KPN and Ericsson Conduct Live LTE Video Trial in the Netherlands
During a football match between Ajax and NEC, held at the Netherland's Amsterdam Arena on Saturday, May 3, fans got to experience a first. Network operator KPN, along with Ericsson and partners Qualcomm, Samsung, and IBM, streamed the game live within the arena over an LTE cellular network using Ericsson's LTE Broadcast technology. LTE Broadcast relies on HEVC, MPEG-DASH, and eMBMS (the LTE version of Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services, which delivers point-to-multipoint cellular broadcasting).
Ericsson says that LTE Broadcast can bring high-quality video of major events to "virtually unlimited" viewers simultaneously. The company is pitching it to operators as a new source of revenue for premium video services.
Citing increased demand for mobile video, Ericsson notes that TV and video traffic over mobile networks is predicted to grow 60 percent each year through the end of 2018.
"Our experience with our country-wide 4G network demonstrates there is a clear customer demand for video content during events," says Joost Steltenpool, director access for KPN. "Therefore our aim was to find a solution for delivering high quality video content to large groups of people."
The LTE Broadcast trial was a success, and KPN is looking to next steps in LTE streaming, Steltenpool says.
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