Issue 7.46 | December 6, 2007 Subscribe: go to www.itvt.com

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interview

Meredith Flynn-Ripley, CEO, Integra5
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interview

Meredith Flynn-Ripley, CEO, Integra5

Over the past few months, Integra5, a Burlington, Massachusetts-based company that specializes in technologies for converged services, has formed partnerships with IPTV technology providers, Minerva Networks and SeaChange International, has signed an international reseller agreement with Panama-based Solusoft, and has been awarded a US patent for technology that enables call management via television. On Tuesday, the company--whose customers include Knology and WOW!--announced that it had secured a deployment of its flagship i5 Converged Services Platform with municipally owned telco, Bristol Virginia Utilities, which will initially use the platform to power a TV-based caller ID service. Integra5 CEO, Meredith Flynn-Ripley, recently spoke to [itvt]'s Tracy Swedlow about the company's technology and how it is being used by its tier-one and tier-two customers; about new converged services--including SMS couponing and text-to-TV--that it is enabling in addition to TV-based caller ID; about the technology's suitability for powering social-networking services on TV; about the company's patent strategy; about why she believes both television and communications services are "becoming independent of devices"; and much more.

[itvt]: You're a female CEO in a field where women have traditionally been underrepresented. How did you end up working at the intersection of telecommunications and interactive TV?

Flynn-Ripley: I really don't think about the gender issue at all. I've just always been interested in bringing new technology into the hands of consumers--ever since the early days of the Web and interactive communications. In fact, even before then--back in the days of video text and the early ASCII online services, like CompuServe and Prodigy. My passion has always been to get in on the early stages of technology and to shape how it gets delivered to end-users. That got me into the cable broadband arena, and then more broadly into the telecom arena.

[itvt]: And what is it that interests you so much about the intersection of television and communications?

Flynn-Ripley: There's a fundamental change taking place in technology and consumer behavior, both in the television sphere and the communications sphere: Services are becoming independent of devices.

Television, of course, is an environment that's been ripe for innovation for some time now. But, unfortunately, for many years the technology wasn't available to support the kinds of innovations that people were envisioning. I was very involved in the early days of the US WEST interactive television trials in Omaha--I remember realizing at a certain point that the 3DO set-top box simply wasn't going to be capable of supporting the types of services that people were expecting it to support.

That's when I hopped over to the broadband, high-speed data side of the high-tech industry. But in recent years, it's been really exciting to get back into working on services delivered to the television set--because the technology is now here, and the kind of interactions that people have for a long time been thinking about doing in the television environment are now technically possible at a very economical price point. So interactive TV really can now be delivered to the masses.

And it's not just a matter of the technology now being ready for interactive television. It also has to do with consumers themselves now being ready. When I think back to the kinds of interactive TV that I was involved in, in the 80's and 90's, the big difference today is that consumer behavior has changed. Consumers are now engaged in many different types of interactions and communications that weren't envisioned before, and that lend themselves to being delivered via the television. Texting, for example, didn't exist back then, so obviously no one would have thought of bringing texting to a television environment. And, of course, online services were either non-existent or very primitive and not widely used.

So this space has become very exciting, because the technology's finally here and the consumers are finally here. And interestingly, I no longer hear people repeating that old piece of received wisdom that viewers don't want to interact with their television set and just want to passively watch. There are no more "massive passives"--that's a term I first heard the other day from an IBM fellow at a conference I was attending. I really think that that particular era of television is over. It's a new era, where people are eager to communicate and interact and access content on-demand on whatever device they happen to have available to them. For example, I recently came across a survey that found that there's been a doubling of the consumption of long-form TV programming on the PC. While the most-watched content on the PC, up until recently, was just short news clips, people are now turning to the PC for long-form video. And the television set, obviously, is a very important component of this emergence of media and communications convergence, even though I think to some extent people have forgotten about it because they've been so focused on the PC and the mobile phone. You really need to look holistically at all the devices in the home: The TV in the living room is definitely not going to be going away.

[itvt]: You mentioned earlier that part of what's driving all this convergence is that consumers themselves are now ready for these services. Do you have any specific evidence that consumers are eager for communications services delivered over the TV?

