The focus for this year’s congress is the “Delivery and Consumption of Digital Media” in recognition of the fact that media streaming is transforming both the telecommunications and broadcasting industries. Providers of online video streaming services are reporting significant growth in the number of subscribers to their services and are investing billions of dollars in the creation of new and original content. Meanwhile, both fixed and mobile operators are reporting significant growth in the data volumes on their networks associated with both live and catch-up streamed video content.

The Congress will therefore address this important trend and examine the impact and challenges arising for both the telecommunications and broadcasting industries by the consumption of digital media and its conveyance over fixed and mobile communication networks.

Spread over two days, the Congress will address these important themes:

5G - a game changer for digital media?

The first 5G standard has been published and services are expected to go live in 2020. So what will 5G offer for the delivery of digital media and how will it drive consumption?

Future of media distribution

With an increasing usage and demand for online catch-up and OTT services as a primary means of distribution coupled to a move to all IP work flows, is the future all OTT?

Enhancing the viewer experience

How will the viewer experience continue to be influenced by the move to ever higher image definition (4K and beyond), the introduction of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality? What are the societal impacts of these new paradigms and their legal and regulatory implications?

Social Media, where next?

Social media already exerts a significant influence but what is the future potential for business, news media, user generated content, data mining and big data? What are the ongoing societal impacts?

Next Generation Networks

Media consumption dominates both fixed and mobile network usage. A move to more flexible network architectures is therefore essential and so industry needs to embrace Fibre to the Home, Software Defined Networks and Network Functions Virtualisation.

Developing the user interface

Can smartphones continue to evolve, can TV screens get any bigger, is the smart watch a paradigm shift? How will users interact with media in the future and what does this mean for the design of the next generation of user terminals and interfaces?