Zeugma Systems today announced the first in a series of applications for operators that want to provide differentiated services based on varying levels of Internet bandwidth, at a time when many providers are considering changes in their access offerings.
The upstart vendor says the first application, SmartVideo, lets operators turn their Internet bandwidth into “premium” video services with an incremental fee for guaranteed, always-on capacity.
Zeugma claims it can turn streaming video, specifically, into such a “service” that carries an opt-in option.
What remains to be seen is whether consumers, which already pay a set fee for a set theoretical maximum of Internet bandwidth, will pay extra for anything. Reaction to Comcast Corp.'s (CMCSA) monthly 250 gigabyte monthly usage cap has been primarily negative, though that ceiling appears quite high to others.
AT&T Inc. (T) has confirmed it has started a bandwidth metering trial in Reno, Nev., that just a few months after Time Warner Cable started one for new customers in one market.
Overall, the throttling of P2P traffic by Comcast, and claims by carriers that they’re using capacity management technologies to avoid congestion and weed out power users that are eating up too much bandwidth, have been questioned. Many wonder if the real focus isn’t on further monetizing Internet bandwidth.
While this was transpiring, Zeugma developed an operating system/development environment of sorts and technology that lets carriers look in to individual user “sessions,” as the keystone to enabling operators to create pay-extra premium services.
Carriers that wish to proceed need Zeugma’s Service Delivery Router, which was designed to speed the introduction of new offerings, according to the vendor. Combining the router with the first application, which is available now, gets the ball rolling.
Zeugma is counting on demand for Web Internet from a wide variety of sites that offer streaming movies, TV shows and more to justify the launch of the premium service. But the service is still bandwidth.
Operators need new and bigger revenue streams, especially with a seriously challenged economy, so the idea of monetizing existing capacity assets should prove alluring enough, according to Zeugma.
For interested parties, the Zeugma offering also includes the ecosystem needed to provision, track, support opt-in, and bill for (settlement) premium video services. The vendor adds that it provides quality-of-experience monitoring to ensure prospective customers get the bandwidth they pay extra for.
