Part 2: Providing High-Quality Video Outside of the Mobile Data Caps
In my opinion, the end-user mobile video experience today leaves a lot to be desired. On any given day, I will visit an app for a leading cable news site on my iPhone. Half of the time I wind up watching a video of decent quality, and half of the time, I get a video that freezes and buffers until I get frustrated and exit the app. At best, the experience is mediocre.
Personally, I think this is unacceptable, and it looks like the majority of mobile video users today agree. In fact, we expect that over time, consumers will migrate to those applications that provide better experience for their “video snacking” time and even premium video.
It is essential, therefore, for content owners to provide consumers with a better experience just to stay competitive. One way to improve QoE and gain a strong competitive advantage is to enable apps with content pre-positioning technology. Apps that utilize this exciting new technology eliminate consumer frustration by pre-positioning content into the end device memory using surplus capacity. This allows content to be played back instantly, truly at any time (on an airplane, etc.) and with ultimate consistent quality.
We believe that pre-positioning technology, which is utilized by Opanga’s NetRover solution, can complement subscriber data usage limits and pricing plans that are becoming the norm today (see previous post). For example, content pre-positioning can enable operators to offer new innovative revenue growth applications that are “outside of the cap,” and, when done properly, can maximize the efficiency of the operators’ networks by leveraging underutilized capacity. This is in addition to providing consumers with a far superior playback experience on their device. Consider, for example, the following possible use cases:
- Premium content distribution such as catch-up TV, Seasons Pass TV and “mobile DVR” functionality.
- New release VOD movie content delivered to smartphones that coincide with DVD and Blu-Ray release windows.
- Up-to-date news applications, where subscribers can open an app and watch all of the latest local or national news videos – without a broadband connection
- Personal file sharing, where subscribers can share sharing pictures and media with other devices or family members
What other use cases can you imagine with business use cases? What is your favorite video-based app?
One Response to «Part 2: Providing High-Quality Video Outside of the Mobile Data Caps»
April 07, 2011 at 7:21 pm, Imposing data caps to contain the damage of streaming video | Opanga said:
[...] to a very complicated problem, which is commendable, but is it really wise to further diminish an already poor quality of experience for the customer? For sure the data cap will help as a band aid to their network capacity crunch [...]