“The DVD will be short-lived,” said Tchuruk during the opening of the Alcatel Enterprise Forum on Tuesday. “This kind of video was a passive exercise. Today things need to be much more interactive.”
Tchuruk pointed towards the rapidly falling price of broadband access, which has been halved during the last two years, and increased capacity, which expanded by nearly 500 percent within the same period.
Because of the huge increase in the amount of data that can be transmitted over broadband connections, Tchuruk is predicting that downloading video on demand will replace DVD use in the coming years.
Tchuruk’s comments echo similar statements made by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in July.
At the time, Gates predicted that DVD players would becoming obsolete within the next 10 years, due to both the fragile nature of DVD discs and the increased role that computers will play in delivering entertainment services.
Instead of DVD players or VCRs, Gates foresees a melding of home computers and television sets that provide “what we want to see, when we want to see it.”
“When we get home, the home computer will know who we are from our voice or our face,” Gates said. “It will know what we want to watch, our favorite programs, or what the kids shouldn’t be allowed to see.”
Tchuruk also said that telecommunications companies are going to have to move away from voice-based services, which currently account for about 70 percent of revenue, to offering other “user-centric” services.