End-users expect to be able to access their desired content – fully personalized social media such as Facebook, YouTube videos or Netflix – on whatever device they happen to be using, wherever they are, whenever they want. Increasingly, those devices are smartphones and tablets.
According to Adobe’s latest Video Benchmarking Report for online video/TV Everywhere, Android apps have now surpassed desktop browsers as access points for watching TV online. Apple’s iOS continued to lead in market share with 51% of the online TV-watching market access points, while Android apps grew to 20% of the market, browsers shrank to 19% market share and gaming consoles and over-the-top devices accounted for 10%. Adobe also found that smartphone viewing of online videos surpassed tablet viewing for the first time, climbing to 14% via smartphone compared to 13% on tablets.
Here are some of the factors affecting the efficiency and quality of experience for content delivery over mobile networks:
• Network variability. This is one of the primary differences between wired and wireless broadband networks: the degree of variability that users experience. Network conditions change as users move in and out of cells, as well as between the cell edge and closer to its center. Adaptive bitrate technology is being used to try to account for network variability.
Cam Cullen of network monitoring and management company Procera Networks, described adaptive bitrate as being able to adjust the video delivery, so that if a network connection starts degrading, a lower bitrate version is sent to the user with no interruption in viewing. Typically, he said, adaptive bitrate content starts at a slower bitrate and then ramps up as high as is possible. The quality of the end-user experience often depends on the buffering capacity of their end device to deal with any network hiccups during the viewing. Adaptive bitrate becomes particularly important, he said, in encrypted content and in mobile networks, which typically have more variable conditions.
• Device choice. Tablets have been rapidly growing as the device chosen to watch video. EMarketer has reported that “the time U.S. adults spend watching video on tablets is growing faster than on any other medium.”
“Based on current trends, it’s inevitable that tablets will overtake online video — that is, on desktops and laptops — in the near future as the leading device for watching digital video,” the company added.
However, smartphones are also being used to access video. That video tends to be short-form content-snacking, though, and difficult to monetize. But there are some signals that mobile consumers may be shifting toward long-form content on smartphones. A June 2014 survey by 451 Research showed that 22% of consumers watch live TV on their phones at least once a week. A recent survey by ComScore found that watching Netflix on mobile devices is sharply higher among “millennials” — nearly half did so, compared to 36% of adults between the ages of 35 and 54.
Having a mobile device connected doesn’t necessarily mean a cellular connection, however, as Cisco reported that for IP traffic in general, the amount from cellular and Wi-Fi devices will exceed that of wired devices by 2016. The majority of that traffic is video content now, and Cisco predicts that non-file-sharing IP video traffic will hit 80% of overall traffic by 2018.
• Encryption. Because most content consumed over mobile devices has been social-media driven, it typically hasn’t been encrypted – unlike long-form content from studios, which has digital rights management features in order to be protected from unauthorized viewing and copying. That is shifting as major websites, including Google, YouTube, Facebook and others, have begun increasing the levels of content encryption in the past year or so.
“This is the hottest thing in the telco space – what percentage of content is encrypted,” said Shlomi Gian, director of business development for Akamai’s emerging mobile products group. “It’s anything from 30 to 50% – that number used to be 10% to 20% only three years ago.
“This change is shifting power toward content providers. If they have the keys, they encrypt the content, then the carrier in-between is just a pipe,” Gian added.
Operators “are having to fall back to pure network operations and TCP optimization that’s not video-inspection specific,” according to Eric Carr, SVP of engineering for Guavus. Network planning, then, is becoming an even more critical element for content delivery.
For more information on trends and challenges in the ecosystem of content delivery over mobile networks, read more stories here and download RCR Wireless’ special report on content anywhere.
