Using nine months of access logs comprising 1.9 Billion sessions to BBC iPlayer, we survey the UK ISP ecosystem to understand the factors affecting adoption and usage of a high bandwidth TV streaming application across different providers. We find evidence that connection speeds are important and that external events can have a huge impact for live TV usage. Then, through a temporal analysis of the access logs, we demonstrate that data usage caps imposed by mobile ISPs significantly affect usage patterns, and look for solutions. We show that product bundle discounts with a related fixed-line ISP, a strategy already employed by some mobile providers, can better support user needs and capture a bigger share of accesses. We observe that users regularly split their sessions between mobile and fixed-line connections, suggesting a straightforward strategy for offloading by speculatively pre-fetching content from a fixed-line ISP before access on mobile devices.

1. On Factors Affecting the Usage and Adoption of a
Nation-wide TV Streaming Service
Dmytro Karamshuk1, Nishanth Sastry1, Jigna Chandaria2, Andy Secker2
1King's College London, 2BBC R&D
CD-GAIN: EPSRC project in collaboration with BBC R&D, http://bit.ly/cd-gain

2. CISCO Visual Networking Index
Video usage is exploding…
• Video traffic is predicted to reach 79% by 2018
• Three-fourths of mobile traffic will be video by 2019

3. Users have a lot of choice in Video Access
Devices
Pricing models
Operators
• Different networks 3G/4G and WiFi
often both together
• Different Pricing
(unlimited and limited
data plans)
• Different devices (phones, tablets, PCs,
Game Consoles, TVs, etc.)
We need to study the whole ecosystem to
understand user choices

4. Users - 32 M/month
IP address – 20 M/month
Sessions - 1.9 Billion
May 2013 – Jan 2014
≈ 50% of population
First-mile View of the UK’s IP-ecosystem
UK Population – 64M
Only available in UK
[ISPs are comparable]
[

5. Different perspectives on IP ecosystem
very large scale
cross ISPs view
DISCHINGER et al. [IMC’ 2007]
SUNDARESAN et al. [ACM
CCR‘2011]
KREIBICH et al. [IMC’ 2010]
SÁNCHEZ et al. [NSDI’2013]
XU et al. [ACM CCR’2005]
KARAGIANNIS et al. [ACM
CCR’2005]
MAIER et al. [IMC ‘2009]
MOORE et al. [ACNM‘2005]
Last-mile:
End-user
Middle Mile:
Internet Service Provider
First Mile:
Popular Website
small scale,
highly sampled
single ISP single app

6. Longitudinal View across ISPs
Fixed-line Internet market
(5 representative providers)
Mobile market is more dynamic than the fixed-line Internet market
Mobile Internet market
(5 representative providers)

7. Data caps decrease market share
All-you-can-eat data
(M1, M5)
Limited-cap data packages
(M2 – M4)
All-you-can-eat plans boost user consumption

8. Temporal Patterns in different ISPs
Fixed-line accesses (F1-F5) peaks in the evening
Mobile users watch more
during commutes
FixedLinedISPsMobile,limiteddatacaps

9. Mobile Data Pricing and Behavior
+ =
Unlimited data plans (M1, M5) is
a superposition of both
FixedLinedISPsMobile,limiteddatacaps
Mobile,unlimiteddata

10. More on Behavior: How Users Navigate across Content
Mobile users navigate more
Per user activity levels Per user completion ratio
… but complete less

11. Completing Watching across ISPs
Users complete watching across different sessions and networks
Fixed-line ISPs Mobile ISPs
Per user completion ratio

12. Speculative Content Pre-fetching
Pre-fetch at home Watch during commutes
Speculative pre-fetching can save up to 50% of mobile traffic

13. Prefetching does not work for Live Content
Ok, because live is low volume
We can provision for sport events in advance
… except for special sport events

14. We need to provide Infrastructural Support
DevicesPricing modelsOperators
Infrastructural Support

15. Impact of Infrastructural Support
Average per-user # sessions
Infrastructural support is important
Correlation with Ofcom statistics

16. Conclusion
• mobile market is dynamic and all-you-can-eat
boosts user consumption
• mobile consumption peaks during
commutes
• mobile content pre-fetching can save up to 50% of
mobile data except for special events
• infrastructural support is important to boost user
consumption

17. Dmytro Karamshuk
King's College London
follow me on Twitter: @karamshuk
Check out our another INFOCOM’2015 paper:
ISP-friendly Peer-assisted On-demand Streaming of Long
Duration Content in BBC iPlayer