When we watch a video, we expect it to play smoothly, without interruption or gaps. That’s generally true when we watch broadcast television, use cable or satellite, or play it from a storage device, such as a DVD or Blu-ray disk. But, people have increasingly started to watch video through mobiles and this has created a host of challenges. Without going into technical details, the unique demands of mobile networks mean that viewers will often experience delays, suffer from buffering while playback is halted and tries to catch up, and so on.
As a result, what we call their “Quality of Experience” (or QoE) is reduced. With more and more people using their mobiles to watch content, streamed from the internet and live broadcasts, this is becoming an increasingly common issue. What’s needed is a way to offer mobile video consumers a guarantee, so that they receive a predefined level of quality. In other words, guaranteed quality of experience, or as we call it, gQoE.
And that’s just what we do. We’ve developed a solution that can, with surgical precision, delivery the right level of experience to an individual subscriber for the specific content they wish to consume. Of course, there’s a lot of innovation behind this and some sophisticated engineering, but our team has delivered this solution and it’s now running in its first deployment.
Video is hugely important but, of course, it’s just the first use case. It’s easy to understand what makes a good experience when watching video, but there are other services that also depend on quality. We’re extending our focus to include other areas for which quality is essential – and having the means to guarantee the desired levels will make the difference between commercial success or failure. Watch out for more examples soon!