Flynn-Ripley: Absolutely. IDC recently published a survey that they publish every year--it charts people's interest in services that they'd be willing to pay for if the price was right. The number-one service was DVR; the number-two service was TV caller-ID; the number-three was TV-based home security; and the number-four was TV-based active call control--i.e. the ability to forward a call to voicemail or to another number. So clearly people are interested in the television being used to change and enhance communications. And it's not just this IDC survey: we've done a couple of surveys ourselves recently with our customers that definitely show that people want to use their television sets for communications.

As you know, there's a lot of discussion today around video consumption behavior and the fact that video is now being consumed on the TV, the PC and the mobile phone. The same kinds of behavior changes hold true of communications. People are very used to scrolling down a call log and clicking to call: the fact that, until recently, they've been limited to doing that on the mobile phone has simply been due to the limitations of the technology platforms, not to a lack of interest on the part of consumers in seeing those types of services available on the television set or the PC.

One of the surveys we recently fielded generated responses from more than 3,500 subscribers of Comporium, a South Carolina-based service provider. It was a pretty unique survey, because it was polling a group of people who are already getting interactive, convergent communication services on their television sets--some who've gotten those services for more than three years. Uniformly, they love their TV-based caller ID. In fact, TV caller ID subscribers were 30% more likely than non-subscribers to rate Comporium as "great," and a quarter of them said TV caller ID is a "main reason" they stay with that provider. More importantly, they're very interested in getting many more types of interactive communication services on their television sets. Let me pull up some of the numbers for you: 70% of them actually prefer the TV as the primary device for receiving converged services; around 41% would like to receive those services both on the TV and the PC; 80% are interested in click-to-call--which is the ability to scroll through call logs or an address book on your TV or your PC and then to start a phone call via a click of your remote control or your mouse; 77% want TV- and PC-based voicemail--which shows you how many messages you have and provides you with a voicemail log that you can click on to play back those messages; and 81% want personalized convergent communications--so the ability to add pictures and photos to their communications, which is sort of another dimension of ringtones. We conducted a similar survey last year with one of our triple-play customers, Hargray Communications, where converged services subscribers said they would pay a dollar or more each month per incremental converged service.

Of course, it's true that people do have a great desire to be passively entertained--and that's obviously an argument that's been used against interactive TV in the past. But the desire to communicate is even more primal, and naturally people want to be able to do that on the TV.

[itvt]: One kind of service that would seem to be a natural development from the convergence between television and telecommunications is videoconferencing. Do you see video telephony becoming more popular?

Flynn-Ripley: I certainly think that video and telecommunications are going to converge. But this convergence may not manifest itself primarily as video phone calls. Instead, it might be something that develops from what we're starting to see today with MMS--the ability to send photos or video snippets to the TV, and to enable groups of users to view that content. In other words, video-oriented social networking services, where you'd open yourself up to a group of friends, and then share video on a real-time or a delayed basis. So services that would include video overlaid with IM and text-messaging, where people could view user-generated content, or a TV program, or a sporting event, and talk about it at the same time. I definitely think there's going to be more and more blending between programming and communications going forward.

[itvt]: Could you explain what Integra's flagship product, the i5 Converged Services Platform, is?

Flynn-Ripley: It's a network-based software platform that sits up in the service-provider's infrastructure. It taps into the wireline and wireless voice, video, and data networks and grabs all the real-time communications and content protocols from each of those networks--which, while they may all be IP-based, are usually converged only in the sense that the consumer receives a single bill for the various services they deliver. Our platform ties these networks--the signals on these networks--together, and delivers consumer- and small-business-facing mash-up applications. We're geared towards ingesting all of these real-time protocols--be they from a telephony switch, from a voicemail server, from an IM server, from an SMSC, from an RSS news feed, or wherever. Our platform can handle all these various IP and communications protocols--SIP, MGCP, SS7, SMPP, XMPP, etc.--and blends them in a very low latency environment to deliver various applications to multiple devices: not just the TV, but also the PC and mobile phone. So far, using this technology to deliver telephony-related services to the TV has been a sweet spot for us here in the US, with our services like TV-based caller ID and voicemail logs. Text messaging seems to be bigger outside of North America--in South Africa, Asia and Europe, for example.

