15 years of key changes in streaming: the path of Broadpeak

Arnault Lannuzel, vice president of sales for the markets of Latin America, Southern Europe and Africa, reviews the 15 years of experience of Broadpeak, a company dedicated to the distribution of content via IP that has accompanied the evolution of streaming with solutions adapted to its most important challenges.

The world has changed significantly since 2010. While that year there were events of great impact such as the dramatic earthquake in Haiti or the massive leak of diplomatic documents by WikiLeaks, the technology and audiovisual entertainment It advanced with milestones that ended up redefining the interaction of users with technology.

The launch of iPad Apple opened the doors to a alternative audiovisual consumption to the television, beginning to develop second screens and consumption at various levels in household meeting points. Likewise, that year it left its beta phase Instagram, a platform that would ultimately end up becoming a social network with greater importance of video about images, serving as one of the biggest driving forces of the short video trend. Furthermore, the consolidation of the analogue blackout in Spain It showed how digital technology was here to stay, even without being sufficiently aware of the IP video revolution that would arrive over the next few decades.

Even so, at that time, broadcasters and content owners began to consolidate their first experiences in the field of streaming. Netflix launched its service for the first time outside the US; YouTube continued to make progress with the launch of its first monetization plans; the Smart TVs iniciaron implement native applications within still limited operating systems, and the main broadcasters in Spain and Latin America optaban por ofrecer en sus sitios web una pequeña selección de contenidos.

He streaming, en todas sus expresiones, estaba empezando su consolidación mundial, si bien muy pocos podían imaginar la dimensión de un mercado masivo que a día de hoy mueve 674.000 millones, según fuentes de Fortune Business Insights. Entre las compañías que vieron desde el comienzo su potencial se encontraba Broadpeak, una empresa con sede en Cesson-Sévigné (Francia) volcada en la entrega de películas, televisión en directo y todo tipo de contenidos a través de redes de banda ancha. Arnault Lannuzel analyzes the evolution of streaming throughout Broadpeak's 15 years of history, allowing us to know in detail the main challenges that the streaming industry has faced historically and currently.

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Viewer-driven transformation

The world of Internet television distribution at the beginning of the decade was certainly limited. As Lannuzel himself remembers, the first proposals were exclusively OTT sobre VOD. However, key changes gradually occurred that ended up transforming the industry.

He companion device tomó importancia, y la gente comenzó a demandar una alternativa de televisión diferente en sus segundas pantallas. Esto provocó un grandísimo interés de dispositivos conectados que todo tipo de agentes supieron aprovechar.

“De ser felices por el mero hecho de ver la televisión en el móvil, la gente empezó a buscar mejoras en el tiempo de arranque, en la definición, en el buffering…”

Una vez que el sistema de emisión funcionaba y los espectadores podían acceder de servicios de televisión en directo o streamings limitados de ciertos eventos, llegó el momento de evolucionar la propuesta en términos de calidad. “From being happy for the mere fact of watching television on their mobile, people began to look for improvements in boot time, definition, buffering…”, recalls Lannuzel.

The first providers of this type of services, such as Broadpeak, they had to adapt to a new concept of television on connected devices. The company, which initially made servers IPTV, dedicated itself to developing solutions for the distribution of live content.

The first milestone was the launch of the multicast ABR: a solution designed to avoid the risk of traffic congestion on networks due to a growth in recurring sessions. The tool brings together a transversal vision of the possibilities of broadcast: the scalability and quality of experience of free-to-air television, and the ability to reach all the screens offered by ABR formats.

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Developing tools for a new era

The launch of Multicast ABR in 2012, a tool that was widely accepted by the industry and that continues to be deployed today by agents such as DAZN, BT Group, Orange, Megacable or América Móvil, was only the first step in the development of innovative solutions for Broadpeak. Desde aquel entonces, la compañía ha creado una amplia gama de productos adaptadas a todo tipo de entornos, siempre de forma acorde a la evolución de la tecnología.

“El OTT es complementario del IPTV, pero estamos viendo que dentro de unos años podrá convertirse en el modelo principal. Tenemos la misión de acostumbrar a usuarios y anunciantes a diversificar su pauta publicitaria en diferentes tipos de soportes”.

Por ejemplo, con la consolidación de los entornos cloud, Broadpeak introdujo broadpeak.io, una herramienta que representa una alternativa para complementar o sustituir los habituales despliegues on-premises. Y es que esta tecnología API compuesta con aplicaciones SaaS y SDK facilitates processes such as virtual channels, content replacement or a crucial aspect: television monetization.

"OTT is complementary to IPTV, but we are seeing that within a few years it could become the main model. Our mission is to get users and advertisers accustomed to diversifying their advertising schedule in different types of media, either with insertions or replacements of ads, or with interactive advertising displays, which is possible in OTT and not in broadcast," he comments. Lannunzel about an area where Broadpeak already offers targeted advertising and models of revenue share between operators and content providers.

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The global challenges of the markets of Spain, Portugal and Latin America

With consolidated technological processes and an audience willing to pour their entertainment into connected video, some of the most pressing challenges of broadcasters and content owners go through their own business model. As explained by the person responsible for Broadpeak, "the markets are no longer local, but international. We have global agents entering markets previously occupied by local providers or solution channels, which forces content providers to propose an international business."

