BT's MAUD streaming tech headed for primetime with Edgio

It has partnered with Edgio, which as its name suggests, specialises in various edge services, including website performance optimisation and managed security. Two of its biggest areas of business though are content delivery and streaming solutions.

Under the agreement, BT's Multicast-Assisted Unicast Delivery (MAUD) technology will be deployed on Edgio's content delivery network (CDN), improving the performance and efficiency of carrying live streaming video traffic to multiple households.

Unveiled in December, MAUD combines individual streams into a single multicast stream in the core network, and then converts them back into unicast streams at the edge, before delivering it to player applications on end-user devices.

It lends itself well to households that prefer to stream live events like sport over the Internet rather than tune into a traditional broadcaster. BT claims it can reduce bandwidth consumption by up to 50%.

Crucially, all the clever stuff happens in the network, so it doesn't require BT to work with dozens of streaming service providers to integrate the solution into their various applications.

BT and Edgio have been working together on MAUD's development, and now they're ready to test the waters on a limited number of EE TV set-top-boxes (STBs) on BT's commercial network in the coming months.

"Having worked with BT Group since the inception of MAUD we're delighted to be the first CDN to serve content through it," said Edgio's EMEA vice president Emma Whitmore. "By reducing congestion in the core of telco networks, clients will benefit from a more consistent, high-quality experience. Combined with the seamless integration of our content providers, clients can easily adopt this technology in markets where there is a mix of solutions across the network."

If all goes well, BT's network will be more than up to coping with UK households' ongoing migration to streaming video.

When it comes to uptake, stats published by research firm Barb earlier this month showed that 20 million UK homes subscribed to at least one streaming service in the second quarter, up from 19.5 million in Q1. The number of homes subscribing to two or more services grew to 14 million from 13.6 million.

Netflix remains the market leader with 17.1 million customers, followed by Amazon Prime Video (13.7 million) and Disney+ (7.6 million).

In terms of usage, regulator Ofcom's latest Communications Market Report, published in July, found that in 2023 the average punter watched 271 minutes of video content per day.

At 109 minutes, good old-fashioned live broadcast still accounts for the lion's share, followed by video-sharing platforms like YouTube and TikTok with 49. After that comes subscription/ad-funded video-on-demand (SVoD/AVoD), which takes up 38 minutes per day, and then broadcast VoD (BVoD) with 20 minutes.

However, that average is heavily skewed in favour of live broadcast by adults aged 45 and above. Younger generations barely watch any live TV at all, favouring on-demand services instead (see chart below).

Presuming the 'youth' maintain these preferences as they age, then broadcast TV is on course to shrink to a mere speck on the video-viewing landscape.

All of which justifies the lengths to which BT is going to so it can stay on top of streaming traffic.

Howard Watson, BT's chief security and networks officer said: "BT Group's goal is to develop an efficient live streaming solution that addresses the needs of players within the content delivery path. Partnering with Edgio, we're pioneering an effective content delivery system that seamlessly integrates with CDNs, making it accessible for external content providers."

If all goes well with EE TV, it wouldn't be surprising to see other ISPs giving MAUD a go.