Hulu Uses AWS for new live TV service

Hulu has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) to launch its new, over-the-top (OTT) Live TV service, which launched in May 2017.

AWS said its list of media companies and broadcasters running their media supply chains and OTT delivery pipelines now includes Amazon Video, AOL, BBC, Channel 4, C-SPAN, Daily Voice, Discovery Communications, Flipboard, GoPro, Guardian News & Media, Hearst Corporation, LIONSGATE, NDTV, Netflix, News International, News UK, Newsweek, PBS, Simfy Africa, Sony DADC, SoundCloud, Spotify, Time Inc., and United Daily News.

“Hulu is redefining the television experience for viewers and we have set the technical bar much higher by bringing live TV into the mix,” said Rafael Soltanovich, Vice President, Software development at Hulu. “We selected AWS as our cloud provider because of its leading breadth and depth of capabilities. The elasticity, agility, and security they provide were key to deploying our new service. Putting our stream ingest, repackaging, DVR storage, and origin serving on AWS freed us from having to build out data centers and led to a faster time to market with higher availability.”

http://www.aws.amazon.com

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IBM Acquires Clearleap for Cloud Video Platform

IBM has acquired Clearleap, a privately-held provider of cloud based video services based in Duluth, Georgia. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The Clearleap video platform is optimized for massive scalability, which enables clients to ramp up and support millions of concurrent users within seconds to support special events. Clearleap offers an open API framework that enables organizations to easily build video into applications and to adapt to specific business needs such as custom workflows and advanced analytics. The framework also enables access to key third-party applications and includes subscription and monetization services, and data centers from which to host digital video assets.

Clearleap said it serves leading brands such as HBO, A+E Networks, the NFL, BBC America, Sony Movie Channel, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon Communications, among others. The company operates data centers in Atlanta; Las Vegas; Frankfurt, Germany; and Amsterdam.

Clearleap will be integrated into the IBM Cloud platform to provide enterprises with a fast and easy way to manage, monetize and grow user video experiences and deliver them securely over the Web and mobile devices.

IBM said the acquisition is part of its broader strategy to help clients unlock the value of video as it grows in importance in business. IBM is advancing its cloud strategy to improve the performance and management of this powerful tool, and help clients extract insight from it.

“Clearleap joins IBM at a tipping point in the industry when visual information and visual communication are not just important to consumers, but are exploding across every industry," said Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, IBM Cloud. "This comes together for a client when any content can be delivered quickly and economically to any device in the most natural way."

http://www.ibm.com

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Tata Communications and Net Insight Eliminate Streaming Lag for Live Events

Tata Communications has joined forces with Net Insight, a specialist in the transport of live, interactive and on-demand content, to enable media organisations to manage and deliver live OTT content globally, in complete sync across all devices, for the first time.

The combination of Tata Communications’ Media Ecosystem, including its Video Connect service, and Net Insight’s OTT solution, enables media organisations to manage and distribute a video feed from any location globally to any device, without any delay, for a truly real-time, interactive and social TV experience, and to better monetise high-value live sports and music events. The companies said this solution marks a significant improvement over conventional OTT content delivery, where typically there is a lag of several seconds to even minutes between the live TV broadcast and the online feed.

“The OTT market is growing rapidly, driven by people’s hunger to watch their favourite shows, anytime, anywhere, on any device, but to-date, the time lag with OTT content delivery has prevented its widespread use with live events,” says Brian Morris, Vice President & General Manager, Global Media and Entertainment services, Tata Communications.

http://www.tatacommunications.com/article/tata-communications-and-net-insight-make-live-sports-and-music-events-truly-real-time

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Ericsson to Offer Subscription VOD for SPs

Ericsson is launching an end-to-end subscription video-on-demand content service called NuVu that will be marketed with service providers. AirTel Nigeria will be first to launch NuVu beginning in Q1 2016.

Subscribers will gain access to around 3,000 local and international TV and film titles for a small monthly fee. They will be able to download content directly to their smartphones or tablets at no additional data cost during off-peak network times, and access the content offline for up to 30 days after downloading.

Ericsson said it is working with a number of leading international distributors to acquire TV and film content for the new service.
NuVu is a complete end-to-end technology and content service. The platform, which has been developed by Ericsson and leverages the company's extensive over-the-top capabilities, will be fully integrated into the operator's customer relationship management and payment systems. A core feature of the service is the built-in ability to distribute content to consumers during off-peak periods. This minimizes data costs for both operator and consumer, addressing the cost challenge that has so far been an obstacle for video-on-demand uptake in Africa.

http://www.ericsson.com

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Qwilt Launches NFV-based Caching and Acceleration for Mobile Video

Qwilt, a provider of online video delivery and analytics solutions, introduced a new software defined networking (SDN)-based open caching and acceleration suite designed to address the unique challenges of over-the-top (OTT) video delivery for mobile service providers.

