New Requirements for Swedish Laws can have Impact on Streaming Services
The law of freedom of speech and the law of Radio and TV will put new demands and requirements on internet streaming.
The Government’s proposal to complete the vision of a fully-connected Sweden, has been an ongoing project since 2016. The government claims that a connected society creates conditions for living and working in Sweden. A connected society will also contribute to an increasing growth and innovative production.
The governments vision is to have stable and good quality of mobile services by year 2023 and that 98% of Sweden’s population will have access to internet at a speed of at least 1Gbit / s (over a fixed network) by 2025 [1].
With this vision, the government has reviewed the law of freedom of speech and the law of Radio and TV (containing regulations of television broadcasting, order TV, searchable teletext and radio) to adapt to the new way of consuming Radio and TV over internet.
A change will make it easier to put higher demands on the availability of various VOD services [2], or as the Government defines VOD services “TV program that distributes through a request from a database”.
According to the law of freedom of speech and the law of Radio and TV, TV programs distributed in a linear television broadcast shall be available with subtitles and in some cases sign language and audio description.
With the change in the law of freedom of speech and the law of Radio and TV, this will now also include streaming of TV programs [2].
This inclusion will then affect the availability of text and sign language on VOD services. This decision will probably affect the media companies’ ways of working, especially the workflow of publications of programs to their On-demand services.
The consequences of such change of the law may, for example, be that we get to see fewer programs on the VOD services. This as a direct effect of that the material needs to be available in several different formats, that will result in higher production and distribution costs.
If we take a look at today’s VOD consumption, we see a 90/10 ratio between the consumption over fixed networks and the consumption over mobile networks for VOD. For the consumption of VOD over the mobile network the traffic increases as we speak. If we look at the statistics over the network consumption we can see that in a near future, this ratio will be in favour for the mobile network instead.
In order to ensure that the increased distribution of VOD over the mobile network is of high quality, we also have to adapt and expand the infrastructure, this to be in line with the new way of consuming VOD.
The Government’s goal to have a good quality of mobile services by the year of 2023 is definitely in line with this prediction.
The media industry has the technology in place, plans for expanding the infrastructure and that the user experience for consumption of VOD is increasing. We can definitely say that VOD services will not back down due to the higher requirements and lack of network infrastructure.
With the inclusion of Internet streaming in the law, we can instead expect to see a first natural step in the way of creating structure and higher requirements for Internet streaming.
The change of the law of freedom of speech and the law of Radio and TV is just one step in the process of ensuring the regulation of media consumption over the internet. We have already seen that the regulation has begun to some extent with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). GDPR can briefly be described as a regulation to ensure that user information is not spread by the distributors. More about GDPR in a separate blog post.
Summary
In the long term we can be sure that we will see Internet streaming as the primary form of TV and Radio distribution. It might also be that the governments vision, that 98% of Sweden’s population will have access to internet at a speed of at least 1Gb / s by 2025, is in line with that streaming is the primary form of distribution by the same time.
References
[1] Sverige helt uppkopplat 2025 — en bredbandsstrategi (http://www.regeringen.se/4b00e7/contentassets/a1a50c6a306544e28ebaf4f4aa29a74e/sverige-helt-uppkopplat-2025-slutlig.pdf) [2018–04–16]
[2] Regeringens proposition (2017/18:49) — (http://www.regeringen.se/4adfba/contentassets/2901da8359574cc7a12321588d8662bf/prop-2017-18-49.pdf) [2018–04–16]
Eyevinn Technology is the leading independent consultant firm specializing in video technology and media distribution, and proud organizer of the yearly nordic conference Streaming Tech Sweden.
