Methods and apparatus for providing hybrid unicast broadcast services

• US 9,136,958 B2
• Filed: 03/13/2013
• Issued: 09/15/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 06/22/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Qualcomm, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Qualcomm, Inc.
• Inventors: Walker, Gordon Kent, Lo, Charles N., Gupta, Chaitali, Grob, Matthew Stuart, Naik, Nagaraju, Wang, Jun, Luby, Michael G.
• Primary Examiner(s): Alam, Fayyaz
• Application Number:
  US13/802,651
• Publication Number:
  US 20130344798A1
• Time in Patent Office: 916 Days
• Field of Search: 455 301- 306, 4554141-4143, 715/22, 715/25, 715/31, 715/37, 715 38- 41, 715/44, 715/52, 715/54, 715/56, 715 60- 63, 715 86- 89
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/38 Arrangements for distribution where lower stations, e.g. receivers, interact with the broadcast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0428 wherein the data content is protected, e.g. by encrypting or encapsulating the payload

Abstract

A method, an apparatus, and a computer program product are provided in connection with facilitating hybrid unicast/broadcast service distribution. In one example, a communications device is equipped to provide a parity portion of titles in a channel of a service to a plurality of UEs at a first time, receive, from a UE at a second time, a request to access a title of the one or more titles, and provide an enablement item, to the requesting UE, which is a portion of the requested title that, when processed with the provided parity portion of the requested title, is sufficient to allow the requesting UE to decode and access to the requested title. In an aspect, the parity portion may be a parity portion of a fountain code encoded title, and the enablement item may be repair symbols of the fountain code encoded title.

Claims

1. A method of communications, comprising:

providing, to at least one user equipment (UE) of a plurality of UEs at a first time, a parity portion of one or more titles in a channel of a service, wherein the channel includes one or more titles and the service includes one or more channels, wherein the one or more titles are encoded with a code having a property that source symbols can be recovered from any subset of encoded symbols of size equal to or larger than a number of source symbols, K, wherein the parity portion comprises a subset of the encoded symbols less than K;

receiving, from a UE of the plurality of UEs at a second time, a request to access a title of the one or more titles; and

providing, to the requesting UE of the plurality of UEs, an enablement item, which is a portion of the requested title comprising additional encoded symbols that, when processed with the provided parity portion of the requested title, is sufficient to allow the requesting UE to decode and access the requested title.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the parity portion of the requested title comprises a parity portion of a fountain code encoded title, and wherein the enablement item comprises one or more repair symbols that when added to the parity portion of the fountain code encoded title allow the requesting UE to decode the requested title.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the requesting UE is configured to store the provided parity portion of the requested title in decode order.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the fountain code encoded title is a Raptor code encoded title.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the providing the parity portion of the one or more titles in the channel of the service further comprises:

determining whether a level of interest in the title among the plurality of UEs is greater than a first threshold; and

providing the parity portion of the title for a broadcast transmission upon a determination that the level of interest is greater than or equal to the first threshold among the plurality of UEs;

or

providing the parity portion of the title for a unicast transmission to any UEs of the plurality of UEs that have a level of interest in the title above the first threshold upon a determination that the level of interest is less than the first threshold among the plurality of UEs.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the providing the parity portion of the one or more titles in the channel of the service further comprises:

determining at least one of a network congestion value or a unicast connection throughput value; and

providing the parity portion of the title for a unicast transmission when at least one of the network congestion value is below a first threshold value, the unicast connection throughput value is above a second threshold value, or any combination thereof.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the providing the parity portion of the one or more titles in the channel of the service further comprises:

receiving title access information from the at least a portion of the plurality of UEs;

generating a hypothetical title list for at least one UE of the plurality of UEs;

determining whether one or more titles in the hypothetical title list is not cached by the at least one UE; and

providing at least a time to the at least one UE for when the parity portion of the one or more titles from the hypothetical title list that are not cached will be provided.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the generating the hypothetical title list comprises at least one of:

generating a list of titles within a channel of the one or more channels in the service;

or

generating a list of titles across multiple channels of the one or more channels in the service.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of providing the parity portion of the one or more titles or providing the enablement item further comprises:

binding an advertisement content item to access of the requested title; and

providing the advertisement content item to the requesting UE.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of providing the parity portion of the one or more titles or providing the enablement item further comprises:

using at least one of a cellular network, a peer-to-peer connection, a wireless local area network (WLAN) connection, or any combination thereof, in which a broadcast mode and unicast mode of communications are available.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the parity portion of one or more titles further comprises using at least one of:

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a type of delivery to avoid duplicate symbol delivery;

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a unicast transmission to avoid duplicate symbol delivery;

