This significantly increases its deployment costs and usually leads to the need to redesign the entire network .”
“ As an alternative to G . fast networks , LTE mobile technologies offer a feasible option for operators to provide high-speed broadband , especially for subscribers in dispersed , rural settlements . As an example , in Finland , deconstruction of phone lines is underway throughout the countryside and Internet access is usually offered to subscribers by utilising LTE ,” he advises . IP . With many predicting that at some future stage all television delivery becomes IP , will anything less than deeply-deployed fibre become a compromise of compression vs bandwidth ? Will networks collapse under the weight of a continent-wide desire to see live sporting events in 4K or even 8K ?
“ I don ’ t think that video delivery is going to be the major driver for bandwidth growth beyond 500 Mbps to 1 Gbps -type speeds ,” asserts Ciocirlan . “ Beyond 1 Gbps , people will use the bandwidth for services that are going to be different to video streaming . Even with the absolute highest quality of video we can envision today , you still won ’ t need more than 150-200 Mbps steady state bandwidth .”
According to Ciocirlan , what will drive bandwidth growth beyond 1 Gbps will be services other than video . “ There will be new services that will drive the growth over the next 10 years and some of those services we can foresee include virtual reality deployments that require very high cloud-to-home burst capabilities and extremely low latency to achieve real time interactivity . And there will be services that haven ’ t even been invented yet that will be taking advantage of this type of bandwidth and burst capability .”
“ Networks will not collapse under the weight of live sporting events delivered in 4K to multiple screens . Technologies like multicast adaptive bitrate can make a big impact . That ’ s why we have been working on these technologies over the last couple of years – it ’ s precisely for that situation where you have simultaneous transmission to multiple
“ HEVC now has a critical mass .” - Giles Wilson , Ericsson
screens in multiple formats using multiple encryption methodologies .” CONCURRENCY . “ The bigger challenge is the growing availability of ever increasing content choices and timeshifted viewing that reduce the concurrency and fatten up the ‘ long tail ’ of content viewing statistics . This will drive more video capacity than highly popular ‘ live ’ events . However , the levels of capacity we are building into the networks and cloud streaming and storage capabilities should be able to cope with this challenge .”
“ We have good solutions to cope with large scale simulcast events as well as the changes in subscriber behaviour … the challenge for networks over the next few years is going to be coming from areas other than ‘ traditional ’ video delivery . Cloud-rendered experiences with very low latency , real-time interactivity is what ’ s more likely to challenge the networks
over the next five-to-ten years ,” he concludes .
“ This is a really important question , but actually the situation is slightly different ,” suggests Bringuier . “ For the big sporting events , conventional broadcasting by satellite , cable or terrestrial is the most convenient – and incidentally the most green , energyefficient way – to reach mass audiences .” EXTRA . “ What will become more significant is giving audiences something extra . Obviously that includes the ability to watch on a mobile device if you cannot be with your friends and a bucket of beers . But more important still is the need to interact , the desire to experience the event the way you want to . That might be through secondscreening , seeing your own personal replays and alternative angles on a phone or a tablet ,” he envisages . “ The 2014 FIFA World Cup saw massive strides in this direction . Over the course of the tournament more than 24 million unique users watched tens of millions of hours of content through second screen apps . The peak streaming rate was a staggering 6.9 terabytes a second . All this content was processed and packaged using Elemental encoders in the Amazon Web Services cloud .”
“ The progress in the last two years has been massive . Software-defined video infrastructures such as Elemental provides allow for a common headend for broadcast and online content , at multiple acquisition formats including Ultra HD , and deliverable to multiple consumer formats . High performance codecs reduce the demand for bandwidth . The result is greater choice for consumers , to watch what they want , where they want to . This comes at the same time as greatly improved efficiency for broadcasters and content delivery enterprises , who can build flexible , agile workflows in software ,” he notes . SCORE . “ It ’ s unlikely that IP will be the only way forward to deliver TV as there are many use cases where other delivery methods score ,” suggests Ericsson ’ s Wilson . “ On the topic of 8K , due to the very high costs of creating and delivering 8K , and the even more crucial fact that consumers won ’ t see any benefit at today ’ s screen sizes and viewing distances , it ’ s not clear yet when there will be an 8K business model or what that business model will look like . Of course there are potential use cases for 8K , but we will need to see which of those gets traction .”
On the topic of 4K , Wilson says that Ericsson expects HDR to offer much more consumer impact than 4K alone , if done correctly , which raises two possible future scenarios . “ One is where HDR is the technology that speeds up 4K adoption ( if the two get combined ) in which case this will put a lot of pressure on delivery . However , 4K is a bandwidth-hungry application and not everyone will be able to afford it . Therefore , an alternative scenario is that some 4K HDR channels will exist but that HD HDR will also be successful – for those media organisations that can ’ t deliver 4K ( or choose not to ). HD HDR becoming successful is the view of several industry bodies . In the mixed 4K HDR and HD HDR second scenario , there is still a bandwidth crunch , but
“ DOCSIS 3.1 aims at more efficiency in coaxial cable networks .” - Hanno Narjus , Teleste .
18 EUROMEDIA