My old TV aerial is more reliable than my ancient overhead copper wire!

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5216-predictions-...

2021 is one estimate, a lot depends on the cost of transponder space versus the IP delivery costs. Multicast for IP may alter this by a long way.

"All the required kit is in place, just need the multicast service! "

So no significant changes are needed at the content provider end then?

Well, besides getting a multicast enabled network (naturally) and getting their encoders / similar set up to broadcast via this method, nothing that'd cause them to skim from the face of the earth!

http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/super-...

and

http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/super-...

So it still looks like each ISP would have its own streams (ie; BBC One TalkTalk, BBC One IDNet, BBC One BTr etc.) but least they'd only need one stream per exchange. Or per node so they save most of the costs. I did think perhaps it was clever enough to share a common stream between ISPs.

A silly question then. That means that each ISP would provide a stream of "live" material. Does that not then make them broadcasters requiring a broadcast license?

The alternative is that all the streams are broadcast via the original broadcaster but then the ISPs would all need a private link to each broadcaster in order to maintain control of multi-cast all the way down the line.

I may have this completely wrong but unless the end to end network from stream initiation to end point is multi-cast enabled then it will break into separate streams at the first point where multi-cast is not present.