Qwilt Mobile Video Fabric enables dynamic caching of unmanaged and managed streams of video content on mobile networks. The company said its open caching solution, which can be deployed either at a centralized (Gi/SGi) level or distributed (eNodeB) level, will extract the most value and capacity from existing mobile network infrastructure by improving network effective capacity by up to 35 percent.

The Qwilt Mobile Video Fabric reduces network latency, improves throughput and addresses complicated mobile video RAN and backhaul challenges such as packet loss and congestion. Key attributes:

• Caching efficiency. Based on open caching technology that has been proven in networks worldwide, the Qwilt Mobile Video Fabric now extends Qwilt’s expertise to benefit mobile networks, a necessity in light of proliferation of long-form, professionally produced content such as Netflix and Amazon in mobile networks.
  
• TCP acceleration. Tuned specifically for radio network conditions, the Qwilt Mobile Video Fabric optimizes TCP for accurate and timely mobile video delivery.
  
• Any video format. Qwilt’s QB-Series Video Fabric Controller software is built to cache both video-on-demand (VOD) and live video content on mobile networks.
  
• High performance software. Qwilt’s high performance software can run in a network function virtualization (NFV) environment on any platform as an open cache virtualized network function (VNF) or on dedicated COTS hardware platforms, providing a flexible solution for mobile video caching that can be deployed in various network locations based on operator requirements.

“Mobile network operators (MNOs) now face a strategic challenge as a result of the surge and demand for streaming video. Their networks require an open caching solution designed from the ground up for video,” said Alon Maor, Qwilt CEO.

“Our proven solution delivers substantial bandwidth capacity benefits each day to network operators worldwide. We’re pleased to announce the Qwilt Mobile Video Fabric, an open caching solution tailored for mobile video that MNOs can deploy to improve mobile network capacity while saving significantly as they scale their networks. Most importantly, caching mobile content closer to consumers also delivers improved QoE—a win-win for both operators and consumers alike.”

http://www.qwilt.com

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Radisys' WebConnect JAVA Bridges to SIP

Radisys introduced WebConnect JAVA, a JSR-309 compliant adapter which is compatible with the entire Radisys Media Resource Function (MRF) product family.

Radisys WebConnect translates JSR309 media processing requests, in a Java EE environment, into Session Internet Protocol (SIP) and Media Server Markup Language (MSML RFC 5707) XML-based control commands – which are compatible with any Radisys MRF.

The new capabilities mean that Radisys MRF resources can be used for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)  services as well as Over The Top (OTT) and WebRTC services delivered on web application servers based on traditional Internet communication and programming standards, such as Java.

“Adding support for JSR309 was a simple decision as many of the leading web application server platforms on the market today are Java EE based,” said Grant Henderson, VP of Marketing and Product Management at Radisys. “In addition, the world has far more computer programming professionals with expertise in Java programming than telecommunication service developers with expertise in SIP. Radisys WebConnect is focused on opening up this market by delivering first-class media processing capabilities to the broad community of IT professionals developing real-time communication services using Java platforms be they WebRTC, video or audio based.”

http://www.radisys.com/2014/radisys-extends-market-leading-media-processing-capabilities-9-million-java-developers-worldwide/

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France's Bouygues Telecom Offers fring OTT Service for Voice+SMS over Wi-Fi

Bouygues Telecom is using the fring Over the Top (OTT) service to provide Bouygues customers with free phone calls and SMS on Wi-Fi while abroad.

“Our customers expect high quality, low cost mobile service which, thanks to the fring service, we can now extend beyond local French cellular coverage, allowing subscribers to enjoy international communication as if they were calling from within France,” said Benoît Torloting, Head of digital & B&YOU at Bouygues Telecom. “Leveraging the fring OTT solution, we eliminate cellular network roaming charges and deliver our commitment to quality-cost competitive advantage even when our customers are travelling worldwide.”  Benoît Torloting continued, “Our World & YOU launch was a great success, with an increase in new users and substantial interest from the French market.”

“This successful offering with Bouygues Telecom demonstrates market demand for the fring Telco OTT solution, which enables telecom operators to provide their subscribers with cost-saving communications, a rich user experience and reduced churn to independent applications,” said Roy Timor-Rousso, former CEO of fring and current senior executive in GENBAND’s Multimedia Business Unit.”

http://www.genband.com

Earlier this month, GENBAND announced its acquisition of fring’s Over-the-Top (OTT) mobile IP communications service for consumers. Financial terms were not disclosed. not disclosed.

The fring app, which is available for both iOS and Android, provides free mobile group video chat, 2-way video chat, voice-only calls and text chat over IP.  GENBAND will offer a white label version that will let service providers and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) compete with OTT solutions. fring reduces roaming costs for subscribers by moving voice and video sessions away from radio access networks and routing them over the Internet.

GENBAND said fring white-label solution for the consumer OTT market segment complements its NUViA white-label Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) offering.

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