Solving the ‘last-mile delivery challenge’ for quality Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming content

Project Information

FAST-STREAM

Grant agreement ID: 190125980

DOI

10.3030/190125980

Project closed

EC signature date 22 June 2022

Start date 1 May 2022

End date 30 September 2024

Funded under

• The European Innovation Council (EIC)

Total cost

€ 3 572 425,00

EU contribution

€ 2 489 148,00

Coordinated by

COMPIRA LABS LTD
Israel

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - FAST-STREAM (Solving the ‘last-mile delivery challenge’ for quality Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming content)

Reporting period: 2023-02-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

In recent years, Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming has become increasingly popular for a wide range of applications. During the coronavirus pandemic, the need for social distancing led to increasing numbers of people who work and study remotely. Despite massive investments in network infrastructure, which includes newly deployed 5G and fibre networks, severe problems in service quality persist. These include frequent re-buffering and low resolution for video streaming, to long "lags behind live" for real-time services such as video conferencing and live sports.

The root cause of these problems is the "the last mile network". To reach its destination, content must often traverse volatile network segments (such as mobile and Wi-Fi networks) and must compete with traffic from other services over scarce network bandwidth. Bad user-experience results in customer churn, decreased user engagement, and loss of income for service providers. It also harms the ability to effectively work and study from home and has a negative impact on the economy.

Compira Labs' solution is utilizing Performance-oriented Congestion Control (PCC) algorithmic framework, data analysis and machine learning methodologies. While it requires no changes to the network or applications, it offers better utilization of the existing networks thus reducing the digital divide by providing better access to Internet services to wider communities.
The goals of this project were focused on scaling up our technical solution to support successful large-scale field trials for a diverse set of customer use cases, followed by successful qualification and validation of our technology under operational conditions.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The following specific technical and scientific objectives were established and achieved over the course of the project:

1. Qualification and validation of solution in operational environments: We conducted pilots with Telefonica (Spain, Chile, Peru), Lumen (USA, Mexico), Conversant Solutions Pte Ltd. (Vietnam. Malaysia), and Medianova (Europe and Middle East). In these pilots, we were able to effectively qualify and validate our CompiraEdge software for HTTP/TCP and QUIC/UDP delivery, as well as its integration with our CompiraCloud data platform and SaaS dashboard, in a variety of use-cases and networks.

2. Technology improvements and development: Scale up of our technical solution for a commercially viable product. This included performance improvement of pre-commercial PCC module plug-ins (HTTP/TCP, QUIC, WebRTC), increasing protocol resiliency, scaling data collection and analytics engine, enabling automated PCC configuration updates (using machine learning techniques), and improving and extending our testing capabilities to cover all primary transport platforms as well as additional network scenarios (mobile, fixed networks, etc.).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Our solution for HTTP/TCP was tested in the field with many thousands of live customers and was able to reduce rebuffering metrics by 30% as well as reduce the number of low-quality video sessions by more than 30%.
In the lab, our solution achieved better user experience metrics than the state-of-the-art alternatives for both HTTP3/QUIC and webRTC implementations.