Video Delivery Gets a Boost with SDV

By: Jesse Cryderman

I was recently on a commuter train visiting the Chicago suburbs--something I hadn’t done in quite a while--when I realized the experience of train travel had changed since my last Metra trip. Gone were all the newspapers that once hid the faces of the many businessmen and women shuttling back and forth from their jobs to their bedroom communities. Instead, nearly everyone was fixated on a mobile device, and a large percentage were watching video as we sped along at 60 mph. I’ve noticed the same phenomena on planes, in subway stations, and even in the back of taxi cabs. Video envelops the totality of the world in real-time, on-the-go, on every type of device, and at every altitude. As a result, video delivery has become incredibly complex and in a very short amount of time.

The businesses tasked with delivering video and supporting quality of experience (QoE) are constantly making capital investments to keep pace with these rapid changes. Some of the most popular methods include:

• Purchasing expensive, purpose-built video encoding and transcoding hardware.
• Utilizing compression technologies to improve bandwidth efficiency.
• Leveraging network intelligence and advanced analytics to control capacity and optimize cell site utilization.
• Pursuing small cell deployments in high-density areas.
  
• Expanding Wi-Fi footprints to achieve pervasive connectivity, as a group of cable networks has done.
• Partnering with content delivery networks that are colocated in data centers that also house servers for popular media sites to reduce latencies. 
• Placing highly popular video content on the edge of the network, such as we see with Nokia Networks’ liquid apps concept. 

All of these strategies are effective, but they are also expensive, often not inherently adaptable, and operators are still struggling to keep pace. The lack of commercially available hardware-based 4K HEVC decoders for set-top boxes eighteen months after the specification was ratified is a prime example of this. New devices, formats, and demands enter the market every day, and to accommodate this, network operators must have highly-flexible solutions in place.

A common theme throughout the industry is to insert real-time, automated intelligence into every action point. For instance, mobile marketing is most effective if it’s personalized, dynamic, and delivered at the point of consumption and decision. To achieve this, intelligence on the user profile, device, and application must be leveraged in real-time. A concurrent theme in the industry is virtualization--that is, transforming purpose-built hardware-based network and application functions into software that can run on low-cost, general purpose computing platforms. Can these concepts be applied to video delivery?

Pipeline covered a news story from network operator Telstra at the tail end of 2014 that piqued our interest. The company announced that it was pursuing a Software Defined Video (SDV) strategy through a material investment in a company named Elemental. Why would a service provider make an equity investment into a solution provider?

According to Telstra, Elemental helps media companies connect consumers with video content across multiple screens – including connected TVs, computers, tablets, smartphones, set-top, and other IP devices – using software-defined video solutions to ensure high quality, high definition viewing experiences.

Mark Sherman, Telstra Ventures Managing Partner, explained the logic behind the investment:

“Telstra’s equity investment, soon to be combined with a commercial agreement that is currently being negotiated, will allow the company to integrate solutions from Elemental into the company’s network. This will provide media and broadcast customers with access to an award winning video solution for multiscreen content delivery and offer flexibility and scalability to ensure a great customer experience”

“We also plan to use Elemental’s solutions internally, across our large portfolio of media properties such as IPTV, Foxtel on T-Box, AFL, NRL and BigPond movies to deliver high quality video performance across a multitude of devices for customers,” said Mr. Sherman. “With our international connectivity, Telstra intends to make Elemental cloud capability available to its media customers globally in virtual hosting facilities,” he concluded.