LTE makes optimizing video service high quality and buyer expertise attainable. But to allow a golden age of video providers, operators should put together by optimizing their enterprise fashions, enhancing community capabilities, and enhancing buyer expertise.
Video has emerged as a major income supply for mobile broadband visitors. In truth, Huawei estimates that video visitors will make up over 70% of all mobile visitors by 2018. In the 3G period, excessive visitors charges and a poor service expertise held again widespread consumer adoption, however the superior wi-fi pipes of the LTE period make an optimum buyer expertise attainable. Nevertheless, to allow the golden age of video providers, telcos must deal with the challenges they face by designing appropriate enterprise fashions, strengthening community capabilities, and enhancing consumer expertise.
Mobile video developments
From the angle of consumer conduct, mainstream demand within the 3G period covers searching social networking websites (SNS) and internet pages, whereas LTE customers like to observe movies on mobile units. Huawei’s MBB Lab (mLAB) and Sohu Video collectively launched the Mobile Video Insight Report for Q3 2014, which lists the principle components that affect on-line video expertise as smoothness, definition and visitors consumption.
LTE is best than 3G for enjoying on-line movies, delivering larger success charges and smoothness. Loading occasions for mobile video on LTE is twice as quick as on a 3G community, with common preliminary buffering reducing to 2.4 seconds in contrast with 4.5 seconds. HD video is rising as a share of whole mobile video and, notably, a complete of 36% LTE customers select HD video, in contrast with 16% of 3G customers.
In the context of the business chain, good LTE units are outfitted with bigger screens and batteries, but costs are persevering with to drop. According to the report, 43% of all good units launched by Q3 2014 have screens bigger than 5 inches, and 35% have batteries over 3,000mAh. Bigger screens, bigger batteries and HD mix to make video providers much more fashionable. The worth of good units additionally retains falling, with LTE-enabled handsets for lower than CNY1,000 (USD160) accessible in all places.
There is an growing pattern of integrating telcos and media firms. Mainstream international telcos have launched into inter-field operations utilizing advantageous video sources to construct future-oriented competitiveness. They make use of a number of strategies to take action. First, direct funding in content material and TV providers, equivalent to BT’s TV service – BT Sports. Second, acquisition of video or TV firms to launch built-in providers, equivalent to AT&T’s buy of DirectTV. Third, cooperation with OTTs, an instance of which is the focused visitors bundle China Unicom developed for Sohu Video. And fourth, launch of an modern video service, equivalent to when Jiangsu Unicom launched its LTE Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) for the 2014 Youth Olympic Games, and the BBC partnered with EE to offer LTE eMBMS for the Commonwealth Games.
Chances and challenges
Mobile video provides telcos an opportunity to domesticate new customers, improve community competitiveness, and enhance revenues. First, video providers assist telcos entice extra LTE customers; for instance, SKT in South Korea plans to draw customers by way of LTE-enabled HD and UHD video providers. LTE networks permit customers to shoot and add photos rapidly and simply. Services like WeChat’s brief video taking pictures (6-to-8 seconds) faucet into customers’ ardour for taking pictures movies and gas the explosive progress of user-generated content material (UGC) on mobile terminals. Second, LTE can improve telcos’ community competitiveness. Spectral effectivity is larger than on UMTS networks, which not directly reduces telcos’ community development prices. Since over half of all visitors might be generated by mobile video sooner or later, decreasing community development prices means enhancing community capabilities. Third, video providers will turn into the principle income supply for telcos sooner or later. NTT DOCOMO, for instance, plans to construct a future enterprise operation mannequin centered on video. Huawei additionally forecasts that, as video visitors will increase, mobile information income will develop quickly from CNY400 billion (USD64 billion) per 30 days in 2013 to CNY1 trillion (USD160 billion) per 30 days in 2018.
As a double-edged sword, video providers additionally create challenges for telcos when it comes to growing ROI, guaranteeing consumer expertise, and enhancing pipeline capabilities. First, how can ROI be elevated? Faced with the dilemma of elevated visitors and static income, telcos are searching for new methods to spice up ROI. For video providers, they will design new enterprise fashions and scale back the per bit price of pipelines to extend income. Second, how can a constant service expertise be ensured for 3G and LTE customers, customers with totally different working providers, and totally different eventualities like unicast and multicast eventualities? New customers needs to be supplied with easy-to-use providers which are simple to order, present visitors use notifications, and provide versatile tariff packages.
