conception

Since the birth of the Internet in 1969, scientists and researchers have found unlimited uses for this far reaching communications technology. Today the Internet is utilized by professionals and consumers as a means of instantaneous communications throughout the world for written word, sound, and pictures. The global community now takes advantage of this technology, Internet Protocol or IP Networks, for business communications, personal correspondence, and entertainment delivery. While the many uses of the Internet offer vast opportunities to create and grow new business and revenue models, our focus here is on the delivery of entertainment services. Specifically, live television broadcasting over IP Networks, or IPTV. Unlike archives of downloadable audio and video media which is static such as "clips" or "trailers" that so many companies are currently delivering, Backspace Communications is dedicated to delivering live network television in real-time identical to that which is available via cable or satellite.

The telephone system is the largest network in the world. The Internet is built upon this pre-existing network infrastructure. Since practically every home has telephone service capable of carrying IP traffic and broadband services, High Speed IP networks deployment eclipses cable and satellite coverage by many orders of magnitude. Thus giving way to many more potential customers. In addition, this network infrastructure is already built so there is no need for costly build-out of new terrestrial 'cable' networks or celestial 'satellite' networks. There are no exorbitant up front costs associated with wide-scale deployment because it's already done. Backspace Communications' business model simply consists of building a fault tolerant head-end for central content aggregation, negotiating content rights with producers, and delivering services to existing deployments of broadband subscribers.

Thanks to the exponential growth of Broadband technology and high speed network deployment over the passed 10 years, the services available over the Internet have dramatically increased. With faster dialup modems in the early 1990's came the worldwide web and hypertext transmission protocol, http. This allowed for Internet users to view words and pictures on the same pages through a web browser interface utilizing hypertext markup language, html. And while larger corporations and educational institutions were already enjoying additional uses such as voice and video teleconferencing over their costly high speed IP Networks, it wasn't until the late 1990's that Broadband services became commercially available at consumer prices for the home user. And though at first the quality of streaming video content was far less than that available from other means of delivery, broadband throughput has now increased, and audio and video compression technology has come to a point, that it is now possible to not only meet but surpass the quality of that which is available from those pre-existing delivery systems.

This global network is now capable of carrying all the same services at the same or better quality than current satellite and cable networks deliver, and more. Cable and satellite delivery systems are inherently one-way networks. They can only push television streams to the end user. The end user has no way of communicating back to the point of origin, or head-end, to request other services or information. Since broadband connections are inherently two-way, Television over IP, IPTV, has the enviable position of being born from a place that cable and satellite are still trying to reach, a truly interactive services platform.

Backspace Communications is offering a full compliment of "cable" television, premium pay channels, video on demand, and pay per view services. Backspace Communications is delivering all of this content over IP networks, and is doing so today.

If we look through the telecommunications industry we find many telephone network operators including CLEC's, Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (the little guys), as well as ILEC's, Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (the big guys), all trying to offer as many services as possible across their existing networks. There are literally thousands of these Telco's and they are all competing for commercial and consumer business by offering the same services utilizing the same technology. Right now, the biggest current trend in the Telco Industry is VDV, or Triple Play. VDV stands for Voice-Data-Video. This is referred to in the vernacular as the Triple Play. All CLEC's and ILEC's are doing everything within their power to be able to offer all three of these services to their customers over their existing telephone networks. Backspace Communications will give these Telco's the services they are currently lacking thereby filling a large void in the marketplace and creating an entirely new industry, IPTV.