Title:
TV Over the Internet Pushes Broadband Growth
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
Representatives from some of the world's leading
broadband service providers and equipment
manufacturers met in San Diego, California in
December. They talked about the future of broadband
and the Internet Protocols that govern it. Broadband
is a high data rate connection to the Internet. A
group called Broadband Forum organized the meeting.
It was the group's fourth meeting in two thousand
ten. The Broadband Forum has almost two hundred
members from around the world. They work to develop
broadband network standards across the industry.
Laurie Adams Gonzalez is the marketing director for
Broadband Forum. She says the group has been helping
service providers move to the newest Internet
Protocol, known as IPv6. Mrs. Gonzalez says the
current version of the Internet, known as IPv4,
could soon run out of space.Broadband is one of the
fastest growing areas of the telecommunications
industry. A report from the Broadband Forum says the
number of broadband subscribers reached four hundred
ninety-eight million worldwide in June. By the third
week of July it had passed five hundred million.
That represents one in five homes worldwide. Mrs.
Gonzalez says much of the growth has come from an
unexpected source -- developing countries. Asia
represents almost forty-one percent of the total
broadband subscriptions. More than one hundred
twenty million of those subscribers are in China.
The report from the Broadband Forum also looked at
Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV. IPTV is one
of the main developments leading the growth in
broadband. IPTV uses fast broadband connections to
bring television programs into homes. It normally
requires a subscription and a special box on top of
the television. The Forum report said IPTV
subscriptions had grown to more than thirty-eight
million by the end of June. France has the highest
number of IPTV subscribers at more than nine
million. China and the United States are next, with
an average of more than six million subscribers
each.The Broadband Forum released its latest usage
report in December. There was more growth for both
broadband and IPTV. For VOA Special English, I'm
Alex Villarreal. Our programs are online with
transcripts and MP3 files at voaspecialenglish.com.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
