Aerocast to Offer Streaming Service

Aerocast Routs Video Over Shadow Network

By Brian Santo

(Cable World) Aerocast, a startup in San Diego with some powerful friends, has big plans to start delivering a new streaming video service this year.

On a conceptual level, this one has an interestingly ambitious twist: Aerocast has devised an end-to-end system that’s already substantially deployed. As for the technology, the company claims it’s "easy."

If Aerocast succeeds, it will provide streaming video that will allow broadband companies — including cable operators and DSL providers — to offer video truly on demand.

Motorola is a major investor and technology partner. Liberty Media is also an investor. Those two patrons combined to infuse the company with $15 million.

"Streaming media is inevitable, and for cable operators, it’s best not denied or deferred, because the opportunity to differentiate yourself against the direct-to-home providers is now," said Marc Tayer, Aerocast’s vice president of business development.

Today the quality of streaming video is often low, network infrastructure is still not fully supportive of streaming, and it costs too much. If you look at most of the streaming video content available, much of it consists of teasers and previews, paid for out of promotional budgets.

Aerocast’s plan is to assume, shift or obviate each of the various costs involved so that any cable operator who wants to offer streaming video services can start making money doing so almost immediately. The plan depends on a sort of "shadow" network, one that piggybacks on the Internet. The approach is sometimes referred to as a "value-added network overlay."

The elements of the Aerocast network include the equivalent of routers and edge servers. Both run versions of Aerocast’s AVX software.

The "routers" are installed in data centers or other central nodes. Whoever installs the AVX routers assumes responsibility for operating and managing them, as well as assuming the associated costs.

Axient Communications Inc. in Phoenix is the first to have stepped up to the plate, having purchased and installed Aerocast AVX routers in data centers in 65 major metropolitan centers.

"Edge servers" are installed at the service provider’s central offices and, in the case of cable operators, at their head-ends. Aerocast will install, operate and manage these, absorbing the equipment and maintenance costs.

Content providers will pay Aerocast a fee for carrying their content to the edge servers. Aerocast in turn will pay backbone companies such as Axient support fees for using their resources.

The Aerocast videostreaming technique also requires that an Aerocast software module, called "Rabbit," be installed in client equipment, whether it’s a set-top box, a PC, or something else.

The way this is supposed to work is that a customer orders a video title through his service provider. The content provider begins streaming the video out. Aerocast "injector" software works in conjunction with the content provider’s streaming media software. The "injector" adds data to the stream that identifies it as content that must be routed through the Aerocast routers and servers, rather than through the Internet’s routers and servers. This approach should avoid the latency problems that have made shipping video over the Internet impractical.

The Rabbit software will work in conjunction with a video application (e.g., the Real Player or Apple Computer’s Quicktime), managing the streaming process and communicating with the Aerocast AVX network.

"QuickTime, Real, Microsoft Media — they’ll be embedded. The Rabbit runs on the PC, on the set-top, and it’ll eventually be embedded, too," said Mike Sawyer, Aerocast vice president of marketing. "Right now, we’ll rely on the cable modem or PC user to download it. It’s an easy download."

The company said it is working hand in hand with the same Motorola group that developed the Digicipher and Mediacipher encryption technologies to ensure that content remains secure.

"We’ll be their first customer," Thayer said.