Mobile operators constantly seek revenue opportunities, and the coming rollout of multicast and broadcast networks will create new opportunities for non real-time content consumption.
Micro-personalization represents the most intimate personalization of content, and also the prevalent form of content consumption in mobility. Today, micro-personalization occurs through unicast delivery of video-on-demand and downloadable forms of mobile content. Micro-personalization offers consumers the broadest choice of content—the level of supportable content is limitless, allowing for even the smallest demand niches to be satisfied—users can stream videos about emerging fashion trends or download the their favorite ringtones of the ‘60s, among the infinite sea of choices.
However, as consumers take advantage of the available content offerings, operators need to scale their networks, and broadcast/multicast represents a significant opportunity—not only to achieve scale, but also to create new applications and revenue opportunities. Macro-personalization takes advantage of multicast and broadcast to push content to consumers. Rather than having 24 users in a cell pulling the latest 2 minute video new update via unicast (and congesting the network), operators will push that video out as a video file that is cached to device memory or a memory card. Sports fans can receive highlights of their favorite teams in time for a morning commute, pop culture fiends can get updates on the latest exploits of Young Hollywood, and traffic updates can be pushed out to commuters, all customizable through preference settings.
The applications and revenue possibilities of macro-personalization are substantial, and we expect those to become common as multicast and broadcast networks such as MBMS, DVB-H, and MediaFLO rollout.
