BT delivers first successful trial of new live streaming technology

By Chris Bramley, Managing director, NAS and architecture, Networks, BT

It’s the era of box office events driving huge online traffic, and in the case of Taylor Swift, literally the ‘Eras’. During her tour she smashed records for the most mobile data used during a standalone concert at Wembley Stadium. And while Swifties streamed their favourite songs in 2024, we saw sports lovers also drive record highs of online traffic. Over 11.5 million homes streamed a home-nations match at Euro 2024 and there was a record weekend of data in July, driven by Formula One at Silverstone, Women’s T20 cricket, international rugby and tennis action on the grass courts of SW19.

Without doubt, the demand for live content will continue and innovation will be part of the answer to deliver faster streaming, of higher quality content, to an even greater number of devices.

In late 2023, responding to this challenge, we launched MAUD (Multicast-Assisted Unicast Delivery) – BT Group’s revolutionary technology solution. MAUD enhances live video streaming quality and reliability for viewers and increases content delivery efficiency for broadcasters and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).

We teamed up with Broadpeak - a leading provider of content delivery network (CDN) video streaming solutions for content providers and pay-tv operators worldwide, to leverage their technology as part of the MAUD solution. And our partnership with Qwilt enabled us to deploy the MAUD solution with their Open Edge technology.

A year on from launching MAUD and we’re delighted with the results from our first trial. The trial used BBC Two content on EE’s set-top box TV platform in the live network – taking the technology from proof of concept to real-world.  The trial has shown that during peak times on the network, the MAUD solution has converted over 60 percent of traffic from unicast delivery to multicast delivery. In simpler terms, the trial has demonstrated MAUD’s ability to flatten peaks of network traffic, by switching to multicast delivery, which is a more efficient way of delivering content over the internet.

Moving to the next stage of the trial, BT Group is looking to broaden the scope to include more channels, build out the full feature set, as well as to test the addition of dynamic ad insertion, which would enable a seamless, personalised ad experience for viewers. As seen during the recent Super-Bowl, there is high demand for ad space for live sports with CEO of Fox, Lachlan Murdoch, commenting that ‘ad space had sold out at record pricing’.

As millions look forward to watching the next live event, we’ll continue to innovate and collaborate with content and application providers, on technologies such as MAUD, to make sure that we collectively deliver the best experiences for our shared customers.