DEMO :: Digital content distribution using the Digital Advanced Rural Testbed (DART) Gorry Fairhurst 1 , Nikhil Ninan, Trevor Barker 2, , Mukul Kumar 2, , Nicholas Race 3 4 , Luis Hill 5 1 dot.rural Digital Economy Hub, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK 2 Avanti Communications, London, UK 3 University of Lancaster, Lancaster, UK 4 21 media, Lancaster, UK 5 H3B, London, UK {G.Fairhurst, N.Ninan}@abdn.ac.uk; n.race@lancaster.ac.uk; luis@h3bmedia.com ABSTRACT The DART project is a multi-disciplinary project funded jointly by UK industry, the Technology Strategy Board and the RCUK dot.rural digital economy hub. The project has developed one of five network service demonstrators funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to test new technology enablers for business models, applications and advanced services. This abstract focuses on digital content distribution 1. INTRODUCTION DART has built a testbed incorporating advanced infrastructure using satellite broadband to allow open and flexible experimentation by third parties (e.g., content and application providers). Four technology enablers have been implemented to enable creation of new services, applications and business models by combining adaptive variation of Quality of Service/bandwidth, multicast, caching of multimedia content and micropayments. Trialists and experimenters are welcome to apply to use DART and other TSB service demonstrators [1]. This paper focuses on use of a number of these enablers to build a digital content distribution network that can be used to “broadcast” video-rich content and make this available to users across the UK. 2. THE CHALLNGE OF DIGITAL MEDIA Video-rich digital media is rapidly gaining popularity and causes major problems to network providers and ISPs who receive little value from providing the “fat pipes” for this content whilst at the same time bearing the cost of providing the infrastructure. An exponential growth in the use of on-demand television, and other video-rich digital media has imposed strain on the network operators. Content includes live television, on- demand TV streaming services (e.g. catch-up TV), streaming (e.g. generated by an organization or SME), and regional/local content. The majority of current TV content is currently carried through the unicast connections offered as a part of the home broadband service. In UK, the BBC media player, iPlayer, received 62 millions of requests (of TV and radio programs) in January 2009, which increased to 159 millions in May 2011, an increment of more than 150% [2], and is expected to be significantly higher for 2013. The introduction of super fast broadband is expected to extend access to video-based media to the majority of users throughout the UK – however, at least 30% of households, mainly in rural areas, do not have access to high speed broadband, leading to a “Digital Divide”, and disadvantaging people/locations from engagement in this new digital format. This problem is set to increase with new “hungry-bandwidth” formats such as HDTV and 3D-TV. One way to address the digital divide is to use satellite broadband [3], in which Internet access is provided by satellite ensuring reach to virtually all locations within a country. While broadband satellite services may provide lower capacity for a given cost compared to cable service, they can present significant cost advantages when used to send the same content to multiple locations. Innovation in multicast services may allow them to compliment fixed broadband services. This feature is exploited in the multicast distribution service described in this paper [4]. While broadband access attracts a cost per user, the cost of multicasting content is largely unaffected by the number of receivers. Satellite multicast also avoids the need for significant investment in server infrastructure at ISPs to realise a content distribution network. It is therefore very cost effective (one reason for the success of satellite TV). There is potential for satellite-based caching to play this important role in all geographies, not just rural locations. In this latter case, the multicast distribution service may be envisaged as an “overlay” operating in conjunction with the traditional broadband service, but relieving the cable network of the burden of TV content distribution. Establishing an open multicast media distribution service presents new opportunities for content creation – with the possibility for individuals as well as professional operators to introduce their own content. This could for example be used for micro broadcasting, allowing specialized content to be created and distributed to viewers across the UK. It could for instance be used to introduce community TV content (e.g. Lancashire 1 in this demo) allowing local cultural content, regional news, and local interest items to be available alongside national broadcast services, and if a successful open distribution network is built can be expected facilitate the creation of new types of media. 3. THE DART DEOMNSTRATOR The DART network is operational and supports a community of over 200 users spread across the UK, including a mixture of business, home, and community Digital Futures 2012, October, 2012, Aberdeen, UK. The research described here is in part supported by the award made by the RCUK Digital Economy programme to the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub, reference: EP/G066051/1.