Could the World Cup streaming woes have been prevented?

Brad Crismale, CEO Matrium Technologies

The recent performance issues experienced by Optus Sport customers streaming the World Cup drew the ire of not only the sporting public but even the Prime Minister of Australia.

Despite having fixed majority of the issues with the streaming service, Optus Sport agreed to share the distribution rights with SBS for all the remaining matches of the World Cup. This decision is not one that would’ve been taken lightly and credit must be given to Optus to allow consumers to watch these World Cup matches that were previously exclusive to the Optus Sport app.

The real shame is that the Optus Sport production of the World Cup has been first class, it’s just that as a content delivery provider in today’s world, modern mobile and cloud networks must be able to scale to millions of users and hundreds of millions of simultaneous transactions.

During unpredictable event-based traffic bursts, the key consideration for the content provider is to maintain a quality of experience (QoE). Especially when that delivery service is tested under stress, a content provider must attempt to answer the following questions:

• At what number of subscribers is service degradation becoming an issue?
• Are we experiencing buffering or delays with the video?
• What is an acceptable level of video quality?
• Is the app crashing under load and are we receiving error messages?

This level of application scale and complexity means that equipment vendors and network operators need a high performance test platform with matching application-rich metrics and real-world scale.

So whilst nothing can ever be guaranteed in the technology game until things “go live” (especially if third parties are involved), engaging a testing partner prior to deployment will help identify bottlenecks and performance issues. It’s a prudent risk mitigation strategy to help ensure an improved overall customer experience.

How do we know this? Because Matrium Technologies has over 25 years’ experience in testing networks & applications for service providers, network equipment manufactures & enterprises in Australia. Our proven network testing methodologies can emulate millions of subscribers, sessions profiles and determine the Quality of Experience for the end user before these deployments “go live” to help deliver a successful business outcome for the content provider.

For more information on how Matrium Technologies can help improve your Network performance. Contact one of our consultants at info@matrium.com.au or alternatively on 1300 889 888.