“Acompañamos no solo en el desarrollo de modelos y soluciones tecnológicas, sino que también nos convertimos en asesores para ayudar a definir el mejor modelo posible para cada aplicación. ¿Qué es lo que voy a poner en la nube? ¿Qué merece la pena meter localmente?”

Uno de estos agentes es la empresa chilena de IPTV Zapping, que ha extendido su negocio a otros cuatro países de Latinoamérica. “Si queremos sobrevivir, tenemos que vender nuestros contenidos fuera y distribuirlos a través de una aplicación atractiva, diferente, y que dé interés al contenido”, subraya Lannunzel, lo que requerirá contar con soluciones específicas para hacer frente a estos desafíos, como el CDN selector by Broadpeak, which allows the same agent to adapt to the distribution channels of several Latin American countries.

Apart from scale and internationalize the business model, a task for which there are specific support teams, there are vital challenges for the future of the industry. For example, the control of energy consumption in areas such as headers, data centers or the edge del operador. Como compañía que aborda transversalmente las necesidades de distribución de contenidos, Broadpeak trabaja para adaptarse a cada uno de estos entornos: “Acompañamos no solo en el desarrollo de modelos y soluciones tecnológicas, sino que también nos convertimos en asesores para ayudar a definir el mejor modelo posible para cada aplicación. ¿Qué es lo que voy a poner en la nube? ¿Qué merece la pena meter localmente? ¿Cuál es el tamaño del servidor que voy a usar para poder servir la necesidad del streaming sin demasiados costos de hardware o de energía?”.

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Alianzas y flexibilidad, clave para el éxito del streaming

In this complex environment of the world of streaming, in which many times the ownership of the rights to the same football competition, for example, is distributed among several agents, Lannuzel envisions a future that brings together the cooperation between content providers and local operators: "We are promoting alliances based on the technological capabilities of the operators. If I have a network, I can offer you a streaming service using my local network and, at the same time, you give me access to your content. This creates a mutually beneficial situation."

"Broadpeak's success in Latin America or in Spain and Portugal lies in the ability to adapt our technologies, customizing them for the operators' own environments, or implementing them in a rapid, hybrid or progressive way."

This cooperation is already taking place between several operators of Latin America, who precisely sign agreements with Netflix o Amazon to put or rent part of the infrastructure to distribute the content within the same country. Broadpeak addresses this need by giving the medium necessary to host different types of content providers on its servers, optimizing costs and offering an improvement in the quality of the experience via multicast ABR. Likewise, for those agents who are in the process of expanding the development of their infrastructures, Broadpeak provides the industry with tools to develop their own streaming server.

The flexibility, in Lannuzel's words, is key: "Broadpeak's success in Latin America or in Spain and Portugal, key countries for us, lies in the ability to adapt our technologies, customizing them for the operators' own environments, or implementing them in a rapid, hybrid or progressive way so that they can quickly launch their innovative offers to end users." This philosophy also extends to business models, granting the possibility of offering financing for operators, or betting on the deployment of local support teams: "We have more than 20 local engineers in Latin America, Spain and Portugal who support customer development, as well as a 24/7 NOC with global support. Our team has minimal rotation: it is a very interesting market in which the company is successful and we hope to continue to be that way."

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Designing the future of the industry

15 years after the birth of Broadpeak, the world of streaming continues to redefine itself by adapting to the user needs and benefiting from the progress of technologies. Far from settling, the French company continues to work actively to improve all phases of your business through tools such as machine learning or artificial intelligence.

"By deploying these tools to predict user behavior, capacity planning is facilitated, estimating the level of traffic that we are going to have. It is an important advantage, because it not only allows us to guarantee the quality of the experience, but also optimize operating costs," explains Lannuzel, who also points out that these AI deployments They also extend to ad insertion: different algorithms that shed light on the predictability of tastes, while the possible success of brands allows the possibility of selecting the most suitable spot among several candidates in the same slot.

"The future will bring opportunities for interactivity and personalization of the experience, but also technological obstacles. At Broadpeak, we are more than prepared to face them."

This is the present, but there is still the future. Broadpeak has a department called “Exploration” that tests technology three and four years old. Its members have the necessary vision to investigate trends and technologies fresh from scientific development centers to apply them to video distribution: "It is a job that requires investment. We know it and we are very aware, but we are facing a very important condition for the survival and growth of this industry."

He streaming and IP, beyond being a complementary channel, aims to become the audiovisual consumption standard. Lannuzel is convinced. Faced with this future, all that remains is to continue working to build, step by step, Robust, secure and sustainable streaming capabilities that allow us to usher in a new era: "I recently had a conversation in which we commented that television transmitters are going to disappear. Some countries put the date in 2030; others, in 2033 or 2035. This will mean that distribution will be 100% IP. The future will bring opportunities for interactivity and personalization of the experience, but also technological obstacles. At Broadpeak, we are more than prepared to face them, since we are putting them to the test in the laboratory or together with some of our clients for years.”

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