Archiving Captured Content

Content capture is also by nature asymmetric in the uplink direction. Surveillance
devices and Web cams are uplink devices. However, value can be generated by archiving
captured content. Captured content can then be redelivered to the originating subscribers.
This is subscriber-generated content that ends up being consumed by the
same subscribers (we enjoy looking at our own content). One objective in content capture
is to realize value from content redelivery. Offered traffic loading here is determined
by the image capture bandwidth of the device. Image resolution, color depth,
and frame rate determine offered traffic volume and offered traffic value.
Redelivery bandwidth is determined by the display bandwidth constraints of the
receiving device. Early experience with 3G networks in Japan and Korea confirmed, for
example, that 65,000 color displays increased average revenue per user (ARPU). The
quality of the experience was better, so users wanted more. Handset hardware and software
determines offered traffic loading and offered traffic value, which means handset
hardware and software determines network hardware- and software-added value.
Value is greater if we can capture subscriber-generated content, archive this content in
the network, and deliver it back to the originating subscriber (and to other subscribers).
The number of participants in this type of exchange, however, can be very fluid and
dynamic. If we consider personal subscribers, the offered traffic loading would be determined
by the size of the buddy group—the number of people participating in a chat room
exchange, for example. Chat groups also don’t just exchange e-mails, but may exchange
images, voice, and video as well (multimedia messaging). People leave and join the chat
group as a session progresses (the session may be continuous 24 hours a day).
In a corporate or specialist user application, user groups could be actively configured
by the network, and group configuration/reconfiguration can be event based. Motorola
calls them storm plans, which, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, is the ability to reconfigure
a network in response to a particular event, a natural disaster, or terrorist attack. A
storm plan will involve preplanning a response to a possible future event. The preplanning
will include user group configuration, priority and access rights to delivery bandwidth,
and priority and access rights to storage bandwidth—information on hazardous
chemicals, for example, or terrorist personality profiles. Sometimes such networks are
described as being situationally aware.
Flexible user group configuration and reconfiguration can be very complex to
implement and involve issues such as authentication and policy control. User group
membership lists have to be maintained and updated, including records of individual
user profiles. Many of the techniques used in specialist private mobile radio (access
and policy control and user group configuration) are also directly applicable in public
access networks. Problems tend to arise when hundreds or thousands of subscribers
are participating in a user group with lots of different hardware and software device
profiles and lots of different service profiles. Access can also become protocol-limited.
Priority protocols are difficult to implement in multipoint-to-multipoint exchanges,
particularly when there is a high rate of change in user group configuration (lots of
people entering or leaving the user group).
Buddy groups can produce very bursty offered traffic. Acomment might provoke a
stream of replies; arguments tend to end up with everyone speaking at once. Buddy
group interaction is an effective mechanism for increasing session persistency and session
complexity (and by default session value). It is the job of the network to sustain
and preserve this session value.