Copy of Hybrid CDN & SD-WAN + 5G Broadcast delivery Coming soon to a Network near you!

I was reading an article on a recent panel comparing CDN's and Broadcast.?Apparently the tech world is still trying to figure out when CDN's will reach the scale of Broadcast technology.?This question has emerged in different forms and for different reasons for years if not decades. When will they stop trying to compare apples and oranges??

The only sensible way Unicast could continue to to scale and reach parity or surpass any broadcast delivery service, satellite or terrestrial, is to leverage some form of 5G broadcast at the edge. ?This hybrid will handle unicast and broadcast requests mixing the benefits and limitations of both.? Not as useful for interactive experiences like eSPorts, and not extremely innovative for engaging experiences like AR & VR.?So what is the point? The point is that the demand will come in many forms driven by both lean forward and lean back experiences.

It is a likely real world scenario is that Unicast and Broadcast will co-exist.?The former when the content is not typically Tier One or requires an interactive and immersive experience.? The latter when the audience is massive, persistent and requires low latency & synchronization.?

The CDN's we know today will adapt, or possibly perish.?The best chance they have to adapt is to embrace enhanced 4G or 5G for technology like LTE Broadcast at the edge.?Many of the new mobile consumption devices already support receipt of such broadcast-like signals but the features are not yet enabled. The good news is that the devices will participate in the delivery technology versus the dumb Unicast devices that connect to the finite cache and stream points at the network edge today. We will see a tight coupling of device and service which may afford some mashing of messaging, social and commerce, amongst other features, into the mix.

Who knows exactly when the tipping point will arrive.?Maybe in 2 years when 5G deployments get some scale and reach, maybe sooner in closed, local or in-venue delivery.?The winners will be those who adapt and ride the quickly coming tide of hybrid unicast and broadcast networking.