Video is the telecom star

Video permeates our existence, and network expansion and bandwidth enhancement are efforts to develop new ways to deliver video.

“I understand that people are actually beginning to make movies for the Internet.”
— Desh Deshpande, chairman and co-founder, Sycamore Networks

If Desh Deshpande were a pop culture junkie he would have been more direct. He would have said something like this: “Video is the application that is fueling the proliferation of broadband networks because video appeals to everyone and applies to everything.” Or maybe he would have used the truncated but still universally understood version: “Everyone watches TV.”

But Deshpande, as an entrepreneur and engineer, probably doesn't have the kind of time required to be an enthusiast of various forms of video content himself. It's difficult to picture him vegging on the couch engrossed in the plot of a sitcom or a reality show. He's engrossed instead in technology plots that eventually will allow sitcoms and reality shows to be streamed on the Internet so we can watch them all the time.

So he hinted at the point, but blanketed it in vagueness and a suggestion of secondhand awareness: He “understands” that video content is being created specifically for the Internet, but he has had no direct knowledge of it. He even used an example of video content created specifically for the Web — a film called “Guinevere” — but was quick to add, “I haven't seen this one.” No one seemed all that surprised.

All of this took place during Deshpande's keynote address at Networld+Interop last week. His speech wasn't called “Video is the Killer App” but rather “Creating the Building Blocks for a Data-Optimized Infrastructure,” which sounds a little less exciting and doesn't sound like it would be about video at all.

During his presentation, Deshpande said all the things you would expect the co-founder of a company that makes intelligent optical networks to say: that faster and simpler bandwidth provisioning is crucial, that technology depreciation cycles need to get shorter, that faster and cheaper and more available optical bandwidth will foster more experimentation among service providers. He explained Sycamore's vision of how intelligent optical networks will allow customers to buy their bandwidth when they need it, where they need it and as they need it.

It was only toward the end of his presentation that Deshpande mentioned the Internet movie and produced a list of applications for which customers are or will be using their bandwidth. Just about every item on the list had something to do with video: Interactive TV. Videoconferencing. Telemedicine. Video streaming. Remote learning. Even something called “telepresence,” which I'm not familiar with but I would guess has something to do with vegging out on the couch watching sitcoms and reality shows.

Right about then it became clear: Video permeates our existence, and network expansion and bandwidth enhancement are efforts to develop new ways to deliver video.

Think about it: We love TV, just like Deshpande didn't say. We even love MTV, despite some people's early objections to turning music into a visual event. We would prefer to see people while we talk to them on the phone, as long as we made ourselves presentable before we answered. While we still like going to movie theaters because of the way they make the experience surround us, we also like to watch them from the couch — and the idea of being able to download them from the Web and watch them on a monitor or even a portable device is very appealing.

So Deshpande was right in everything he said and everything he didn't say. Intelligent optical networks will create faster and simpler bandwidth provisioning, which will create faster and more available bandwidth, which will allow for more experimentation with different types of content. That, and everyone watches TV.

Contact Jason Meyers at jmeyers@intertec.com