Adoption of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) ATSC 3.0 digital transmission standard is underway and leading-edge broadcast providers have lined up to take advantage of its unprecedented new business opportunities.
ATSC 3.0 enables extra capacity and resources that will help support new use cases such as broadcast internet – internet services delivered on ATSC 3.0’s one-to-many architecture. When paired with existing spectrum, the extra capacity will be able to send out up to 25 Mbps data streams, and enable convergence with other technologies such as 5G network capabilities.
We recently explored the big picture of the opportunities of an end-to-end ATSC 3.0 network from core to edge The next topic in this series looks in depth at the foundational role of the broadcast core network in this new frontier.
Broadcast core network: A foundation for services at scale
A high-performing broadcast core network that provides services at scale will be essential to deliver on the promises of ATSC 3.0. Following a 5G-service-based architecture, the broadcast core network will streamline the efficiencies of spectrum usage, and provide maximum flexibility to content delivery.
A core network can offer broadcaster businesses like yours benefits such as:
- Efficiently offering numerous services across regions and markets
- Enabling orchestration, automation, and zero-touch operation of services
- Allowing clients to discover services from the core network
- Providing clients with up-to-date entitlement to services
- Offering security, by allowing you to identify users and provide specific services to which each user is entitled, based on which services are included in their subscriptions
- Providing additional benefits for consumers in hard-to-reach, remote areas that lack strong broadband connections
- Enabling new use cases such as allowing a broadcast hosting company to serve as a Broadcast Virtual Network Operator (BVNO)—leasing spectrum resources to other companies on demand, or as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO)—selling unused network capacity to other operators.
Broadcast core network and ATSC standards: The journey toward convergence
When it comes to taking assets from content to broadcast, the legacy ATSC 1.0 architecture is a rigid linear technology. This design can’t support the ability to enable your business to offer the personalized advertising that holds greater revenue potential. While we could nominally characterize the data transport function of ATSC 1.0 as “multicast,” in fact its ability to offer differentiated services beyond mass-audience reach is severely limited.
- Broadcasters compete in an increasingly competitive field. Consumers today expect to be able to curate their own programming needs with content from many sources, aggregated over broadband IP networks.
- These networks can target small, desired demographics with unique and interesting content. These innovators have started by transforming the technologies that support their services—building around the convergence of the broadcast core network and 5G.
- Flexibility is at the heart of this convergence. As IP-delivered broadcasting in a 5G space comes together with traditional, multicast terrestrial broadcasting, the playing field changes.
- An ATSC 3.0 architecture enabled by a broadcast core network opens an unprecedented ability to program and deliver individualized content streams via the best transmission path to reach the desired target audience.
- Broadcast core networks will converge with 5G to enable a balancing act. Whether viewers acquire content by mobile device or by television, you’ll be able to distribute any content with optimal economics. Your viewers’ screens will become spots for broadcast or multicast for both traditional broadcast and OTT content. This convergence will give you the flexibility to program anything, anytime, to anyone. You’ll be able to curate your content to unicast or multicast and ramp up to scale from there.
Go-to-market strategies and revenue models re-imagined: Where to begin
As the traditional world of over-the-air (OTA) programming comes together with multicast and unicast IP on your viewers’ screens, you’ll need to re-imagine your go-to-market strategies and revenue models.
Beyond the table stakes
Clearly, enabling ATSC 3.0 is now a must as a minimum point of parity to keep your viewers engaged and satisfied. But the incremental costs of upgrading to add new modulation, exciters, and so forth, that support ATSC 3.0, will be unaffordable if you otherwise keep operating in an ATSC 1.0 world. Beyond these upgrades, you must plan how to use them to drive new programming streams and revenue models.
Where you should begin depends entirely on identifying your most immediate revenue targets, and aligning to a positive cash flow position against that new market opportunity. In our assessment, impactful multicast players with the highest run rate advertising revenues will target the broadcast and OTT content domain first, while other players with smaller advertising run rate business will choose to focus on disruptive datacasting revenue opportunities.
- Traditional broadcast revenues. If you seek the most immediate uplift on traditional broadcast revenues, the dynamic content core is the critical first step. This is the domain where the revenue streams associated with instant channels, event-driven content, ad personalization, and ultra-high-definition viewership are enabled.
- Multicast revenues. If you’re targeting multicast revenues, the edge deployment architecture is the critical first step. In this space, the content and software distribution caches intersect with scheduling and multi-tenant edge distribution to create new datacasting revenue opportunities both as a wholesale distributor and via edge hosting and transmission for client distribution platforms.
Unique programming and variable streams drive targeted advertising revenue
The broadcasting community is just starting to assess the possibilities that the core broadcast network will enable—including services never before considered. Innovative broadcasters have begun to evolve their services to monetize opportunities in this challenging but promising landscape.
Ultimately, the broadcast core network changes the competitive landscape by enabling domains to support instant channels and hybrid broadcast/over-the-top (OTT) content. Broadcasters who get this right will be able to offer a unique mix of high-quality content with unique user feeds and highly targeted content. You’ll be able to program for and reach precisely the audiences you want—ranging from the masses on down to one organization, household, or individual.
This unlocks differentiated, targeted capabilities, with accompanying revenue streams and market opportunities. As a result, the core broadcast network will transform your ability to enter new markets. Traditionally, the cost to reach a minimum viable threshold of viewers has been the biggest barrier to enter a new market. But in a “TikTok” world where advertisers can take interest in even one or two content views by the right viewers, this barrier drops sharply.
