MainStreaming and Deutsche Telekom are extending their partnership with an on-demand approach designed to help broadcasters cope with the sharp traffic peaks generated by major live events.
Speaking to Broadband TV News at IBC 2026, Dan Racioppa, SVP of Revenue at MainStreaming, explained how the company’s “Better Together” approach brings broadcasters, ISPs and infrastructure providers closer together. By placing streaming infrastructure directly within ISP networks, MainStreaming says content can be delivered closer to viewers, improving quality of experience while reducing reliance on conventional CDN delivery.
Racioppa pointed to ITV’s addition of MainStreaming to the multi-CDN strategy supporting ITVX as an example of broadcasters seeking greater resilience across live and on-demand streaming.
“If you want true resilience, you need to make sure that you’re covering all angles and having the best vendors all working together in order to give the best experience to the customers,” he said.
The discussion also highlighted the relationship between streaming performance and piracy. Racioppa explained that infrastructure is dimensioned around expected legitimate audiences. Unauthorised redistribution can therefore introduce additional traffic and potentially affect service quality, making stream protection an operational issue as well as a matter of protecting content rights.
MainStreaming is now taking its collaboration model further with Deutsche Telekom, developing infrastructure aimed specifically at broadcasters facing occasional, exceptionally large streaming audiences.
Sahler Salem, Team Lead, New Business & Innovation Sales at Deutsche Telekom, said broadcasters traditionally have to provision infrastructure capable of handling their largest audiences even though that additional capacity may be needed only a handful of times each year.
The new model instead allows broadcasters to reserve dedicated streaming infrastructure and egress capacity within Deutsche Telekom’s German network for individual events, potentially for just three or four hours.
“For these special events, which happen a few times a year, we are providing a complete technology stack, from the connectivity up to the streaming software,” said Salem.
Capacity can effectively be booked by the hour, removing the need for broadcasters to invest permanently in infrastructure that may remain idle for much of the year.
MainStreaming provides the servers, software and streaming technology, while Deutsche Telekom supplies the network connectivity. The companies already work together on MagentaTV, with the new live streaming project representing an extension of that relationship.
