Consumer communications and the next generation broadcast networks

Abstract

Over 20 years ago the challenge for the communications community was the convergence between networking, telecommunication, and broadcasting. This challenge has been fairly well met, and we now note that around the world telco companies are being re-born as new hybrid telco-broadcast entities, and the reverse is true for many broadcasting corporations that provide Internet services in addition to their core business. Current and new infrastructure networks now face a number of major challenges that include increasing efficiency in the delivery of services from the installed or legacy systems, and an evolution path to address more topical concerns such as energy conservation and the increased heterogeneity in media, applications, and delivery systems. Central to all of these are the ever changing consumer communication habits and demands. These particular themes are addressed in this issue.