Future proofing TV for over 1 million subscribers using AWS with BT

As it looked to upgrade its TV services to deliver an enhanced customer experience, BT faced several challenges. The existing on-premises infrastructure, while stable, created operational friction because of lifecycle constraints, limited elasticity, and increasing support costs, which came with lengthy analysis processes. Meanwhile, broadcast delivery began transitioning from direct-to-home aerial delivery to IPTV and over-the-top streaming services across the United Kingdom.

BT launched its first IPTV service 14 years ago. Maintaining and operating the hardware became a costly cycle of regression testing, bug fixes, and deferred upgrades. Firmware updates and channel builds sometimes took weeks, reducing the flexibility to launch services quickly and respond to customer and content-partner demand. Fixed capacity also meant that scaling for high-demand live events required investing in additional hardware in advance.

BT had a narrow window to future proof its infrastructure while managing technical requirements, overcoming cost pressures, and maintaining service availability for millions of customers. Already using AWS services in its on-premises workflows, the company worked alongside AWS to find a solution.

With a track record of successfully migrating and modernizing broadcast and streaming workloads and a comprehensive portfolio of media services, AWS proved a natural choice to support the company’s transition. So the telecom provider decided to use AWS Elemental Media Services to deliver high-quality video at global scale.

To automate the provisioning of video-encoding infrastructure, BT adopted AWS Elemental MediaLive, a broadcast-grade video-processing service with the power to deploy live channels within minutes. For video-on-demand storage, the telecom provider uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service. The company opted for AWS Elemental MediaPackage to prepare and protect video for internet delivery.

All live channels were also tagged in AWS Cost Explorer, which has an easy-to-use interface for visualizing, understanding, and managing AWS cost and usage over time. Tagging channels by name and content provider gives BT detailed visibility and cost predictability across its TV headend infrastructure, down to the per-stream level. This has helped the company identify areas where it could save money while accelerating channel launches and maintaining the same customer experience. “AWS Cost Explorer, alongside AWS Elemental Media Services, gives us the commercial and technical flexibility to address new business opportunities quickly,” says Owen Clarke, solutions architect at BT.

To build operational confidence, the company migrated in phases, including parallel run, validation, and cutover. Collaboration between the AWS and BT teams—and among the BT teams—was essential for success, because cloud-based workflows require deep alignment between product, engineering, operations, and finance teams. “We valued the ongoing, coordinated conversation between the BT and AWS teams,” says Pete Harvey, TV distribution senior manager at BT.

Within 12 months, the company migrated 213 linear channels to cloud-based over-the-top distribution. The updated environment supports over 1 million subscribers while maintaining service availability and low latency for linear customers.

Channel build times decreased from days or weeks to hours. Now, when a content partner submits a late request to carry additional channels—something that previously required hardware procurement and weeks of planning—BT can respond in near real time. Also, the financial operations team can generate commercial cost insights in about 10 minutes, down from around 1 day—reducing cost-analysis time by over 99 percent.

Looking forward, BT is exploring more capabilities—including AI solutions and multi-region architectures—to further strengthen resilience and scalability. “The AWS team helped us deliver excellent service to our customers,” says Harvey.