CDN providers face new OTT video delivery challenges

Peter Dinham
Friday, 06 January 2012 19:06

IT Industry - Market

Content Delivery Network providers are faced with a number of market challenges in the next five years with the delivery of increasingly large volumes of OTT video, and the daunting task of delivering not just to PCs, but to a range of devices like tablets and smartphones.

According to business intelligence firm, Informa Telecoms & Media, OTT (Over-the-top) video accounted for 32.6 exabytes (EB)  of network traffic over fixed line broadband in Asia alone in 2011, and it forecasts this traffic to grow by over 200 percent by the end of 2015.

Informa says that CDNs and, therefore their customers, must also overcome the challenge of delivering OTT video to a range of devices, whereas in the last decade almost all OTT video was delivered to PCs, which despite their many differences offered quite a homogenous environment across different manufacturers and form factors.

'Now OTT video will be delivered not only to the PC but also to the Connected TV, tablets, and smartphones. Each of these different devices will make different demands on OTT video, requiring video to be delivered in the appropriate resolution, format and the correct DRM. A one size fits all approach of simply offering standard web video will not be sufficient to provide an excellent experience to users on all of these devices,' Informa Telecoms & Media's Stephen Scott said.

Informa makes the point that the sheer number of smartphones entering the market each year means that they cannot be ignored, and it forecast that the sales of smartphones in Asia will exceed 140 million in 2011 and that this number will more than double by 2016. 'But although their technical specifications are increasingly on par with PCs providing web quality video to smartphones will place an unnecessary burden on the network as the screen is too small for users to perceive the benefits,' Scott says.

Informa also predicts that there will be 331 million connected TVs in the Asia Pacific region accounting for almost one third of total TVs in the region, and that the TV OTT video services must offer a comparable service to linear TV. 'When users select a video to watch, load times should be as minimal as possible and stoppages for video buffering are cardinal sins. Variable bit rate streaming can overcome these problems. But users will equally not tolerate low quality video and must have as close to real HD as possible so higher bandwidths of at least 1.5Mbps will be required,' cautions Scott.

'The majority of video watched on connected TVs will be long form, and as these devices lack significant storage and memory so progressive streaming is not a viable option. It is also worth noting that as yet there is very little standardisation across connected TVs as to what video streaming technology and DRM these devices support further complicating the issue.'

In a connected home full of new smart devices, Informa stresses that CDNs have the unenviable task of having to serve two masters - the smartphone with its demands of short form lower quality video, and Connected TV devices which will demand high quality long form video. Any CDN that can manage such a juggling act will find itself in great demand, according to Informa.

Stephen Scott said the CDN Asia Summit, to be held in Hong Kong on 7 and 8 February, will be 'buzzing with the major service providers from the APAC region wanting to gain an insight on (sic) to manage a CDN.'  Scott says the summit will also feature 17 exclusive CDN case studies from the leading service providers in the region such as Telstra, Tata, Korea Telecom and KDDI.