At a recent initial meeting with hotel clients, we discussed
the general requirements for their newly built 4-star resort-type property, how
many rooms they had, whether they wanted VOD or not and what other features
were of interest for their in-room entertainment system. Almost casually, we
threw in the question “You have Cat 5e or 6, right?” to which the perplexed
answer was no.
While the Asia-Pacific region as a whole is in terms of
connectivity and technology innovation outpacing many more developed regions,
there are significant differences within the region when it comes to
connectivity.
In more mature markets like Hong Kong and Singapore
COAX has been long replaced by UTP cabling, and sometimes even fiber, but
developing countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and
particularly China remain a COAX stronghold, even for new builds. So why this lingering
attraction to COAX?
The Cost Factor
Economics usually drive customer decisions and for a long
time, COAX was considerably cheaper than CAT5e or CAT6, specifically in
developing countries where broadband speeds were low. The reasoning went
something like “Why pay for something that you won’t be able to get any time
soon anyway”? But this cost argument no longer holds up. COAX pricing has
remained constant for many years while UTP pricing has dropped consistently
over the past 10 years to the point where it is now on average 20-25% cheaper
than COAX (and fiber is yet cheaper again due to the higher cost of copper used
in UTP).
And given that the demand for UTP remains strong, this price
gap is likely to get even wider, making the COAX proposition even more
unattractive to the bottom line.
The Need for
Speed… and Quality
The other factor is speed. While it’s true that COAX,
through various methodologies, can provide higher speed than UTP, the reality
is that the speed comes at the cost of quality. COAX uses analogue modulations
which doesn’t provide background noise resilience and means the overall quality
will not match UTP’s digital modulation.
Then there’s future proofing. There is this saying that
bandwidth precedes data rates just as highways come before traffic. As
streaming media applications such as video and multi-media become commonplace,
Ethernet is the highway that will facilitate these services now with higher
reliability and will enable higher bandwidth in the future, when the next
generation of applications demand a smooth thoroughfare on the data highway.
Can’t rewire? Try Smart
TV
Of course, sometimes rewiring an existing hotel is not an
option for cost reasons, at least not in the immediate future. The good news is
that there are solutions that will enable these hotels to install attractive
technology innovations to wow their guests – at least until the next re-wiring
renovation.
Smart TVs today offer a great alternative in cases where no UTP
cabling is available. In this scenario, the TV channels can be delivered
analogue to the Smart TV, and the hospitality features, such as in-room dining,
messaging, facilities, and other interactive services can be delivered
wirelessly through the SmartTV’s in-built wireless AP. Given that all TVs will
eventually be Smart TVs, investing in this type of set up is certainly a very
viable alternative where re-wiring is not possible. And once the hotel can
finally run UTP to the back of the TV, they can easily cutover the analogue TV
channels to IPTV channels.
So why has COAX managed to hold out this long? With
cost and quality significant factors to decide against COAX, the reason COAX-based
TV systems are still being deployed today could be due to a lack of awareness.