Fundamentally, then, our platform is all about bringing these real-time signals in, and then using them to deliver applications that have very low latency requirements to multiple devices. It's a very robust platform, and TV-based caller ID is really just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of the types of services that it can deliver, both now and in the future. I think--unfortunately or fortunately--TV-based caller ID has become synonymous with converged services: people haven't really been thinking about the next step. However, once operators have caller ID deployed to their customer base, and they see how powerful it is, and see the results of these surveys--where customers are saying that 70, 80, or 90% of them want these services and there's a willingness to pay--then I think you're going to see exponential growth in new converged services coming out.

TV-based caller ID is basically a toe in the water. It's the first baby step to get the service providers comfortable with the concept of converged services. I think these services are going to explode in '08 and '09, as they become more widely deployed by the tier-one operators.

[itvt]: You're currently working with both cable operators and telcos. What are the differences between working with those two groups of customers?

Flynn-Ripley: The big difference in our customers isn't between the telcos and the cable operators. It's between the tier-ones and the tier- twos. Working with tier-twos--whether they be tier-two cable operators or telcos--is generally a lot faster than working with the tier-ones. They're usually not the largest players in their markets, and therefore tend to be operating in a very competitive environment: so they need to get creative and differentiate themselves very quickly, and working with them is therefore on a fast track. Tier-ones, obviously, which are the incumbents and which already have the marketshare, tend to look at things in terms of a much larger strategy--they tend to think in terms of their larger infrastructural needs and goals, and they build their own infrastructure. So we have to integrate into their existing, complex environments--and that, of course, is fine, because our platform is meant to fit into pretty much any environment. But our work with them generally tends to proceed more slowly.

[itvt]: Which operators are currently using your technologies?

Flynn-Ripley: We have eight announced customers, including top 20 MSO's Knology and WOW!, as well as Comporium, Hargray, Everest, EATEL, Foothills Telephone Cooperative and Bristol Virginia Utilities OptiNet. We're working with several tier-ones and expect to start announcing our already signed contracts with tier-one service providers from the US and international markets throughout 2008.

[itvt]: Can you talk a little bit about the services your customers are using your platform to deliver?

Flynn-Ripley: I'm somewhat limited as to what I can talk about. As you can imagine, in this category of differentiating services, our customers very often don't want to tip their hat to their competitors about what they're doing, in advance of actually doing it.

What I can say is that, in North America, as I just mentioned, most operators are starting with TV-based caller ID. Also, with our brand-new customers, we're seeing a trend toward the simultaneous launch of TV- and PC-based caller ID. And we're also definitely seeing our existing TV-based caller ID customers moving up the converged services chain, to incorporate the PC into the mix, and to add services including customer-care notifications (where operators can send messages to their customers about, for example, service upgrades and maintenance); voicemail notifications (where a banner alert on the TV or PC lets subscribers know they have voicemail messages); voicemail logs (which contain a repository of call information associated with incoming voicemails and allow subscribers to listen to them); and news alerts (where subscribers can receive banner alerts that display headlines of their choice).

We have a lot of customers who are interested in our upcoming applications that are scheduled to launch in '08. Those include our voicemail through the TV application--where you can access and listen to your live voicemail messages on the TV--as well as an application for text messaging to the TV, which we previewed at CES 2007. With this service, text messages sent from mobile phones to landline numbers are diverted to subscribers' televisions, and subscribers can use their remote controls to reply or click to call. We're also going to be launching an application that sends caller-ID notifications to mobile phones: you'll be able to see calls to your landline phone in real time on your cell phone. Another thing we're doing is SMS retail couponing, as an extension of targeted advertising: we're embedding our active call control into targeted local advertising, so that, when you see an overlay over, say, a commercial for a pizza parlor, you can click a button on your remote and get connected to the pizza parlor and instantly order a pizza with a two-dollars-off coupon. It's all about adding real-time components to the targeted advertising space, in order to realize the instant-gratification model of interactive advertising. Basically, applications like this allow you to create a dialog with the consumer, that isn't considered just advertising any more, but rather is seen as useful information that ends in a transaction.