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a broadcast push to avoid duplicate symbol delivery, or any combination thereof.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the parity portion of one or more titles further comprises using non-overlapping symbol sets for multiple unicast connections for an individual user to avoid duplicate symbol delivery.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the requested title is formatted in segments for delivery using dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH), HTTP live streaming (HLS), or mobile streaming service (MSS), and wherein the requesting UE is configured to organize memory blocks in a UE cache to correspond to the formatted segments.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing a bill of lading indicating a list of one or more titles that will be available from a broadcast transmission prior to providing the parity portion of the one or more titles.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the enablement item is selected to allow the requesting UE to decode a corresponding portion of the requested title prior to completion of playback of a previous title.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the parity portion of one or more titles further comprises:

determining whether an allotment of memory in a first UE of the plurality of UEs is sufficient to store the parity portion of the one or more titles; and

prompting the first UE of the plurality of UEs to allocate additional memory for caching upon at determination that the allotment of memory is insufficient to store the parity portion of the one or more titles.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein the providing the parity portion, the providing the enablement item, and the receiving are performed by a service provider server.

18. A method of communications, comprising:

receiving, by a user equipment (UE) at a first time, a parity portion of one or more titles in a channel of a service, wherein the channel includes one or more titles and the service includes one or more channels, wherein the one or more titles are encoded with a code having a property that source symbols can be recovered from any subset of encoded symbols of size equal to or larger than a number of source symbols, K, wherein the parity portion comprises a subset of encoded symbols less than K;

caching the parity portion of the one or more titles;

transmitting a request to access a title of the one or more titles at a second time after the first time;

receiving, over a unicast transmission, an enablement item for the requested title, wherein the enablement item is a portion of the requested title comprising additional encoded symbols that, when processed with the provided parity portion of the requested title, is sufficient to allow the UE to decode and access the requested title; and

accessing, upon receipt of the enablement item, the requested title through addition of the enablement item to the cached parity portion of the requested title.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the receiving the parity portion of the one or more titles further comprises:

receiving a bill of lading indicating a list of one or more titles that will be available from a broadcast transmission;

determining that at least one of the one or more titles is not available on the UE; and

receiving the at least one of the one or more titles is not available on the UE using the broadcast transmission.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the parity portion of the one or more titles comprises a parity portion of a fountain code encoded title, and wherein the enablement item comprises one or more repair symbols that when added to the parity portion of the fountain code encoded title allow the UE to decode at least a portion of the requested title.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the fountain code encoded title is a Raptor code encoded title.

22. The method of claim 18, wherein the caching further comprises caching in a decode order.

23. The method of claim 18, wherein the caching further comprises using at least one of:

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a type of delivery to avoid duplicate symbol storage;

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a unicast transmission to avoid duplicate symbol storage;

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a broadcast push to avoid duplicate symbol storage, or any combination thereof.

24. The method of claim 18, wherein the caching further comprises using non-overlapping symbol sets for multiple unicast connections for the same user to avoid duplicate symbol storage.

25. The method of claim 18, wherein the receiving the parity portion of the one or more titles in the channel of the service further comprises at least one of:

receiving the parity portion of the one or more titles as part of a broadcast transmission;

receiving the parity portion of the one or more titles as part of a unicast transmission, or any combination thereof.

26. The method of claim 18, wherein the transmitting further comprises:

transmitting, to a service provider server, title access information indicating which of the one or more titles have been accessed; and

wherein the receiving the parity portion further comprises receiving at least a third time when the parity portion of the one or more titles associated with a service provider server generated hypothetical title list will be provided.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein the receiving the parity portion further comprises:

receiving the parity portion of the one or more titles from the service provider server generated hypothetical title list at the third time.

28. The method of claim 18, wherein at least one of the receiving the parity portion of the one or more titles or receiving the enablement item further comprises:

receiving an advertisement content item that is bound to access of at least one title of the one or more titles; and

accessing the advertisement content item prior to providing access to the at least one title of the one or more titles.

29. The method of claim 18, wherein the accessing further comprises:

accessing a first portion of the requested title; and

decoding a second portion of the requested title prior to completion of the access of the first portion, wherein a size of the enablement item is selected to allow for the decoding a corresponding portion of the requested title prior to completion of accessing of the first portion of the requested title.

30. The method of claim 18, wherein the caching further comprises:

determining whether an allotment of memory is sufficient to store the parity portion of the one or more titles; and

allocating additional memory for caching upon at determination that the allotment of memory is insufficient to store the parity portion of the one or more titles.

31. The method of claim 18, wherein the accessing further comprises biasing title selection towards the one or more titles cached by the UE.

32. The method of claim 18, further comprising:

querying one or more applications operable on the UE to determine whether any titles are available through the one or more applications; and

wherein the accessing further comprises accessing the requested title through at least one of the one or more applications.

33. The method of claim 18, further comprising:

selecting to purchase the accessed title; and

providing the selected title for storage and access on the UE.

34. The method of claim 33, wherein the providing the selected title for storage and access on the UE further comprises:

determining whether the accessed title has a quality of playback sufficient for purchase; and

providing the accessed title for storage and access upon a determination that the quality of playback is sufficient for purchase;

or

providing the accessed title for access and prompting the UE to subsequently access a purchase quality copy of the title at a later time upon a determination that the quality of playback is insufficient for purchase.

