Cisco will show potential of IoT to create a joined up life experience

Cisco will emphasise its all-round IP networking capabilities by demonstrating the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) to create a joined up life experience both inside and outside the home. In the IBC Future Zone Cisco will demonstrate this vision of Connected Life with ‘a day in the life’ scenario, featuring a visually immersive experience that will show how service providers can capitalise on IoT to offer easy-to-use and personalized experiences that will create additional revenues by combining current islands of automation or entertainment. 

The company will expand on this vision in a conference session, ‘The Internet of Everything and Smart Living’, where Chief Technology Officer of Cisco’s Service Provider Video Technology Group, Nick Thexton, and CTO of Connected Devices, Ken Morse, will argue that many vendors and operators are missing two key ingredients when discussing IoT: people and the network. The latter is required to expand the IoT world of connected objects to embrace the applications and services that will exploit the full potential in terms of automation and integration, while the people define the software and services that will be developed. Cisco will highlight the increased challenges this brings, such as the need for more network bandwidth, new security considerations and demand for more agile and cohesive infrastructure.

On the video front, Morse will be advancing his view that the HEVC codec ratified in early 2013 will gain traction far more quickly than its predecessor, H.264. Also known as H.265, HEVC dovetails with the roadmaps of all key industry parties, including TV and device makers, broadcasters, Pay TV operators and content producers. Morse argues that HEVC is “great for the bandwidth-constrained providers such as mobile and DSL-based carriers, which gain instantly in reach and capacity.We estimate that DSL-based providers will be able to address another 30% or so of the homes in the markets they serve.” By the same token, a carrier offering three switched HD channels now will be able to provide six with HEVC.