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
Some Figures
• Video traffic is predicted to reach 79% by 2018
• Three-fourths of mobile traffic will be video by 2019

3. …which Raise Some Issues
User Experience Infrastructural Support
Business Models

4. Users - 32 M/month
IP address – 20 M/month
Sessions - 1.9 Billion
May 2013 – Jan 2014
≈ 50% of the UK population
Data-driven Analysis
2 x [INFOCOM’2015], [WWW’2013]
2 x [Under Submission]

5. ≈ 50% of the UK population
First-mile view of the UK’s IP-ecosystem
• Focus on a national market
• Cover 50% of population
• Focus on a single app
Unlike previous studies
• Capture user and network ids
• Cross ISPs
• First-mile view

6. Roadmap
Geography
ISPs
Devices
Fixed-line ISPs
Mobile ISPs
PricingModels
Cross-ISPs

7. Geographic differences
Average per-user # sessions
Infrastructural support is important
Correlation with Ofcom statistics

8. Device-specific differences
Mobile users navigate more
but complete less
Per user activity levels Per user completion ratio

9. Influence of External Events
Daily volume of Live accesses
Mobile consumption is affected by external events
… jumps for mobiles during Wimbledon

10. Roadmap
Geography
ISPs
Devices
Fixed-line ISPs
Mobile ISPs
PricingModels
Cross-ISPs

11. ISP-level view
Fixed-line Internet market
(5 representative providers)
Mobile market is more dynamic than the fixed-line Internet market
Mobile Internet market
(5 representative providers)

12. Pricing Models
All-you-can-eat data
(M1, M5)
Limited-cap data packages
(M2 – M4)
All-you-can-eat plans boost users’ consumption

13. Behavioral Shift
• Fixed-line accesses (F1-F5) peaks in the evening
• Limited data caps (M2-M4) peak in commute hours
Mobile users watch more
during commutes

14. Behavioral Shift
+ =
Unlimited data plans (M1, M5) is
a superposition of both

15. Roadmap
Geography
ISPs
Devices
Fixed-line ISPs
Mobile ISPs
PricingModels
Cross-ISPs

16. Further on cross-ISPs interactions
Completion across different ISPs
Users complete watching across different sessions and networks
Fixed-line ISPs Mobile ISPs

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

18. Conclusions
• user engagement depends on the level of infrastructural support
• mobile users navigate more but complete less and have a
disproportionate share of live access
• there is substantial difference in access patterns between fixed-
line ISPs, mobile ISPs with all-you-can-eat data and limited data-
caps
• this difference can be effectively exploited in shared mobile-
fixed infrastructures
• there is a lot potential in mobile content pre-fetching

19. Dmytro Karamshuk
King's College London
follow me on Twitter: @karamshuk
Our website:
http://bit.ly/cd-gain