Broadband Forum Member calls for greater collaboration between broadband service providers and video content providers during the Q1 Town Hall Innovation Series

Fabrizio Guidotti, OutSys
Broadband Forum member

As broadcasters, such as the BBC, voice their intentions to switch-off terrestrial television and radio signals in the years ahead to focus on Internet content streaming only, the global debate on the future dismissal of television broadcasters’ transmission legacy infrastructures continues.

Viewers are already embracing the broadband network as their preferred way to access TV – which means television broadcasters must be present on the Internet. But this also means running two separate platforms to deliver the same service. By dropping one of them, they can save money and resources.

Reaching new video content possibilities

Alongside this, video content providers (VCPs) – a term coined for both linear TV broadcasters and video OTTs – are all competing to acquire the exclusive rights to Live Events Streaming. This represents a new revenue stream to tap into with the Video on Demand (VoD) market increasingly saturated and overcrowded.

There is a risk though – if event video quality decreases, the reputational damage can be substantial and the whole industry can be perceived as unreliable. This can occur due to either or both the service provider and video content providers’ infrastructures reaching their capacity limits.

Delivering assured bandwidth, latency and distribution capabilities

When it comes to delivering linear and live event streaming, this can be done using both Unicast and Multicast. However, using infrastructure designed for VoD that use Unicast only can have consequences. Service providers and video content providers must keep expanding their infrastructures to avoid service disruptions, and this endless growth is costly in terms of money, time, and resources.  Replacing the existing Content Delivery Network Systems is not justifiable and we know that VCPs have invested a huge amount of resources into these complex platforms. However some features and capabilities to handle multicast streaming should be added to those systems. If the service provider can pre-allocate and configure the Multicast Groups with assured bandwidth, latency, and distribution capabilities on its network infrastructure and then assign them to the VCPs, Multicast can be used as the primary delivery means for linear and live event streaming.

Why Multicast?

Unicast does not scale well, and if you have more viewers or the quality of the transported videos increases, you need to add more and more network bandwidth and video cache servers. Conversely, Multicast dramatically reduces and optimizes the use of bandwidth and video cache server resources since a single video stream from a source server is branched off at the access network edge to reach multiple video devices.

The main issue for the VCP is that it will have a different Multicast Groups for every service provider. But VCPs have the same issue with their current VoD and Unicast models when they need to get the IP addresses of their cache servers closer to the viewer. VCPs currently use strategies such as BGP summarization, which can also identify which Multicast Groups are to be used in which service provider network.

What’s next?

Greater collaboration between video content providers and broadband service providers is needed.  Both parties need each other. Without this collective agreement, they are doomed to keep repeating either the continued expansion of their infrastructures or having to negotiate a new procedure for each broadband service provider and video content provider to deploy their multicast model. This can be taxing to implement and maintain.

Not only will Multicast bring increased savings and promote greater customer retention, but using Multicast to deliver linear and live event streaming also saves a lot a power. The increased cost of energy has deeply dented the revenues of both parties.

Broadband Forum is the right place, with the right culture, for all stakeholders to meet and come to an agreement. But we need more video content providers to join the conversation! We have to put words into action and involve as many broadband service providers and video content providers as possible. Starting a new initiative within Broadband Forum can address the issue the industry faces.

Fabrizio Guidotti delivered a presentation on this topic as part of Broadband Forum’s Town Hall Innovation Series during its Q1 meeting. Going forward, these Town Hall sessions will take place at each quarterly meeting, and we are inviting speakers to get involved. Broadband Forum plans to focus on different topics each quarter, with the focus in its Q2 meeting being energy and sustainability.

The topics presented can stimulate future work for the Forum and act as a catalyst for new projects. Please contact THIS@broadband-forum.org if you would like to present on a subject matter or suggest a topic.