The Internet wasn't built for Television
MainStreaming's Ian Franklyn explains why that matters and what European CDN infrastructure is doing about it.
The streaming industry talks endlessly about content, user interfaces and recommendation algorithms (guilty as charged 🙋🏻♀️). What gets overlooked is the infrastructure actually delivering video from server to screen.
When your stream buffers during a penalty kick or your 4K documentary drops to potato quality, that’s not your device, it’s the delivery network failing you.
I'm tech savvy, not technical (I can already hear the engineers cringing). Honestly, most people in the streaming industry aren't either. So I sat down with Ian Franklyn, MainStreaming’s Chief Revenue Officer to make sense of it all.
The Waze for Video
“The Internet was not designed for delivering television,” Franklyn said “It’s the Wild West.” It was designed for emails, web pages and small file transfers. Traditional content delivery networks treat video like any other data, pushing it through the same pipes used for everything else on the internet.
MainStreaming takes a different approach. The company operates its own dedicated edge delivery network, purpose-built for video (edge what?). “We’re building highways specifically for trucks rather than making trucks share lanes with bicycles.” Ah gotcha!
Franklyn uses another road analogy to explain how MainStreaming’s intelligent routing works. “If you think of how Waze operates, it analyses traffic in real time and suggests the best route. We do the same thing but we do it for video.”
The system analyses every viewing session in real time. Network conditions, device capabilities, delivery performance. When it detects congestion or quality degradation, it automatically reroutes traffic through better paths.
The difference from traditional CDNs is control. “We control the last mile. We’re not reliant on somebody else to figure it out. We have something like 300 different paths that we’re analysing all the time.”
This matters most during live events when millions of viewers tune in simultaneously. A football match kicking off, a major announcement during a political debate or a decisive moment in a championship. These are the moments when generic CDNs struggle and MainStreaming’s infrastructure proves its value.
Breaking the traditional model
Traditional CDN pricing works like a toll road. Every stream that passes through gets charged, typically per petabyte of data. For most events, broadcasters can estimate costs but live sports throws that predictability out the window.
“That event was really popular, which is great, but our CDN bill is now five times more than we thought it was going to be.” Franklyn describing a common problem for content providers.
The other issue with public CDNs is congestion. Multiple streaming services share the same infrastructure, creating bottlenecks during peak events. When everyone’s delivering live sports simultaneously, quality suffers.
MainStreaming offers a hybrid model that addresses both problems. For high-value live sports content, they build dedicated private delivery networks for individual clients. Instead of charging per stream, they charge based on network capacity (e.g. the size of the road itself, not the number of cars on it).
“If they need two lanes, we’ll charge them for two lanes. If they want 10 lanes, a superhighway, we’ll charge for a superhighway. As long as the content provider puts their traffic down that road, it ends up being very cost efficient.”
The result is predictable pricing, no congestion from other services and costs that typically run about half what public CDN models charge. The system can seamlessly switch between private and public networks, routing traffic intelligently based on real-time conditions.
But the real innovation is how they structure deals. Rather than the traditional client-vendor relationship, MainStreaming works on revenue share arrangements that bring all three parties to the table: the CDN, the ISP and the content provider.
“It’s very transparent to everyone because you’ve got the three parties: us, the ISP, and the content provider. It’s very transparent about what the costs are, who gets what.”
MainStreaming is European-rooted (headquarters are in Milan), with strong presence in Germany and the UK. The company works with Deutsche Telekom, Sky, RTVE and BT alongside DAZN and Rai. This European focus creates an interesting dynamic in a market dominated by US hyperscalers and global CDN providers.
Join us at Streaming Made Easy Live - Lisbon on April 13th during StreamTV Europe. Registration details here. Use my code (SME10) to get 10% off here.
We just released our programming here. A lot of great content is coming your way.
Degrade, don't block
The Waze analogy extends beyond routing to anti-piracy. Because MainStreaming analyses every viewing session in real time, the system can identify suspicious connections that look like pirate streams.
The difference from traditional anti-piracy solutions is that MainStreaming controls the actual delivery of the video. When they identify a suspicious connection, they don’t just block it. Pirates will immediately create another connection. Instead, they can throttle the quality or desync the audio.
“The end viewer still gets the stream, but they’re getting a really bad experience. They’re then incentivized to say, hang on, why don’t I just pay and actually subscribe to the legitimate stream rather than paying less but getting a bad experience.”
This matters most for live sports, where piracy spikes during major events and traditional blocking methods prove ineffective. The ability to degrade rather than block creates a better outcome. Converting pirates into paying subscribers rather than playing whack-a-mole with VPNs and new connections.
Winning the Sports Fan
Which brings us back to the living room. When telcos, streamers, broadcasters and platforms are all fighting to own the first click, sports is a must have. Rights are expensive, expectations are high and a single buffering incident during a crucial moment can send fans to a competitor (or a pirate site).
“Acquiring rights is only half the battle” Franklyn said. “Delivering a flawless, immersive experience is where fans are won or lost.”
At Streaming Made Easy Live - Lisbon, Franklyn will join operators and streamers to examine who’s actually ahead in the race for the sports fan’s living room. What does a winning viewing experience look like in 2026? Where are the technical gaps that still frustrate fans? And what separates the players building loyalty from those just renting attention?
You’re in?
🗳️ Poll time
That’s it for today. Comments, shares or likes come a long way 🙏🏻
Enjoy your week and see you on Thursday for another edition of Streaming Made Easy!
It's always been about the TV.
Microsoft understood this early. WebTV was the first attempt, then MSN TV (formerly WebTV), then MS ITV. Low adoption across all of them. The living room resisted every direct approach. The only way to actually get into the TV was through a games console, because that's what people were already plugging in.
So Xbox became the Trojan horse that WebTV and MS ITV never could be. For a time it worked because it did one thing exceptionally well. Then the Xbox One reveal happened and it became clear they'd lost the plot entirely. Forty-five minutes on NFL partnerships and TV integration for an audience that was mostly not in North America and definitely not there for sports rights deals. No games. No content. Just hub features nobody asked for.
The irony is that Xbox had genuinely built something useful. Renting and buying films through the dashboard worked. The integration was clean. But somewhere between "games console that does other things" and "entertainment hub that does everything," they polarized their core audience, confused everyone else, and delivered nothing with enough depth to justify the complexity.
Over-hubification. Build the infrastructure before you've earned the trust to operate it. Show users a system instead of showing them value.
The living room question is still unanswered because everyone keeps making the same mistake: they want to own the screen before they've given anyone a reason to hand it over.