Nick Moreno, Director of Strategy, Satellite & Media, at Arqiva anticipates the following broadcasting trends at this year’s Mobile World Congress:
“The biggest broadcasting trend we are going to see at this year’s Mobile World Congress is around the shift to new ways of viewing.
“Consumer viewing habits are changing at a significant rate, and we’re already seeing the mobile device becoming the first-screen for younger, millennial audiences watching video content. In the near future, vast amounts of video will be viewed on mobile devices, and to enable that the industry needs much more efficient delivery mechanisms.
“This is pushing new technologies such as 5G into implementation phase, as companies attempt to meet the demands of the modern viewer. 5G offers significant benefits for delivering video at scale to millions of customers, and many will be exploring this at MWC.
“Another trend that will be interesting for broadcasters is the use of blockchain technology.
“We are already starting to see blockchain looked at as a ledger of video rights, so that various industry players can easily view the rights for monetising a certain piece of video content in different territories.
“Blockchain could also have a longer term use case as the enabling technology for ultra-local peer-to-peer distribution of content, allowing content to be distributed closer to the consumer (i.e. local servers, personal PCs) whilst still having legitimately tracked usage rights.”