Integration of Broadcaster and Telco Access Networks for Real Time/Live Events

In the last years the multimedia traffic on IP networks has increased significantly. According to Cisco, the video contents are expected to reach 82% of the total IP traffic by 2022. The explosion of video on demand and real time/live event videos causes several issues for Telco networks, such as increased delay in content delivery, frequent congestions and service unavailability. In this paper we analyse an integration model between the broadcaster’s network and the Telcos’ fixed access networks. In particular, contents from the distribution network of broadcasters are directly injected into the central offices of Telco’s network. This integrated architecture allows offloading the core and metro segments of the Telco network and, at the same time, it enables broadcasters to provide contents with reduced latency and to avoid typical inconveniences in Telco’s network. Performance analysis is carried out in terms of the required transmission power per multiplex. As shown in the paper, the considered integrated network architecture can achieve cost savings in terms of transmission power per multiplex. The possibility of improving current FTTC access networks for supporting broadcast by means of sharing of multiple copper pairs has been also investigated.