Looking for a satellite-free 4K future, Bloomberg tests Zixi video on Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength
Verizon announced this week a collaboration with Bloomberg Media, live-streaming video platform maker Zixi and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The companies are working together, said Verizon, to test how 5G and mobile edge computing (MEC) can be used to deliver live 4K Ultra High Definition (UHD) video content.
Verizon is pitching a streamlined 4K UHD distribution workflow for content providers which doesn’t rely on satellites. The service uses Verizon and AWS’s edge computing to host Zixi’s Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP) and ZEN Master control plane.
This combination “minimizes the latency and simplifies the networking required to connect from hosted software services on 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength to the end user’s device while ensuring a high quality broadcast signal is maintained,” said Verizon.
“5G and edge compute have the potential to revolutionize the media and entertainment space and reinvent how global business news is produced and consumed,” Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business.
Roman Mackiewicz, CIO at Bloomberg Media, called the “modern streaming news experience” afforded by MEC-based premium content delivery as potentially disruptive for the media industry.
Bloomberg sends UHD video using this portfolio of apps and managed services to process the video into multiple streams for broadcast across various platforms, it said. The partners will next test direct-to-consumer streaming for 5G device users. After that, they plan to test near real-time native translation of Bloomberg TV+.
Verizon and AWS’s MEC footprint grows
Verizon launched 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength in 2020. The MEC service aligns Verizon’s 5G network with Amazon’s Wide Area Network (WAN), moving AWS compute and storage resources to the edge of Verizon’s network. Verizon has so far spun up 17 metropolitan areas in the United States with the MEC service. The latest cities to join Verizon’s MEC parade are Charlotte, Detroit, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, marking a 30% boost to the carrier’s MEC footprint.
In other cloud content distribution news, Salesforce and AWS announced a new partnership for streamlined streaming content delivery. The lynchpin is Salesforce’s Media Cloud, its Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven subscriber management, ad sales, and content management platform. Media Cloud provide customer lifecycle management and content personalization for content distributors who use AWS D2C, the company’s direct-to-consumer suite. The two companies provide similar services to NBC Universal, but this news delivers the capability as a service to any content delivery business that’s interested.
