Broadcasting

June 14, 2007
Could television bridge India’s ICT divide?

Chris Jaeger

AUSTRALIA -- Government bodies across Asia have long recognised that information and most particularly the high-speed and seamless delivery of such information to the populace is the key to prosperity and improved standards of living. Across the region, we are seeing national information communication technology (ICT) strategies being developed, refined, and deployed. An important information delivery method that could be considered is one that is already right under our nose, and ready to use  - the television.

Infocasting or ‘datacasting’ as it is alternatively known is a unique application of digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcasting. While the entertainment diversity and spectral efficiencies of DTT are well publicised, the broader functionality of DTT and its ability to transform the humble television into a rich ‘information kiosk’ are less known.

The infocasting concept permits government bodies and its agencies to distribute vital information and education programs to the populace, in a mix of text, fixed image and audio/video formats. The spectral efficiency of DTT permits multiple streams of such information which might be health advice, education, national emergency support, parliament coverage and reports, farming and crop advice, and so on to be the broadest extensively and widely via the free-to-air DTT network.

The contrast of the potential (and almost immediate) penetration of DTT infocasting against conventional PC/Internet connectivity is dramatic. In India as of 2005, 52 percent of the population has access to a television and, once a free-to-air DTT network is in place, the addition of a simple DTT set top box (STB) could easily provide access to a multi-stream wealth of infocasting. This is in contrast to just two percent of India’s population who have access to a PC, as recently estimated by the Hindu Times (April 23, 2007).

Infocast interactivity

The advantages of infocasting become even more apparent with the advent of viewer interactivity. Using a purpose-built interactive STB, the infocast viewer is provided with an interactive data mining experience, as he or she explores a pre-selected array of multi-format information.

Such interactivity is a feature of an Australian Government-endorsed infocast trial service in Sydney known as DIGITAL FORTY FOUR. Broadcast Australia is providing the technology and delivery platform for the DIGITAL FORTY FOUR trial, and is also the infocasting trial license holder.

The interactivity in the Sydney trial is founded on the multimedia home platform (MHP) standard, which is a standard for supplementary DTT services based on the digital video broadcast (DVB) platform. Under the MHP standard, a separate stream of data (embedded in the DTT transport stream) is broadcast to the STB, comprising all the ‘channels’ of interactive information, which are repeated over and over every few seconds in what is called the MHP ‘data carousel’.

At the request of the user (via the STB’s remote control), the MHP-compliant STB interrogates the data stream, then caches and decodes the selected data. An important benefit of the MHP interactive standard is that it is far more spectrally efficient than conventional continuous video and audio streams. Using MHP, around 50 times the data can be accommodated in one quarter of the bandwidth, when compared with that of conventional streaming video.

From a user’s perspective, infocast data mining provides a true ‘seek-and-learn’ interactivity experience. Multiple streams of data can be constructed in tree-format, allowing the viewer to search and learn as he or she requires. Importantly, this allows government bodies and their agencies to push out the most vital information as it is required, on a national scale.

Emergency infocasts

While DTT infocasting offers almost limitless information dissemination scenarios, arguably the most important is its potential role in emergency services and post-disaster reconstruction programs.

In the wake of the 2004 end Asian Tsunami, a network of community-run radio stations, known as the Aceh Emergency Radio Network (AERnet) was quickly established across the Territory of Aceh. The network provided vital communications, linking up family members and advising Acehnese of reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts. This popular radio network exists to this day, and now operates under the name of the Aceh Reconstruction Radio Network (ARRnet).

It is worth considering the magnifying effect that DTT infocasting might have had on the reach and power of AERnet, which was a simple analogue radio broadcast system. The multi-stream nature of DTT infocasting could provide the very specific information needed on stream-by-stream basis. These streams would support the tens of specialist and special need groups caught up in such events, the displaced, the rescuers, the medical teams, the food/water distribution groups, the emergency transport teams, and so on.

Fast-track deployment

The greatest benefit of DTT-based infocasting is its potential ubiquity and ease of deployment. Leveraging the advantage of existing television households referred to earlier, a national DTT upgrade permits viewers to be immediately ‘on-line’ and information-enabled with the addition of a simple STB (at around US $75 today, and expected to fall, as is the trend for modern electronics).

DTT free-to-air infocasting has enormous information dissemination benefits, and exhibits some interesting advantages over conventional broadband ICT options. First and foremost, it reaches a high percentage of the population easily and simply. For governments and their agencies, particularly in countries and regions where computer and telephone penetration figures are low, this is an enormous attraction.

Also, the information it provides is contention-free. As DTT broadcast is founded on a simple scale-free, one-to-many architecture, there is no risk of subscriber over-demand, nor any potential future need to upgrade to support a growing ‘subscriber base’. Consider this alongside the contention challenges experienced in fibre optic, satellite, DSL or 3G telephony systems.

From a deployment perspective, DTT infocasting represents a ‘ready to go’ ICT solution in countries where a national digital television broadcast infrastructure is either already in place, or under development. In this regard, DTT infocasting has the potential to play a key role in bridging the ICT divide across India.

(The author is Managing Director International Business Group with leading infrastructure group, Broadcast Australia)