Telstra has this week announced they’ve switched on LTE-Broadcast (LTE-B) technology nationally in their mobile network, offering high-quality video and audio over their mobile network, even in high traffic area.
LTE-B essentially allows broadcasters, or content providers to send a single high-bitrate data stream from a mobile cell which can then be accessed at equal quality by any device. Telstra is leading the world on LTE-B deployment, becoming one of the first in the world to deploy the technology on their network.
Telstra has begun offering the LTE-B broadcasts to Samsung Galaxy S8 and S9 handsets using the AFL Live Official app, with a successful live demonstration in Sydney showing over 100 devices showing simultaneous high definition content from the app. Telstra also set up a second batch of devices showing the content delivered by conventional unicast, which demonstrated how traditional broadcast over normal networks can be saturated by demand, meaning lower quality and lag of content to avid fans.
Solving broadcast issues for mobile video content is a high priority for Telstra who offer sporting streams for the AFL/AFL-W, NRL, Netball and the Socceroos across a variety of apps to their customers. Mike Wright, Telstra Group Managing Director, Networks said
In fact, Telstra is now streaming live sports content to a massive base of around 1.2 million devices, and sports fans consume 37 million minutes of live content over our apps on any given weekend.
Telstra intends to implement LTE-B streams within more apps, and make it accessible to more devices over the coming months.
if it doesn’t Affect regular users… fantastic.. probably wouldn’t need this if we had been given the original broadband we were promised.
After the World Cup fiasco, this looks like the sort of technology that Optus needs.
Then again, all I want out of a telco is for them to deliver zeros and ones. They should get out of the content game.
AH this isn’t only what optus needs they need steams and caching.
Youtube, Netflix has Caching systems all over the world & provide multiple device type streams with lots of different bitrates.
Optus Sports was shit 12months (and always) before the world cup knew full well they couldn’t cope with the load
they also said they supported devices like chromecasting but it never worked correctly due to them no supporting the device with the correct encoded stream.