Cloud TV: Technologie, business, content, and policy

Few questions are fraught with more long-term implications than the way we shape our communications system. It is therefore important to understand that we are on the verge of one of humanity’s greatest leaps in media and communications, and consequently also of one of its major disruptions of social, cultural, political, and economic arrangements. We are entering the 3rd stage of TV, that of “Cloud TV”, where content is delivered over the internet and wireless networks. In such a TV system technology innovation will accelerate and diversify enormously. For reasons of interoperation, financial settlements, etc., this diversity will be held together by intermediaries that are today called cloud providers, and through whom much of media content will flow. Based on their fundamental economic characteristics, the cloud operators might form a concentrated market structure. This is not just a matter of new pipes and platforms but of totally different arrangements. New styles and genres of content will emerge. Media companies and industries will change. And the question faced by governments around the world is what rules to apply to this new Cloud-TV, and what the new problems and approaches might be.