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Sporting events like the Super Bowl, World Cup and the Olympics have long been watched by thousands via television. Over the years, some sports have become more popular and mainstream thanks to high television viewership. As the world continues to live a mobile lifestyle, mobiles device are becoming a companion screen for television viewing. Mobile television viewing skyrocketed this year thanks in part to the Summer Olympic Games in London.
ByteMobile and Amethon Solutions published a report in mid-2012 on the expected impact of the 2012 Summer Olympics on operators’ networks. This initial report was based on a collaborative analysis of mobile data trends during major sporting events of the previous 12 months. Based on this research, it was projected that mobile operators would see a 211% increase in traffic worldwide during the London Games. The findings also predicted that mobile video usage would double, accounting for 50% of total data traffic on 3G and “4G” networks, worldwide.
In London, it didn’t take long for mobile users to strain the network. During the men’s cycling road race, mobile traffic impacted the networks, which interrupted television coverage and GPS devices of the racers. Throughout the games, viewers consumed an average of 94.3 minutes of live content via mobile applications. The consumption was nearly equal to the 11.4 live streaming minutes consumed on the Web, with 60% of visits to the official Olympics website coming from mobile devices. Overall, the London Olympics saw 159.3 million video streams, compared to 75.5 million streams four years earlier in Beijing. Following the games, both NBC and BBC reported 45% and 41%, respectively, of Olympic IP videos streamed were to mobile and tablet devices.
Today’s consumers and sports fans are looking to enhance their viewing experience with a dual screen and expect the same level of experience on their high-end mobile devices and tablet computers as they’ve had on their traditional laptops or desktop PCs. If the devices are ready and the content is there, then what is the issue? The network is the issue. Mobile operators require the ability to assess how much more data traffic a new device and bandwidth-intensive content really mean for their network – and to plan accordingly. This further intensifies the importance of providing a quality viewing experience. Unfortunately, as a majority of network operators have already seen, the growth of mobile data traffic has resulted in significant network congestion and therefore a diminished user experience. As data usage continues to increase, the user experience will deteriorate, and we can expect to see operators experiment with more sophisticated tariffs and billing policies in order to manage their network traffic intelligently.
Many can draw the conclusion that the Olympics fundamentally changed the entire sports-viewing landscape. As we reach the era of increased high-speed LTE networks and devices with high-definition viewing support, consumers will increasingly use their mobile devices as not just companion viewing devices, but also as primary screens. Sporting events such as the Super Bowl, World Cup and future Olympic Games are more likely to have an increased mobile viewership than on a television. Consumers now expect to have the same sports and entertainment content on their mobile devices that they could access on their PC and TV, including live streaming content.
The gap between user expectations and congestion-impacted service is not only frustrating to consumers, but also creates new challenges for operators. Mobile operators are prioritizing investments to enable their networks to handle more subscribers and bandwidth, as well as latency-dependent applications. Smart capacity solutions can reduce network download volumes by up to 60 % – further decreasing the cost of content while improving the overall economics of mobile video and other data services offered by operators.
Traffic management solutions, in particular mobile video and web optimization, will reduce the amount of traffic on mobile networks while helping improve the overall user experience. These technologies provide device and application aware intelligence in the network and let operators achieve the best utilization of their existing network assets, including spectrum. When deployed in combination with LTE, they can help operators meet explosive traffic demand and high user expectations. With sports viewing on mobile devices increasing, operators will need to consider optimizing their capacity to allow for the influx in traffic.
We are currently on the brink where new devices with faster networks and elevated consumer expectations have propelled each further, creating a viable market for streaming live mobile television offerings. This emerging market with a growing user base will allow for increased revenue potential for service providers and telcos alike – if they are prepared for sports and other entertainment viewing to take on the small screen.
