Do you know what Telstra, Vodafone, Verizon, China Telecom… and others have in common? Well, apart being progressive and leading network operators, they all have recently trialed or demonstrated LTE Broadcast on devices powered by Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ processors! Since I last wrote on Verizon’s LTE Broadcast trials at the Indy 500, Qualcomm Technologies has been involved in a flurry of activity around LTE Broadcast. With many operators now experimenting with LTE Broadcast in a big way around the world, commercialization opportunities for this new technology appear to be growing every day.
From Melbourne to Nanjing
For a quick recap, Telstra successfully tested LTE Broadcast in a large-scale trial during a live cricket match at the Melbourne cricket ground in January. Verizon trialed broadcast at the Super Bowl while Vodafone tested LTE Broadcast at a live soccer game in Germany in February. KPN chose to trial LTE Broadcast, again at a soccer stadium, in Amsterdam in May.
Orange conducted an LTE Broadcast trial at the tennis French open while China Telecom did a demonstration at the Mobile Internet Forum in Nanjing during June. Very recently, EE partnered with BBC to demonstrate LTE Broadcast at the commonwealth games in London. Note that all of the above activities were enabled by devices using Qualcomm Technologies chipsets and LTE Broadcast middleware solution.
Delivering an amazing user experience
Whether it was following race car drivers through multiple cameras at the Indy, watching instant replays of crucial soccer plays, or getting real-time stats of concurrently playing tennis matches at the French open, LTE broadcast allowed mobile users to enjoy a multi-stream, content-rich experience across these vastly different sporting events.
Delivering high quality content simultaneously yet reliably and efficiently to a large number of consumers at sporting venues has always been an important pain point for the mobile ecosystem. All of the above trial activity goes to show that LTE Broadcast is addressing this challenge by bringing together an exceptional end-to-end solution based on proven LTE technology that can scale with an increasing number of users while offering an amazing user experience.
Potential for innovation in LTE services
Beyond sporting events, there exist many potential applications such as mobile TV (already launched by KT in Korea), public safety, mobile learning, and e-media delivery to name a few. As enhanced business models around broadcast service delivery and content distribution begin to emerge, many of these potential applications are likely to be triggered.
There is no doubt that LTE Broadcast is evolving rapidly with strong support from key players in the mobile ecosystem. If you are interested to learn more about the evolution and potential impact of LTE Broadcast, join the public webinar hosted by Qualcomm Technologies in collaboration with Fierce Wireless on 8/26/2014.
