Graham Mills was the next speaker; he is the co-founder and chair of Personal Media Platforms. This is a collaborative project, with three key goals. It hopes to enable the personal media industry to:
- Meet the growth in consumer demand for media content at an affordable cost;
- Deliver a user experience that will delight consumers; and
- Enable a wide range of content services to be used on any device and in any location.
Click for higher resolutionMobile data traffic is expected to continue to grow: according to Ericsson, it will rise eight-fold every five years. This could continue will into the next decade, at which point usage will exceed an hour per day. Meeting this demand into the 2020s, with current networks, could lead to a ‘capital crunch’ for mobile network operators. For popular content, delivery costs per-viewer-hour over IP can be substantially higher than broadcast.
Mills had some suggestions on how to meet the challenge. First was technology innovation, wherein cheaper device storage and faster processors enable new ways to use existing infrastructure. In addition, there will be new architectures for advanced video delivery (i.e. one-to-many, 5G). Other solutions include a change in business models and regulations – i.e. to allow more network sharing between MNOs and broadcasters – and changing the content offered.
As part of its work, PMP will pilot the use of many technologies:
- Predictive tools to identify and anticipate users’ content needs;
- Local caching, to download content efficiently to a user’s personal device;
- New UIs, which will integrate relevant broadcast and on-demand content;
- Multicast and off-peak unicast delivery, as well as network management tools to reduce demand peaks on IP networks;
- Targeted advertising, enabling ad-supported services to become more relevant to each user; and
- Efficient use of mobile and broadcast networks, to deliver content directly to many or all users in one or more adjacent mobile cells.
There are 11 participants in the scoping phase of the PMP, including Ericsson, the EBU and the DTG.
