Products & Solutions :: Technology
With the advent of 3G and 4G mobile networks, operators and technology providers across the globe are realizing, while these networks succeed in reducing delivery cost and enabling new services, they still aren't capable of delivering a truly mass market, consumer mobile video experience.
To answer this unmet challenge, a new generation of "mobile broadcast" technology has been developed that leverages new Radio Frequency (RF) techniques to radically alter the content delivery equation to mobile handsets. While these technologies are referred to by a variety of acronyms including DVB-H, MediaFLO, WiMax MBS, MBMS, and BCMCS, and more, they all promise breakthrough economics using similar mechanisms.
Mobile Broadcast Overview
Traditional mobile content delivery uses a model derived from voice services known as "unicast," where a single content stream is delivered to a single consumer. With services like high-quality/high-bitrate mobile video, this sort of "point-to-point" delivery can quickly result in significant Over-the-Air (OTA) cost for the operator and consumer alike.
In contrast to unicast, broadcast and multicast services deliver a single, shared OTA content stream that multiple consumers listen to simultaneously. This RF technique has the immediate benefit of sharing the OTA cost among multiple users resulting in dramatically improved economics for the operator. Furthermore, the deployment of mobile broadcast also introduces a unique, new delivery channel to handsets with their own new semantics and behaviors distinct from classic, point-to-point mobile applications.
Peruse the following websites to learn more about the fast-paced mobile broadcast industry. These websites detail industry news and provide relevant background information.