Converged network operation
Targeted advertising will certainly drive revenue opportunities in this new landscape. But ultimately, broadcasters will gain the most go-forward revenue opportunities from serving as a converged network operator and last-mile access provider. Because of the similarity of broadcast core network with 3GPP core network design, especially with respect to the control plane, ATSC 3.0 makes this unique opportunity possible. The same core network elements will interact with mobile radio access network (RAN) and with ATSC 3.0 broadcast chain to provide converged services. Both BVNOs and MVNOs will look to operate on the distribution side as offload channels for the carriers, as this will be the true driver for new revenue.
Key building blocks of the broadcast core network
The ATSC standards body is shaping the standards for the broadcast core network. The broadcast core will take its definitions from 5G core to the greatest degree possible, following a service-based architecture where the control plane is decoupled from the data plane, or more accurately, the data plane in ATSC 3.0 is the transmission chain.
Several key functions for the broadcast core network already are known to be similar in nature to a 3GPP 5G core network:
Transport function, control plane, and orchestrator. The transport function and control are necessary to create different slices within the network for the ATSC 3.0 core.
- An orchestrator, or “slice manager” adds key flexibility and efficiency. The orchestrator makes it possible to dynamically allocate spectrum-to-data sources across multiple locations through a mesh of antennas.
- Enabling and offering services in a large-scale network requires zero-touch operation. The orchestrator automatically instantiates all necessary functions for any given services on demand and likewise automatically deprovisions them when they’re no longer needed. The utilized spectrum is then released back into the available pool.
- The orchestrator will have service definitions and an entitlement to services to enable it to register the necessary network components of every activated service into a monitoring system. This system will track the operational health of all components and report any issues so that automatic healing can be done to restore these services.
- Orchestration is a key function to enable the BVNO use case, discussed above, as automation is an essential feature to instantly activate a service.
Subscriber data management (SDM). SDM is another important module in the ATSC 3.0 core network. SDM is needed to enable advanced services. It will provide:
- Authentication functionality to identify a customer’s receiving equipment and enable it to consume the multicast / broadcast services
- A function that exposes northbound interfaces to enable customer provisioning / deprovisioning to services
- A function to enable service discovery. After each customer is identified, the SDM will provide a pointer to the services specific to this customer’s subscriptions.
What’s next for the broadcast core network?
The ATSC standards body’s ATSC Planning Team 8 (PT-8) is actively working to shape the future of the broadcast core network:
- This planning team is conducting a study to identify additional key functions that the broadcast core will require.
- PT-8 is also reviewing all the new use cases that ATSC 3.0 enables. PT-8 will conduct a deep dive on each use case to identify the associated core network benefits.
- PT-8 is working to recommend further changes to the ATSC architecture so that new services can be dynamically detected as they are introduced, rather than requiring the services configuration to remain static between frequency scans, as it was in ATSC 1.0, and remains in the initial implementation of ATSC 3.0
- Following these exercises, the team will submit a report to the ATSC 3.0 board, outlining these specific benefits and recommending clear next steps.
Implementing these improvements will make it possible to offer nation-wide services that expand the boundaries of broadcast service provisioning – from local to global—vastly increasing the opportunities to monetize the broadcast spectrum.
HPE supports the standards and builds the technologies that will enable broadcasters to define and implement the steps to harness these market-changing opportunities:
- Standards. HPE contributes guidance to the go-forward ATSC standards as an active member of the ATSC and of PT-8. HPE also participates in the GSMA and 3GPP standards bodies.
- Technologies. HPE’s 5G Core network software stack provides slicing, interworking with previous generation network technologies, and end-to-end automation. HPE designed this stack as cloud-native from the ground up.
- It includes stateless containerized network functions (CNF) from HPE and partners, a shared data environment (SDE), a common platform-as-a-service (PaaS) architecture, end-to-end Management and Orchestration (MANO), and automation framework.
- All are pre-integrated on carrier-grade infrastructure as a service (IaaS).
- The stack is designed for end-to-end production.
Learn more
Next in this series, we’ll discuss in detail the role that the dynamic content core plays in the convergence of ATSC 3.0 and 5G.
Contact HPE’s telecom digital services creation experts to learn how HPE can help broadcasters prepare to take advantage of the opportunities of this convergence.
Meet the HPE Telco Experts!
Ali Dernaika is a solution architect in digital video services for the HPE Americas region since 2016. He holds a Master’s degree in telecommunications from Lebanese University. Ali has worked in several major telecom companies and service providers with responsibility for TV service architecture and deployment; currently he’s focused on digital transformation to media clouds
Atheer Sabti is a Global Video Solution Architect at HPE with over 20 years of experience in the technology and media industry with a working experience and background in broadcasting and telecom domains. He participates in and contributes to achieve business growth and expansion by means of developing and researching solutions that address the business goals, demands, and opportunities of our telco clients.
Sean P Sullivan is an HPE North America strategy director in communications, media and entertainment, and has been with HPE since 2011. He has over 20 years’ experience in the telco and media industries, currently focusing on edge cloud connectivity via 5G/FWA and ATSC 3, extending into WiFi, MEC and uCPE. He holds degrees from Florida State University and the Ohio State University.
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