MUNICH, GERMANY / AGILITYPR.NEWS / April 23, 2020 / In Times of Extremely High NetworkTraffic Media Monitoring is Critical, so says Rohde & Schwarz

While millions of people worldwide are socially distancing themselves in an attempt to surpress the coronavirus pandemic, many are becoming increasingly frustrated by poor quality of experience (QoE) in their OTT service. Hannes Strobel, Vice President, Media Technologies at Rohde & Schwarz believes that new technology solutions exist today that can alleviate many of these quality issues.

“We live in unprecedented, uncertain times. The availability of reliable live OTT streaming services has become a critical requirement of our socially distanced lives as we fight the pandemic. And yet broadcasters, telecoms carriers and network operators are increasingly challenged by their content distribution network’s capacity and the uninterrupted availability of the content. In this environment, reliable video monitoring, from the media production center right up to the consumer’s device is essential to locate and remedy distribution issues,” Hannes Strobel, Vice President Media Technologies at Rohde & Schwarz explained.

Furthermore, Strobel thinks that this is more than just a short-term anomaly: he believes that this social crisis could lead to long-term changes in workflow and behavior, with many organizations developing new business strategies that see them leveraging cloud-based technologies. These changes will have a profound effect on people’s working practices and many organizations’ capital investment policies.

Since the onset of the pandemic, demand for OTT streaming services has grown exponentially. Network operators across Europe have admitted to experiencing capacity issues, while Netflix has resorted to streaming only standard definition content to savebandwidth capacity. Against this background, Rohde & Schwarz is advising its customers to urgently review their video monitoring capabilities.

“Last year, we introduced a cloud-based virtualized media monitoring platform – PRISMON.cloud – which enables content owners and network providers to monitor their data streams far beyond the broadcast production center into the consumers‘homes,” explained Hannes Strobel. “This resource provides reassurance: that consumers are enjoying a premium QoS and when faults occur, they are identified and located immediately.”

With some of Rohde & Schwarz’s larger broadcaster customers, they require more than one CDN provider to support their OTT streaming operations. In this situation monitoring is even more important since products such as PRISMON.cloud can monitor and record the operating efficiency of each infrastructure, identifying exactly where a fault or bottleneck occurs within a content distribution network.

Such is the efficiency of PRISMON.cloud in monitoring live OTT streaming networks that it can pin-point and trouble shoot an operational issue before it becomes a problem that consumers are aware of.

Another advantage of the fully virtualized solution is that zero CAPEX investments are required, and operators can flexibly adapt to their requirements and situation.

“The coronavirus pandemic is creating a profound impact on our society and that impact could be long-lasting, “considered Hannes Strobel. “Streaming is an ever-increasing reality of our lives andcontent and service providers are adapting to these demands. Cloud-based media monitoring such as PRISMON.cloud will be a key factor in deciding who wins and who loses by providing a broadcast grade, reliable service to their customer. Monitoring Quality of Service is key to achieving that.”