Finally, how can pipeline capabilities be enhanced, together with pipeline capability and community agility? Pipeline capability is affected by a rising demand for uplink capability because of the reputation of sharing selfies and movies, coupled with the truth that customers have gotten much less tolerant of delay. Reducing E2E delay includes optimizing wi-fi, bearer, and core networks, in addition to content material sources.
Tackling mobile video challenges
New enterprise fashions
For OTT video providers, along with conventional visitors billing, telcos can design new enterprise fashions equivalent to focused OTT visitors packages or advert gross sales. Huawei lists 4 eventualities for its broadcast and multicast video service – reside sports activities, mobile TV, file supply, and M2M. For reside sports activities broadcasts, telcos can cooperate with sponsors to realize content material rights. They can then cost customers a sure charge every month for the content material. Alternatively, they will provide the content material for free and revenue by way of reverse charging on multi-screen adverts. For mobile TV, telcos can study from the cooperative mannequin between EE and the BBC the place EE broadcasts BBC TV content material reside on its eMBMS community.
To allow file supply, telcos can ship content material in batches to customers when the community is free and the cost is low. To facilitate M2M, telcos can ship adverts to screens in airports, elevators, and bus stations, chopping labor prices and guaranteeing speedy content material supply. To assure a viable enterprise mannequin, Huawei is prepared to share its profitable experiences in several initiatives world wide to debate the business eventualities of LTE video providers with telcos.
Improved mobile video expertise
Boosting video expertise is an E2E activity that requires particular instruments for key high quality indicator (KQI) assessments. KQI assessments primarily cowl preliminary buffering time, obtain fee, video streaming begin success fee, body freeze frequency, and common freeze time. Areas with poor service expertise are then topic to root trigger evaluation to find out whether or not inadequate wi-fi protection, roundabout bearer networks, or inadequate caching area in content material servers are guilty. After the issues are recognized, video optimization options might be deployed, together with wi-fi community TCP acceleration, QoS assurance for video providers on IP networks, and format conversion/bitrate adaptation/clever buffering of video on the PS community aspect.
Leveraging its monetization answer lab for mobile broadband visitors and community answer lab for mobile broadband high quality, Huawei has established an entire set of benchmark databases and strategies for evaluating video expertise, alongside a corresponding check platform. Huawei can work with telcos to assist them assess video expertise and provides optimization ideas accordingly.
Enhanced pipe capabilities
In phrases of pipe development, telcos want to hold out E2E community transformation in service provision functionality, community structure and help for multicast video providers. To improve service capabilities, telcos ought to remodel their present voice- and data-bearing networks into video-bearing networks that supply superior community capability, structure, and video coding/decoding. IP-based bearing networks are wanted to help multicast, clock synchronization, consumer authentication, content material error correction and compensation, and interworking with third-party platforms.
Network parts (NEs), equivalent to a multi-cell/multicast coordination entity (MCE) and broadcast/multicast service heart (BM-SC), are additionally wanted to help developed multimedia broadcast/multicast service (eMBMS). In phrases of visitors fashions, the present voice- and data-based visitors mannequin will step by step give strategy to a data-based mannequin that primarily carries video visitors. The visitors oversubscription ratio for entry/MAN/spine networks will shift from 4:3:2 to 1:1:1. Telcos want to completely analyze consumer information and consumer behaviors to successfully plan future community capability. Moreover, versatile useful resource scheduling needs to be employed for unicast and multicast eventualities to maximise spectral effectivity. To optimize billing fashions, telcos ought to evolve their easy voice- and data-centric billing to versatile billing that helps numerous video providers.
To date, Huawei has deployed LTE networks in additional than 110 cities world wide and carried out 30+ video optimization initiatives and 6 LTE eMBMS joint innovation initiatives. We have amassed wealthy expertise when it comes to evaluating and planning mobile video networks, and are prepared to assist telcos provide superior mobile video providers.
Industry chain coordination
To obtain enterprise success, business individuals ought to collaborate and coordinate successfully and take the next actions. They ought to develop the business scale and promote good terminals and chips to leap the boundaries to business improvement; discover new enterprise fashions to advertise the penetration of video providers; optimize service expertise from the content material supply on the community aspect to ensure consumer expertise; conduct E2E reconstruction and adaptation of networks to fulfill the longer term wants of video distribution; and precisely establish high-value areas of video providers, and make investments modest sources in these areas to optimize ROI.
