Multicast Content Delivery for Mobiles
Rod Walsh, Antti‐Pentti Vainio, Janne Aaltonen · 2004
The delivery of content to many users simultaneously using a shared multicast transport path and last mile is attractive for several reasons. More efficient use of infrastructure and radio bandwidth is very important to mobile wireless network operators, especially since higher data rate rich-media services are made feasible without increasing the total network capacity. Users benefit from consuming shared content both in technical terms - higher data rates and faster downloads - and social terms - content demand increasingly correlates to common interests for persistent communities and dynamic ad hoc groups. Two recent initiatives are on the track of progressing through development, standardization and commercialization, which are IP Datacast (IPDC) and Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS). Although these originate from different backgrounds - digital television and radio broadcast, and 3rd generation cellular telecommunications respectively - they both hold the promise of providing true multipoint services to mobile and wireless users, with all the benefits and opportunities that this brings.