Verizon this summer will launch its Digital Media Services offering, an IP utility service that will give content creators and distributors a more economical way to distribute their digital media.
Verizon
officials are about to roll out a new digital media utility service that will
leverage the company's ongoing investments in its worldwide IP network to
reduce the costs and burden for entertainment companies that deliver online
content to customers through their televisions, smartphones and other mobile
devices.
Unveiled April
11 at the 2011 NAB Show in Las Vegas, the Verizon Digital Media Services has
been in development for more than three years, and currently is in beta
testing, according to David Rips, president of Verizon Digital Media Services.
It should roll out for commercial release in July.
The end-to-end
digital media network is designed to give media companies-from advertisers to
media groups to entertainment businesses-a more cost-effective and efficient
way of managing and distributing their content to a customer base that has a
rapidly growing number of devices with which to receive the content, from TVs
to smartphones to tablets, Rips said.
"This is ... a
new type of business for Verizon," he said in an interview with eWEEK. "It's
essentially a value-added service."
Verizon is
aiming the service at content creators-from videos to games to music
publishers-and content distributors, all of whom are under pressure from
customers, who are looking to get the content they want on the device that they
want. The problem is that traditional avenues for distributing media-such as
television networks-were not made to meet the demands of the current
environment, Rips said. For example, television networks are built for a
one-to-many scenario-broadcasting-rather than the current one-to-one demands,
which he called "unicasting."
With unicasting,
the number of simultaneous media streams, formats and data transfers skyrocket,
Rips said. Broadcasters aren't built for it, and neither is the Internet.
Traditional media distributors don't have the money, resources or networks to
meet customer demands for customized, on-demand content. They're spending too
much on delivering media content, and would need to spend millions more to keep
up with the demand, he said.
Verizon's new
service is designed to take that task off their hands. The utility service will
automate such processes as formatting, managing and delivering digital media to
any device or platform, and will be able to do it on a large scale, Rips said.
Verizon already has much of the infrastructure to do this, he said.
"We're
leveraging the giant network Verizon already has," Rips said, adding that more
than 200 engineers have worked on the project creating the company's Digital
Media Services. "We can achieve the economy of scale ... that will create an
economically viable model."
Mike
Weintraub, director of technology for Verizon Digital Media Services, said
Verizon already has much of what such a distribution network needs, including
large data centers and a sophisticated infrastructure.
"It's big,
it's reliable and it's secure," Weintraub said.
Turner
Broadcasting, Hearst Magazines and The Associated Press are among the first
digital media content companies to use Verizon Digital Media Services'
capabilities, according to Verizon.
The Verizon
Digital Media Services will address the increasing consumer demands for a
faster, more customized and more on-demand digital media experience, Rips said.
And consumers want that enhanced experience, even if it means spending more, he
said.
"People are
willing to pay a lot of money to get a high level of [digital] media," he said,
adding that the rub is that it costs money to meet that demand. "We know what
the customer wants, but what they want is very complex [and] very costly."
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