[itvt]: Will viewers be able to bookmark these coupons, so that they can use them at any time, or will they need to use them only during or immediately after the commercial they're associated with?

Flynn-Ripley: We just provide the platform, so it's really up to the service provider to make decisions like that. We're very flexible with what we can do: it could either go into a coupon log or it could disappear, so to speak. But I think it shows that we have a platform that supports not only some very interesting and innovative forms of communication, but communication that results in transactions.

[itvt]: You just mentioned that you have an SMS-to-TV application. Could you talk a little about that?

Flynn-Ripley: In general, our platform gives the service provider a lot of latitude in deciding how to configure the services it enables. It not only delivers these various convergent applications, but it also has both an operator portal and a customer control portal, so that the service provider and the consumer can orchestrate which services go to which devices in the home at which times of day. These control portals are driven by our Edge Device Handler, which accesses our triple-play database of services, devices and phone numbers to send the appropriate application to the appropriate device.

We're putting control over all that into the service providers' hands, and they are then allowing the end-users to actually specify what kinds of services they want going to which devices. Our platform also has the flexibility to allow the service providers to let the end-users decide how their services appear on the device screen--so the end-users can decide that they want a text service to appear, say, as a banner of a certain size, in such and such a color, and either on the top or the bottom of the screen, and so forth. An end-user whose service provider has deployed our platform could assign his phone number to whichever devices in his home he wanted to receive text messages on, and would then be able to view those messages in his preferred layout--he could say, for example, "I want to receive text messages on this particular TV set or PC, and I want them to appear at the top of the screen." If one of his kids were to send him a text message while he was watching TV, it would pop up only on that television set--not on the other television sets in his house--and he could then either read the message, or just let it go to the text log, if he didn't want to read it right away. And if he did want to read it, he could open it up, and then respond by calling her back: he could use our iClick functionality--which is our term for click-to-call: he'd simply click the "A" button on the universal remote, his home phone would ring, and he'd automatically be connected to his kid's cell phone so that he could talk to her. Or he could send a pre-recorded response, or a text message. We actually have a large operator customer that's done some research and has found that younger people have no problem texting on the TV remote, even without any kind of overlay. I personally couldn't do that, but I'm sure my daughter could.

I definitely think that one of the primary uses of our SMS application is going to be for groups--not necessarily a family group, like in the example I just gave you: it could be used by a group of friends to text one another about a TV show that they were all watching at the same time.

[itvt]: And for this service to work, the operator doesn't need to be a quad-play provider, correct--i.e. doesn't need to offer their own wireless mobile service?

Flynn-Ripley: Exactly. A video provider that deploys this application doesn't have to also be a wireless mobile provider: you can receive any SMS message on your set-top box, regardless of which mobile provider's network the message is from. On the other hand, if your video provider is also your wireless provider, then you can have voice calls to your cell phone displaying on your TV and your PC. But the beauty of the SMS product is that you don't need to be a quad-play provider: you're simply bridging SMS services into your video environment.

[itvt]: Which set-top boxes are you currently enabled on?

Flynn-Ripley: We're delivering services on all the Scientific-Atlanta set-top boxes and on all the Motorola boxes, starting with the DCT-2000. We're also on Pace boxes, and we're interoperable with several IPTV middleware platforms. We actually have some customers who have both cable and IPTV set-top boxes deployed, and the same i5 platform is delivering services simultaneously to both kinds.

[itvt]: Which middleware platforms are you enabled on?

We're enabled on Minerva, Nokia Siemens and Myrio, and we've recently joined the Microsoft Mediaroom Developer program.

[itvt]: How much of your technology is in the network and how much is in the device?

Flynn-Ripley: Well, typically around 98% of our software platform sits in the network, and then we have very thin software clients sitting on the devices. In some cases, we don't even need to have software clients on the devices--that's the case with both OCAP and E-BIF, for example. And, on the PC, we can deliver into an IM client, or we can download our own PC client.

