BT Group Moves to Improve UK Video Streaming with New Delivery Network
Broadband and telecoms giant BT Group has today announced a new partnership with edge video delivery network MainStreaming, which they hope will deliver a smoother and “more resilient streaming experience” for UK audiences by integrating it directly into their nationwide mobile and fixed networks.
According to the blurb, the new collaboration will: boost the quality of experience (QoE) and reliability for live streaming audiences; drive greater cost efficiency for network providers through caching at the edge (); and deliver efficiency for content providers through a unique capacity-based model to simplify costs.
On top of that, the roadmap also includes the UK’s “first trials” of MAUD (Multicast-Assisted Unicast Delivery) for live streaming, which is a type of Content Delivery Network (CDN) technology that we’ve written about a few times before (here). But we’re not sure why this is referenced as “first trials“, since EE has already conducted one (here).
Advertisement
The companies will also look at software-defined edge caching solutions designed to meet the evolving demands of content providers and consumers.
Chris Bramley, BT’s Chief Network Architect, said:
“We are continually enhancing our networks to ensure our customers enjoy the best possible streaming experience. Bringing a leading Content Delivery Network provider like MainStreaming into our network enables us to drive efficiency of video content delivery and provide outstanding viewing experiences to our shared customers.”
The improvements are being aimed at UK broadcasters and Over-The-Top (OTT) video platforms, which could include anything from the BBC’s iPlayer to Netflix or EE’s own pay TV services etc. But the announcement is somewhat vague on when everything promised by this partnership will be fully introduced or trialled.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Car Fire Triggers 3 Week Openreach Broadband Outage in East Sussex Village
So more wishy-washy stuff that will make difference to no one. I suppose it sounds good, ISPs can stick it in their advertising and make it sound good.
I don’t really bother with live-streaming, in fact I don’t bother with live-streaming at all.
Before someone comes out with it, yes I would still think it was wishy-washy stuff, even if my network supplier came out with it.
Streaming have not really been a problem for me, even on FTTC, sure sometimes it takes a few seconds to start, but I think that is more to do with the streaming service than the network.
People are too impatient to wait for a couple of seconds these days, they want everything that second.
I also did see about the cost saving
How will it ‘make difference to no-one’? Streaming is the most significant use of broadband networks and how well, or not, it is done has a massive impact on the experience all users of that network get, regardless of what they are doing.
It’s not ‘wishy washy stuff’ – it’s serious network engineering. How to stream well is one of the largest problems any senior network folk working on public networks have to manage.
This CDN covers both live streaming and video on demand.
It’s nothing to do with anyone waiting a few more seconds for a stream to start.
Without CDNs pretty much every ISP’s network would fall apart and to stop that they’d have to charge more.
2Polish Poler , so it proves the point, they are just putting this out to make it look like they offer something other networks don’t
More marketing rubbish.
CDNs come in different flavours, this one being edge and trialing MAUD is interesting.
Sorry it’s not to your interest however the site, being ISP Review, is allowed to publish stories that aren’t tailored to your interests. Could always either not read them at all or read a bit and move on.
Still, your call if you want to take the time to post on things you are neither interested in or have a clue about to share your disinterested and ill-informed opinions.
Feels like it being BT doing this contributed too.
So your sample size of one says this won’t improve my life so it’s stupid. The other 70% of households that stream can do one as I’m happy.
I think you have full encapsulated the problems with our society in one very clear comment. Well done.
It would be interesting to see if the aggregation mechanism causes any noticeable delays to the start of streaming in the off-peak hours, for example, or what the impact of an extended pause initiated by the consumer in the same said hours would have.
The aggregation mechanism? I’m not sure what you mean. People are pointed to the CDN by DNS, they request content, the caches go fetch it and customer receives their stream. Next person served by that cache asking for same content receives from cache. No appreciable increase in delay, any content cache doesn’t have it fetches rapidly.
Huge swathes of the content most consume come from local-ish CDNs if they’re on an ISP with some scale.
Should be documented somewhere.
Yes, the aggregation mechanism.
The BT already has streaming cached in select local exchanges which are long in the tooth.
Main local storage for BBC iPlayer, Netflix & other UK terrestrial services to offload the back haul.
BT says it is first in MAUD as EE is BT, with lines very blurred EE primarily used for domestic customers.
So surprised not to keep MAUD in the EE brand.
I remember seeing a report about SKY needed to pull it’s finger out to add kit as local switching to their backbone was becoming congested. They have now fixed since SKY glass!
This is at least the third attempt within BT Group to get a complete solution, using a different partner in each trial as far as I am aware.
It can’t get any worse. I’ve had 900mb download (supposedly) for two years with bt and have never been able to stream anything on any streaming service without constant buffering. I raised this with bt and they said streaming wasn’t a reliable way to watch content and there’s nothing they could do.
I live in a village in Cornwall , l am unable to have any internet put in, as the exchange is full … the data (giffgaff) l have on my phone varies between 2 bars on 3/4 G l couldn’t even make a phone call easily this morning , obviously the schools are back and using the internet today , so for my phone it was a no show
This looks like a good development. MAUD, as I understand, multicasts content to the network edge which, in this context, is the Smart Hub 2, for unicasting to devices over the LAN. The role of MainStreaming is to enable BT to have an edge CDN inside its network with Mainstreaming managing things like caching for faster delivery to the network edges. It also means that BT won’t need to rely so much on CDNs like Akamai as, instead of repeatedly pulling content from the CDNs it needs to pull once into its own CDN until a refresh is needed.
I believe this is also being looked into for download servers, Xbox, ps and steam ect
Many ISP have direct links or even content caches within their networks for the streaming services because it reduces the amount they have to pay the transit ISPs as the servers within their own network negate the need for multiple users to hit these transit connections. It’s nothing really new but the cost of such systems did cause a debate on net neutrality with regards to who should pay for the servers and bandwidth needed for the streaming services.