The air at Monday night’s first-ever College Football Playoff National Championship was electric. You could tell you were witnessing the beginning of something special.
Off the field, but in the stadium, AT&T was cooking up a little excitement of our own with our first-ever on-site, live trial demonstration of LTE Broadcast. We invited media, analysts, and other key stakeholders to take a look at this new network technology we’re exploring.
LTE Broadcast enables the delivery of content directly to all users with compatible devices within a designated timeframe and area. In the future, it could be used to distribute a wide range of content including music, video, and software to specific areas within our LTE footprint, such as a single sports stadium.
At Monday’s hands-on trial demonstration, we offered attendees a variety of special bonus feeds from ESPN. The “Spider Cam” feed provided an above-field camera angle and “Film Room” included ESPN talent as well as current and former head coaches who broke down plays happening in real-time. Those experiencing the technology could toggle between the two feeds for a unique viewing experience. The LTE Broadcast demo also included highlight reels from each team, as well as real-time stats.
While AT&T has not commercially launched LTE Broadcast at this time, we are excited about the future possibilities. Last week, John Donovan gave you a few ideas of what LTE Broadcast could do. The potential applications go beyond sporting events to include things like new business models for “one-to-many” communications, education, support for the Internet of Things and, as we demonstrated, live events.
We’re looking forward to exploring this technology more and finding ways it could benefit our customers.
Check out this video to get a closer look at LTE Broadcast in action and some highlights from our demo event.
AT&T LTE Broadcast currently is not commercially available, and AT&T makes no representations regarding its future availability. LTE is a trademark of ETSI. LTE not avail. everywhere.
