28 Executive Summary
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Strategic Insights “We are not discussing LTE Broadcast as a DTT replacement but as a way of improving performance and efficiencies of delivering live linear TV”
Taking broadcast to 4G and beyond Matt Stagg Principal Strategist, EE & Mobile Video Alliance Region: UK Interviewed by: Adrian Pennington In 2012 mobile operator EE launched the UK’s first 4G network. It has since used its experience to understand how a high capacity data network influences user behaviour. A key result is that video consumption on mobile is even more significant than expected, and set to grow beyond initial expectations. While Cisco predicts that 72% of mobile traffic will be video by 2020, “we are looking at 75% by 2019,” says Matt Stagg, EE’s Principal
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Strategist. “When we saw this huge uptake in video we realised that what we’d built was in fact a media distribution network. “The biggest fundamental shift we will see in the next decade for mobile distribution of TV is LTE Broadcast. EE’s vision for LTE Broadcast is that it will be better than TV.” Stagg led the team that delivered the UK’s first LTE (4G) engineering proof of concept at the 2014 Commonwealth Games (partnered with the BBC,
Qualcomm and others), and followed that up with a trial at the FA Cup Final at Wembley to prove how it could combine the efficiency of broadcast with the functionality of unicast. “It’s the next iteration of red button,” Stagg says. EE plans a limited live rollout for LTE Broadcast toward the end of 2016. “We’re not saying it’s a commercial launch, but we will start to put capacity on the network for certain events where it provides benefits.” One benefit is to alleviate spikes in congestion around live sports events, not just for users wanting to access the same live content, but for other network users whose normal browsing might be affected. However, talk of the technology pushing aside DTT
as the main distribution network for live and linear TV is, for now, premature. “We are actively steering away from that and saying let’s focus on where we need this technology now. In the future, who knows?” The Mobile Video Alliance (MVA), which Stagg co-chairs, is in accord. “We are not discussing [LTE Broadcast] as a DTT replacement but as a way of improving performance and efficiencies of delivering live linear TV. On top of that we have all the other services, like mass software updates.” Stagg co-founded the MVA in 2013: “It’s done a huge amount for driving forward UK mobile TV and it’s seen as a model, globally, for how you bring mobile operators, content
delivery networks, broadcasters and content providers together to work on delivering a superior customer experience for everyone.” Stagg is also a mentor for the 5GIC project at Surrey University where the awesome potential of a mobile technology without bandwidth limits is taking shape. “5G may yield a perception of limitless bandwidth because you will always have enough for your purpose,” he says. “This could be the connected car, remote surgery or holographic projection. 5G is not just a new air interface and associated technology. It is best understood as an ecosystem which a lot of industries, not just mobile operators, are exploring to change the way we think about being connected.”
23/09/2015 11:41