gateway was introduced to convert RF signal into IP, so that the media feed can be sent to set-top box and multiple connected devices in the house. The media gateway processed descrambling as well as DSG(DOCSIS Set-top Gateway), which was the uplink standard of Korean cable broadcasting. Of course, this type of gateway model was globally adopted by many cable operators at the time.
The CCS(Cable Convergence Service), introduced in 2016, is a case of applying IP technology on a larger scale by utilizing the technical approaches of media gateway to a multi-dwelling environment. For example, apartment buildings equip a IP conversion system which provide channel, VOD, and Internet service to subscribers all through IP. In terms of the set-top box, the external appearance is no different than IP STB as all service is fed through IP. This differentiates the collective broadcasting service from two-way service support through DSG.
Henceforth, the technology called RF Overlay which implements LAN without cable modem and utilizing both IP Multicast and IP uplink instead of DSG Tunnel were also tried. These efforts have been attempted within the scope of not to deviate from the technical standards and regulatory policies cable broadcasting in Korea. It was clearly far from the full-scale adoption of IP technology.
However, it has been pointed out that Korea's broadcasting technology standards and policies are stuck in the frame of traditional broadcasting and cannot actively cope with rapid technological development and market changes. Accordingly, in July 2021, the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) granted IPTV service permission to cable broadcasting operators in stages through the revision of the enforcement ordinance. It declared "technology neutrality" by opening the IP-based transmission method, which was more to the exclusive property of telecommunication businesses, to cable broadcasting operators. It was decided to only apply to small-sized enterprises as the first step, and in fact, a small number of independent SOs benefited.
KCTV Jeju is one of the six SOs approved for IPTV services and is working on a project with Altimedia to provide IPTV services in FTTH networks. For integrated management with existing services, OOB-SI(Out-of-band System Information) signals for cable services are designed to be transmitted and received on IP. The set-top box middleware has also got lid of cable tuner and implanting its features into the media player which performs innate compatibility in Android environment.
Providing IPTV services in the cable environment is one of the main concerns of cable broadcasting operators not only in Korea but also around the world. For cable broadcasters, an optimized solution should be provided in consideration of the existing service platform and terminal environment, rather than simply transmitting broadcast signals through IP. To meet the purpose, a deep understanding and know-how of existing broadcasting services as well as general technology of the IP environment are equally essential.