Because we have this thin-client approach, it's very easy for us to integrate into the various middleware and set-top box platforms that are out there--it's just a very small piece of code, that stays constant, regardless of the different applications that it needs to support.

[itvt]: You mentioned earlier how your SMS application might be used to enable social interaction around television programming. Do you have any plans to work directly with broadcasters on these kinds of applications?

Flynn-Ripley: Fundamentally, we sell services to companies that have telecom infrastructure. So, while our platform certainly enables content-oriented applications that programmers can use, our business focus at this point is on the service provider, not the programmer. I think that might evolve over time, and I can definitely see us helping broker relationships between our customers and programmers and broadcasters that might want to take advantage of the services we enable. But remember that the relationships between the programmers and the service providers--at least on the cable side--have been established for many, many years. So getting in the middle of those relationships could put us in an awkward position. Now, on the telco side, these relationships are just emerging, and we could perhaps play a role there--we see ourselves as enablers, and we could add new dimensions to those relationships. But today our focus is pretty much exclusively on the service providers.

[itvt]: Presumably your platform would lend itself to partnerships with Web-based social-networking services?

Flynn-Ripley: Yes. There's definitely a lot of discussion right now about how to bring social media into the television environment, and certainly communication is fundamental to creating these social-networking environments: when you can add communication services like texting and IM to a video environment, you're creating a significant adjunct to what you have in environments like Facebook and MySpace. So we're certainly open to exploring the social-networking space, but right now we're focused on the basics of getting our platform deployed and up and running, and on targeting the network operators. The market--at least in North America--has dictated that TV- and PC-based caller ID is the first application that our platform is being used to enable. But the beauty of having a platform-based approach is that we can layer on additional applications easily.

[itvt]: You also offer an application called i-Inform, that allows operators to send end-users customer-care notifications and personalized content alerts. Are any of your operator customers using that application?

Flynn-Ripley: We plan to make some announcements--if not before the end of the year, then very early in Q1--with some of our TV caller ID customers that are also offering those services. Our internal research has shown that customer-care applications are likely to be very well-received by consumers: when we surveyed people, we positioned the application as enabling them to get information about programming line-ups and about important technology upgrades. We found that people are expecting the service providers to use it only for very important and very targeted information. People are open to having an ongoing dialog with their service providers, provided it's about things that are important to them: they're open to having a pop-up appear on their TV or PC screen, versus just getting an email, particularly when it's programming-related. What better way to inform people that, say, the Weather Channel has moved from channel 32 to channel 42 than to pop this information up on the TV screen and provide viewers with a little button that moves you from the previous channel location to the new channel location?

[itvt]: Now Integra5 is building up its patent portfolio, correct? What's the strategy behind that?

Flynn-Ripley: Yes, we do have a growing patent portfolio, covering call-screening and call-management, and we were recently granted our first US patent. Our patent strategy is simply about protecting our intellectual property. It's about validating the fact that we've been in this space for quite a long time--the patent that was just granted to us was filed back in 2001. The company's been focused on these types of cross-platform communications services for a long time, and now people are starting to wake up to the fact that there's a triple-play service provider market out there--rapidly turning into a quad-play service provider market--and that it's getting highly competitive. The operators are moving beyond the bundle as a pricing mechanism and are starting to say, "I've got to deliver value-added services to my customers, in order to get them to stay with me." In this emerging war, for want of a better word, our fundamental belief is that whoever delivers the best user experience across multiple devices is going to win. And it's not just a war between cable and the telcos: it's a war that includes big online brands, like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Everyone wants to control the communications experience across devices: cable and the telcos just happen to have an edge right now, because they already have a relationship with many of the devices in question.

Our patents, which describe how we implement via a network approach, aren't being assembled for the purposes of some kind of litigation strategy down the road, but simply in order to protect our IP in a space that's becoming very crowded.

[itvt]: Do you have any plans to target international markets?

Flynn-Ripley: Yes. We're expanding into Latin America--where we recently signed a reseller deal with Solusoft and will announce another deal shortly--and Canada, and we expect to be able to announce new customers in both of those regions shortly. We see those as very big markets, and as increasingly competitive environments.

