Latin America, Africa, Middle East show IPTV potential; Carriers tune into 100GE, packet optical

Latin America, Africa, Mid-East show IPTV potential: If you want to know where there are new IPTV growth opportunities, look no further than Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. While these markets today are relatively small, a Pyramid Research report said that they will be the fastest growing, with IPTV revenue in Latin America growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 56.1 percent. Africa and Middle East IPTV revenue will grow at a CAGR of 22.1 percent between the years 2013 to 2018. Leslie Arathoon, research director at Pyramid, said that the growth "is due to a projected rapid uptake of broadband services, including IPTV, in a region that previously had a low penetration rate." Release

Carriers tune into 100GE, packet optical: Service providers are seeing potential in using P-OTS (packet-optical transport systems) to transport packet traffic versus using routers, notes Infonetics in its 2013 Routing, IP Edge, and Packet-Optical Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey. Out of the service providers they surveyed, 75 percent said they are using P-OTS today or are planning to by 2016. In addition to P-OTS, service providers are looking at deploying 100 Gigabit Ethernet. However, Michael Howard, Infonetics co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks, notes that providers are deploying 100GE for different reasons.

Infonetics P-OTS operators"Some operators are already paying 15 times the price of 10GE for 100GE because they need it now, and we found that some operators are willing to pay more for 100GE for specific parts of their networks; for example, over a third are willing to pay a premium for routes with low fiber availability," Howard said. "Still, most carriers will wait until 100GE pricing comes down to 10 times 10GE or lower, so it behooves manufacturers to continue developments that lower the price of 100GE." Release

Adults get savvy with social networking: Social networking is not just for teens. According to a Pew Research study, about 73 percent of adults that are online are accessing a social networking site. Facebook, not surprisingly, continues to be the dominant platform. Pew said that "71% of online adults are now Facebook users, a slight increase from the 67% of online adults who used Facebook as of late 2012." One of the other factors with Facebook is that 63 percent of its users visit the site at least once a day, with 40 percent accessing it multiple times through a day. Although Facebook is the dominant platform, 42 percent of those surveyed said they are using multiple social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter. Similar to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter subscribers also access these sites "frequently." Article