5G Broadcast and Mobile Networks
Mobile network operators face the following operational challenges known as 3Cs:
- Capacity
- Coverage
- Cost
According to the latest forecast from Ericsson, cellular networks are expected to experience nearly three times the current traffic growth in the next five years. This surge is driven by consumers increasingly adopting 5G phones, which boast larger displays, faster connectivity, and rich media capabilities. Additionally, the transition from cable to fixed wireless access for home broadband contributes to this traffic growth.
Now, there’s a thought-provoking article by Joe Madden, a wireless market analyst. He highlights that the unit cost for carrying data traffic on cellular networks will not decrease as we transition from 5G to 6G in the future. The article is worth reading to understand why the author believes that the likely outcome could be the end of unlimited plans as we currently know it.
Indeed, the convergence of these trends presents a fascinating challenge for mobile network operators. As network operators face the triple challenges of capacity, coverage and cost, finding innovative solutions becomes crucial for profitability and sustained Quality of Experience on their network. Here someone will wonder if there is a way to augment cellular networks with the cost effective and reliable broadcast networks which would ultimately provide more capacity, wider coverage and reduced costs that would benefit both network operator, content platform and equally important benefiting end users. Having advantages in different scenarios combining best of both unicast and broadcast networks sounds like a no brainer. But I will be the first one to admit it is a quite challenging problem to solve with many moving parts and many stakeholders in different business segments. However, the problem at hand is significant enough to warrant a conversation between these stakeholders.
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Being involved in 5G Broadcast development and witnessing explosive interest in 5G Broadcast, I have high confidence there is a tremendous opportunity where broadcast and telecom industries could collaborate on a hybrid unicast/broadcast network where a small section of the video data such as highly popular, live video ( think of recent Super Bowl or cricket World Cup 2023 final with 59 Million concurrent viewers!) on cellular networks could be opportunistically routed to broadcast networks when cellular network is resource constrained or not available at all.
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Just for fun I used very rough but very conservative assumptions and ran some numbers. Here my base assumption was 80% of cellular traffic will be video by 2029 and we will be able to offload only 3% of video data traffic from cellular to broadcast networks. Again, it is important to emphasize this would be only live broadcast of a major event with millions of viewers. If we were to utilize a truly converged unicast-broadcast network, my calculation shows cellular networks and OTT platforms could save over 300M USD annually in distribution and storage costs. Putting aside things like reduced energy footprint with broadcast or improved Quality of Experience for ALL subscribers on the mobile network there is a significant economic value unlocked that is worth exploring. (I am more than happy to hear more educated guesses and constructive criticism from experts with access to more accurate data)
5G Broadcast is an IP based broadcast standard and it can seamlessly integrate to unicast networks, as it was demonstrated by several partners in the past (1) (2) (3). Additionally, 5G Broadcast is unique in its ground-up design as it leverages building blocks inside cellular modems in everyday devices. Support of 5G Broadcast in a cellular device would not require a separate demodulator device which lowers the barriers of entry to mobile device ecosystem.
Admittingly, it will take time for all stakeholders to understand how a new scheme like LTE based 5G Broadcast could integrate to their service offering and benefit their business. Currently, I am passionate about educating, partnering and collaborating with partners around the world, with the objective of bringing 5G Broadcast to all cellular devices.
If you are a MNO, BNO, CDN, cloud service provider, infrastructure vendor, traditional broadcaster, OTT platform or a developer who wants to get involved, feel free to reach out.
Great article Aytac Biber MNO should consider this as a great solution to scale the Subs and off load and be a solution for Live video.
Interesting article Aytac Biber , here is my 2 cents: There is a nice technical opportunity with 5G to implement these mechanisms in a highly intelligent and dynamic way through analytics, utilizing NWDAF. Additionally, multicast/broadcast distribution could be efficiently executed at the network's edge using MEC infrastructure.?These would allow to trigger the usage of Multicast/Broadcast only in the areas it is required. There are significant regulatory aspects to consider for actualizing this potential. It necessitates close cooperation between MNOs and BNOs. Further collaboration in this area will likely require governmental regulation to enable spectrum use for mobile distribution, which may prove challenging in certain countries, especially if broadcasters are concerned about MNOs encroaching on their spectrum. I belive it is an very good opportunity for Broadcasters to introduce new business models to leverage their spectrum and adapt to the growing demand of Mobile connectivity.