Austrian media technology company Big Blue Marble has launched a multi-month proof of concept (PoC) to evaluate Media over QUIC (MoQ), an emerging internet-native streaming protocol designed to deliver live video with ultra-low latency.
The trial, conducted during a major international football championship, is intended to assess the technology’s performance, scalability and operational readiness for future large-scale live sports streaming. The project combines Big Blue Marble’s Cloud Video Kit video processing platform with support from video compression technology provider Ateme.
According to the companies, MoQ has the potential to significantly reduce the delay traditionally associated with OTT streaming, enabling viewers to watch live events almost simultaneously. Lower latency is also expected to support new interactive experiences, including synchronised watch parties, second-screen applications, live statistics and real-time audience engagement.
Continuous measurements during the championship indicate that the MoQ platform is currently delivering the fastest live streaming signal available in Austria, according to Big Blue Marble, adding that the system reduces end-to-end latency by around 20 to 40 seconds compared with existing Austrian streaming services and, in some cases, delivers streams several seconds ahead of terrestrial and satellite television broadcasts.
“Our proof of concept shows that ultra-low latency streaming is now a reality, delivering the fastest live streaming signal in Austria and proving that internet-native delivery can outperform conventional OTT services,” said Johann Mika, Chief Innovation Officer at Big Blue Marble and project lead for the initiative.
According to Ateme, which is supporting the project with its TITAN transcoder and open-source technologies from the OpenMOQ consortium, the initiative demonstrates that sub-second latency can be achieved without compromising broadcast-quality video.
“Media over QUIC is one of the most promising developments for low-latency streaming and large-scale live event delivery,” said Mickaël Raulet, Chief Technology Officer at Ateme. “We are pleased to support Big Blue Marble and contribute our expertise as the industry explores new ways to deliver premium live content at scale.”
As part of the project, Big Blue Marble’s engineering team has extended the open-source MoQ implementation with additional features, including NTP timestamp insertion, end-to-end latency measurement, enhanced monitoring metadata and backend analytics integration. The company is collecting performance data across publisher, relay and player environments to evaluate quality of experience, network efficiency and platform scalability. Streams are protected using the company’s Cloud DRM multi-DRM platform.
The proof of concept will continue throughout the football championship and for several months afterwards. Big Blue Marble plans to use the extended trial period to gather additional operational data and explore commercial deployment opportunities. The company also intends to broaden the initiative by working with cloud providers, content delivery networks (CDNs), technology vendors and media organisations interested in developing next-generation internet-native streaming architectures.
