3GPP Mobile Multimedia Streaming Standards [Standards in a Nutshell]

Data rates offered by mobile networks are increasing, as are the capabilities of mobile devices. With this, mobile multimedia services are getting wider distribution. Traditional linear mobile TV services, where the viewer has to watch a scheduled TV program at the offered time, were initially dominating but other streaming services like Video on Demand, User-Generated Content (USG) services, or Internet streaming services are becoming more important. This article describes the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards for mobile unicast multimedia streaming and how they are used in almost 200 mobile networks.