MBC Activity Report 2016

Chairman: Simon Fell , EBU

Established to deliver the requirements for media delivery over converged networks and to explore relevant deployment and business models of converged networks from the perspectives of all interested parties 

Television delivery has traditionally been dependent on broadcasting (one-way, one-to-many delivery networks to fixed TV sets). Today, however, an increasing number of consumers are watching linear or non-linear content on their traditional home screens, as well as on their smartphones and tablets. Although much of this audio-visual content is currently delivered via Wi-Fi networks, these new forms of media consumption dramatically increase the load on mobile networks. New solutions and use cases will be proposed to enable future wireless networks to deliver mass market broadcast services to mobile devices more efficiently. 

Ongoing work in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP™) is intended to improve the efficiency of eMBMS (the LTE™ version of the Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) for the delivery of mass video traffic, but interest is growing in exploring the potential for developing future mobile and broadcasting standards in a more converged way. Future standards evolution (such as 5G) could, in principle, enable a highly efficient delivery of mass video traffic through a one-to-many ‘broadcast’ delivery scheme, built upon co-operation between and/or convergence of broadcast and mobile networks.

ETSI’s new Industry Specification Group on Mobile and Broadcast Convergence (ISG MBC) held its kick-off meeting in June 2016. The group began work on a general report exploring the deployment and business models of converged networks. ISG MBC will develop use cases and commercial requirements to enable future wireless networks to deliver mass market broadcast services to mobile devices more efficiently. Initially the group will look at the current state of the technology, deployment opportunities and enabling the market. The ISG will take into account all industry views, including broadcasters, terrestrial broadcast network operators, mobile network operators, satellite broadcast network operators, content owners/providers, network infrastructure vendors, manufacturers of consumer equipment and consumers. Publication of a Group Report containing their findings was expected to be published before the end of 2017.