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Verizon has mounted an ambitious bid to underpin the modern digital media platform, providing a unified way for over-the-top video providers to reach a huge range of mobile devices as well as web connected TVs and tablets.

The carrier says its new Digital Media Services will provide an automated way for content companies to reach users regardless of their device, without having to create different files for each one. So major is the opportunity, Verizon believes, that it has created a new dedicated division for its service, headed by president David Rips.

Rips said in an interview that the new platform was designed to reduce the cost and complexity of IP-based video delivery. Rather than having to encode and deliver many versions of a video file and then deliver it to different devices via different networks, content owners will be able to use the Verizon IP backbone almost as far as the last mile connection. This should also ensure higher video quality than relying on the broad internet, Rips said.

The video feeds are delivered on a unicast basis, but the solution cuts out much of the duplication of bits that plagues conventional IP delivery, especially in real time streaming. That current approach will end up "breaking the internet", said Rips, since most of its routers are unable to handle peak volumes. But Verizon Media Services leverages the operator's backbone network and distributes content out to edge nodes close to the end user.

The carrier has applied for patents on the two distinguishing elements of the new architecture. One is a two-tiered distribution plan which transcodes and formats live, linear and on-demand video content for all the possible formats, and pushes it to edge nodes to be stored. The other is a session management system to maintain the state of a consumer's content, enabling device hopping - even between two products connected to different carriers' networks.

The platform wlil be in commercial use this summer, and four of the five largest broadcasters are involved in trials, says the operator, along with two studios (one "major") and a large web video portal. It names Turner Broadcasting, Hearst Magazines and The Associated Press as triallists and insists the service would be open to its own competitors, such as cablecos or IPTV providers, or to over-the-top video specialists like Netflix or iTunes.

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