[itvt]: Are you, by any chance, working on launching a developer program?

Flynn-Ripley: No, but we are talking about it actively. We'd really love to be able to put a set of tools in the hands of people like your readers and see what they come up with. So that's absolutely on our roadmap. Right now, though, we're so consumed with meeting customer needs that it's been put on the back-burner, unfortunately. There's definitely a lot of room for new applications in the world of converged services--it's much more than just caller ID on the TV. I think people are starting to wake up to that, and I think they're really going to wake up to it in 2008.

URL: Integra5




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New Talk Radio Show from [itvt]

This issue sees the beta-launch of a new [itvt] editorial product: a talk radio show, entitled "The TV of Tomorrow Show with Tracy Swedlow," that will feature interviews with newsmakers and other high-profile players in the interactive multiplatform television space.

The shows will be broadcast live (for the times and dates of upcoming live broadcasts, see below, or check our schedule page at http://www.itvt.com/showschedule.html), and will also be available as recordings. To listen to live or recorded shows (currently there is only one show in the archive), go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/itvt-tvoftomorrow. We will also shortly be making the shows available via iTunes; and we will, of course, regularly publish links to recently recorded shows in the [itvt] newsletter.

[itvt] readers will be able to participate in the shows in a number of ways:

  • By calling the show live at 1-646-595-4343.
  • By submitting questions and comments via a chat application that pops up on the "TV of Tomorrow Show" homepage during live broadcasts.
  • By appearing on the show as a guest or co-host (if you or your company are interested in being featured on the show, please email your pitch to Tracy Swedlow at swedlow@itvt.com).
  • By sponsoring the show (if your company is interested in sponsoring the show, please email Richard Washbourne at rwashbourne@itvt.com).

SHOW SCHEDULE
Upcoming Shows:

Show #2
Date: Thursday, December 6, 2007
Time: 10:00AM Pacific/1:00PM Eastern
Length: approximately one hour
Call-In Number: 1-646-595-4343

Guests: Joel McAfee and Amy Townsend, BoomerangiTV

Joel "Jodie" McAfee was previously SVP of corporate development and marketing at The Media Group (TMG), a high-profile interactive TV advertising company/broadcaster that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year. McAfee will discuss the events that led to that company's demise, and he and his colleague, Amy Townsend, will also tell us about their new company, BoomerangiTV.



Show #3
Date: Monday, December 10, 2007
Time: 10:00AM Pacific/1:00PM Eastern
Length: approximately one hour
Call-In Number: 1-646-595-4343

Guest: Brian Seth Hurst, CEO, The Opportunity Management Company

Brian Seth Hurst, a well-known figure in interactive TV circles, was recently elected as vice chairman of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the organization behind the primetime Emmys. His election marks the first time ever that a new media specialist has served in such a senior role at the Academy. Hurst will discuss, among other things, what his election says about the evolution of the Academy and of the television establishment in general.

Previously Recorded
Show #1
Recorded: Sunday, December 2, 2007
Length: 50:19

Guests: Louis Slothouber and Dan Levinson, BIAP

BIAP's Louis Slothouber (chief scientist) and Dan Levinson (EVP of marketing) discuss their company's technologies, the challenges involved in deploying the company's interactive TV applications (which include eBay on TV, Yellow Pages on TV, and Fantasy Football and Baseball Trackers), the company's patent portfolio, the current state of the cable industry, ITV standards, artificial intelligence, emerging market opportunities, and more.



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ABOUT [itvt]

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[itvt] is an ITV/broadband advisory and media company which identifies new trends, business opportunities, and relationships within the interactive television broadband space. [itvt] offers professional services, products, and programs to clients. These include our free email newsletter, focused analysis and advice sessions, in-depth research reports, a B2B portal Web site, networking and workshop events, dynamic online discussion groups, and interactive database resources.

Today, more than ever before, [itvt] believes it is imperative to develop dynamic, flexible, and robust interactiveTV platforms that allow us to learn from and talk about our world and the cultures in it in a free, constructive, and proactive manner.

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