ABSTRACT

With increasing mobility, end-users are accessing video content any-time, anywhere, often over congested mobile networks, leading to poor received performance.

To provide the best viewing experience with superior quality, this paper presents a solution that intelligently pushes popular content to mobile devices, i.e. pre-position using LTE Broadcast, extending beyond the current unicast pull-based approach.

This solution has been developed and trialed in the Telstra network in Australia with successful outcomes. Results from live customer trial shows that this solution can potentially double the capacity through real-time network awareness for prepositioned content delivery, while offering virtually “no buffering” high quality audio and videos to increase end-user engagement.

Beyond video content, this solution can be applied for other usecases such as delivery of firmware updates to mobile devices and connected cars, accelerated website delivery, VR/360° content delivery, and targeted advertising. 

INTRODUCTION

Advances in technologies are enabling the Internet to complement or even replace traditional video broadcast services, as new delivery mechanisms targeting customer experience are coming into existence.

Moreover, over the last decade, our world has gone digital and transitioned to the small screen.The number of mobile broadband subscribers worldwide has reached 4.3 billion ‘Ericsson’. Video is largely responsible for the growth in consumer broadband and mobile data consumption, with video expected to grow to 82% of all IP network traffic by 2020 ‘Cisco’.

As IP video consumption grows, end-users are increasing their quality and reliability expectations towards the high levels they receive from broadcast. In addition, demand for trouble free viewing on their mobile—anytime, anywhere is becoming the norm. The result is a strain on mobile networks leading to a poor Quality of Experience (QoE) and declining user engagement. In the coming years, even higher user expectations and greater demand is envisaged due to new content formats (e.g. 4K/UHD, VR, 360°) and further technology accessibility.

Download the full technical paper below