I just read through Bob's blog on video quality and, if I read it correctly, he believes video quality is a key differentiator for wireless service providers. In particular, Bob points out that consumer expectations are high because of professionally produced content and how we view that on television today, quality within video is noticeable to the human eye, and mobile devices continue to improve in terms of screen size.

The question I have is 'will they care about video quality?' There are many possible answers.

One of the players in ensuring video is efficiently served into operators' networks are CDN players such Akamai, Limelight, CDNetworks, Panther Express, and a host of others. I have seen a number of initiatives coming from Verizon (Partner Port), AT&T, BT (Content Connect) and Level 3, as they build on their existing enterprise CDN experiences to create video CDNs.

One consideration is the carrier-based CDN mentioned above. Operators should know what content their customers like to view. Do they also know if the customer is having a poor viewing experience, and if so want to correct it? Can they make money from that?

My view is that given Amazon's commoditization of the market, CDN players will have to incorporate value added services to differentiate themselves -- quality, analytics, trans-coding, and site acceleration.