Peter

ST Engineering iDirect, a company of ST Engineering North America, is addressing the essential role that satellite will play in delivering high-quality content to DTH Customer Premises Equipment, feeding Content Delivery Networks, offloading congested terrestrial backbones for live content or acting as a lifeline in disaster recovery situations.

As millions of subscribers continue to indulge in streaming sites, Over the Top (OTT) services are expected to replace traditional viewing behavior. This creates challenges for service providers in terms of successful delivery of content

HTTP streaming in unicast doesn’t allow scaling of the distribution backbone, Quality of Experience (QoE) is not on par yet with traditionally delivered pay TV, and last-mile connectivity limits may not be enough for concurrent HD or UHD viewing. 

Satellite connectivity can help service operators keep up with rapidly evolving landscapes and satisfy the growing demand. Satellite’s ability to multicast is unrivaled and integral to successful content distribution and can be used to feed the edge CDNs due to its multicast capability, therefore significantly reducing the distribution backbone traffic.

Until now, satellite has been overlooked as an enabler of OTT services, but with ST Engineering iDirect’s vision and technology, this is no longer the case. The company’s technology provides a solution for both OTT and all-IP newsgathering applications, delivering successful broadcast transmissions through cost-effective scaling to a number of receivers, efficient content delivery to geographical areas, and availability where no other terrestrial return channel exists.