Monday 17 September 2007

MBMS but no Multicast

From the discussions going on in the industry, it seems that MBMS is being implemented by everyone but no one is concentrating on Multicast. This means we should now change MBMS to MBS but ofcourse it doesnt sound as good ;).

In the discussions going in RAN5 on the testing side, Nokia, Qualcomm and Ericsson has indicated that they are not interested in Multicast at the meoment (and probably for long time) and Mobile TV using MBMS will only be using Broadcast services.

The main reason for Multicast not being implemented is that it is quite complex and the purpose it was designed to serve can be served by using authentication at the Application Layer which i think is far enough.

Frankly if operators are really interested in utilising the potential of MBMS (excluding Mobile TV) then they will have to use Multicast sooner or later.

Can anyone think of why Multicast would be better than application layer security?

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