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LTE Broadcast: A Clearer Picture for Mobile Video Streaming?At the end of April, mobile operators from around the world, including EE, Telstra, KT and Verizon, announced the formation of the LTE-Broadcast Alliance. The founding members have between them a combined subscriber base of more than 200 million, and their aim with the alliance is to encourage new business models that use the technology, and also push for wider device compatibility. LTE Broadcast was already a talking point earlier this year at Mobile World Congress, when senior executives from Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and fellow US operator AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) discussed the latest developments around the technology. Of the two operators, Verizon has been the more vocal in its public support for the technology (which it calls LTE multicast) and claims to now have an LTE Broadcast footprint that covers the entire US. Meanwhile, AT&T has revealed that it is investing in technology trials and live demonstrations as it explores different use cases and business models.
Monetizing one to many At the moment, large numbers of spectators at these events compete for network capacity to access content about the spectacle they're attending. Each individual spectator seeks to set up a personal data stream to their own device, all using the same network cell. Unsurprisingly, the cell struggles to support multiple streams simultaneously and the quality of the user experience suffers as a consequence. Both AT&T and Verizon have leveraged LTE Broadcast to tackle this issue and create a single data stream to reach all compatible devices in the stadium. This significantly reduces network congestion and delivers a high-quality service to each recipient while maximizing spectrum and other network resources.
Not just about video She pointed out that operators were unlikely to benefit from video broadcast via multicast technology while Apple devices continued not to support it. Currently, only certain devices from Samsung Corp. , LG Electronics Inc. (London: LGLD; Korea: 6657.KS) , High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC) (Taiwan: 2498) and Motorola Mobility LLC contain LTE Broadcast terminals. This has a lot to do with why Verizon is more eagerly targeting telematics as a means to monetize LTE Broadcast. The growth in connected cars across the US is exciting, but it also brings certain unique challenges. With the activation of each car comes the need to adequately keep its supporting software updated and properly functioning. In this instance, a connected car is no different from a smartphone or any other connected device. The problem is that large over-the-air OS upgrades for smartphones from major OEMs have proved unpopular with consumers, especially when they have to support the large bandwidth demands of these upgrades from their own data plans. Imagine the cost and network impact of having to update thousands (potentially millions) of connected devices -- smartphones, tablets, wearables, cars, household appliances -- with future updates? That is a significant amount of required network bandwidth for operators to provide. The ability for operators to use LTE Broadcast to send the same content to large numbers of subscribers at the same time makes it suitable for these updates. But this is by no means all that LTE Broadcast technology is good for.
Next page: Maximizing multicast for third parties Page 1 / 2 Next > |
In part two of this Q&A, the carrier's group head of network virtualization, SDN and NFV calls on vendors to move faster and lead the cloudification charge.
It's time to focus on cloudification instead, Fran Heeran, the group head of Network Virtualization, SDN and NFV at Vodafone, says.
5G must coexist with LTE, 3G and a host of technologies that will ride on top of it, says Arnaud Vamparys, Orange Network Labs' senior vice president for radio networks.
The OpenStack Foundation's Ildiko Vancsa suggests that 5G readiness means never abandoning telco applications and infrastructures once they're 'cloudy enough.'
IDC's John Delaney talks about how telecom CIOs are addressing the relationship between 5G, automation and virtualization, while cautioning that they might be forgetting the basics.
On-the-Air Thursdays Digital Audio
ARCHIVED | December 7, 2017, 12pm EST
Orange has been one of the leading proponents of SDN and NFV. In this Telco Transformation radio show, Orange's John Isch provides some perspective on his company's NFV/SDN journey.
Special Huawei Video
Huawei Network Transformation Seminar The adoption of virtualization technology and cloud architectures by telecom network operators is now well underway but there is still a long way to go before the transition to an era of Network Functions Cloudification (NFC) is complete. |
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