35. The method of claim 18, wherein the receiving the parity portion of one or more titles in the channel of the service further comprises:

determining that the UE has not previously received the parity portion of one or more titles; and

biasing a reception mode toward use of one or more of a broadcast transmission mode, a Wireless local area network (WLAN) communication mode, a peer-to-peer communication mode, or any combination thereof over use of a cellular network unicast transmission mode.

36. The method of claim 35, further comprising:

transmitting a message to a service provider server indicating at least one bias toward using the one or more broadcast transmission modes, or an identity of a communication mode that will be used.

37. An apparatus for communications, comprising:

means for providing, to at least one user equipment (UE) of a plurality of UEs at a first time, a parity portion of one or more titles in a channel of a service, wherein the channel includes one or more titles and the service includes one or more channels, wherein the one or more titles are encoded with a code having a property that source symbols can be recovered from any subset of encoded symbols of size equal to or larger than a number of source symbols, K, wherein the parity portion comprises a subset of the encoded symbols less than K;

means for receiving, from a UE of the plurality of UEs at a second time, a request to access a title of the one or more titles; and

means for providing, to the requesting UE of the plurality of UEs, an enablement item, which is a portion of the requested title comprising additional encoded symbols that, when processed with the provided parity portion of the requested title, is sufficient to allow the UE to decode and access the title.

38. The apparatus of claim 37, wherein the means for providing the parity portion is further configured to:

determine whether a level of interest in the title among the plurality of UEs is greater than a first threshold; and

provide the parity portion of the title for a broadcast transmission upon a determination that the level of interest is greater than or equal to the first threshold among the plurality of UEs;

or

provide the parity portion of the title for a unicast transmission to any UEs of the plurality of UEs that have a level of interest in the title above the first threshold upon a determination that the level of interest is less than the first threshold among the plurality of UEs.

39. An apparatus for communications, comprising:

means for receiving, by a user equipment (UE) at a first time, a parity portion of one or more titles in a channel of a service, wherein the channel includes one or more titles and the service includes one or more channels, wherein the one or more titles are encoded with a code having a property that source symbols can be recovered from any subset of encoded symbols of size equal to or larger than a number of source symbols, K, wherein the parity portion comprises a subset of encoded symbols less than K;

means for caching the parity portion of the one or more titles;

means for transmitting a request to access a title of the one or more titles at a second time after the first time;

means for receiving, over a unicast transmission, an enablement item for the title, wherein the enablement item is a portion of the requested title comprising additional encoded symbols that, when processed with the provided parity portion of the requested title, is sufficient to allow the UE to decode and access the requested title; and

means for accessing, upon receipt of the enablement item, the requested title through addition of the enablement item to the cached parity portion of the requested title.

40. The apparatus of claim 39, wherein the means for receiving the parity portion is configured to:

receive the parity portion of the one or more titles as part of a broadcast transmission;

receive the parity portion of the one or more titles as part of a unicast transmission, or any combination thereof.

41. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon processor-executable instructions configured to cause a processor to perform operations comprising:

providing, to at least one user equipment (UE) of a plurality of UEs at a first time, a parity portion of one or more titles in a channel of a service, wherein the channel includes one or more titles and the service includes one or more channels, wherein the one or more titles are encoded with a code having a property that source symbols can be recovered from any subset of encoded symbols of size equal to or larger than a number of source symbols, K, wherein the parity portion comprises a subset of the encoded symbols less than K;

receiving, from a UE of the plurality of UEs at a second time, a request to access a title of the one or more titles; and

providing, to the requesting UE of the plurality of UEs, an enablement item, which is a portion of the requested title comprising additional encoded symbols that, when processed with the provided parity portion of the requested title, is sufficient to allow the requesting UE to decode and access the requested title.

42. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon processor-executable instructions configured to cause a processor to perform operations comprising:

receiving, by a user equipment (UE) at a first time, a parity portion of one or more titles in a channel of a service, wherein the channel includes one or more titles and the service includes one or more channels, wherein the one or more titles are encoded with a code having a property that source symbols can be recovered from any subset of encoded symbols of size equal to or larger than a number of source symbols, K, wherein the parity portion comprises a subset of encoded symbols less than K;

caching the parity portion of the one or more titles;

transmitting a request to access a title of the one or more titles at a second time after the first time;

receiving, over a unicast transmission, an enablement item for the title, wherein the enablement item is a portion of the requested title comprising additional encoded symbols that, when processed with the provided parity portion of the requested title, is sufficient to allow the UE to decode and access the requested title; and

accessing, upon receipt of the enablement item, the requested title through addition of the enablement item to the cached parity portion of the requested title.

43. An apparatus for communications, comprising:

a processing system configured with processor-executable software instructions to;

provide, to at least one user equipment (UE) of a plurality of UEs at a first time, a parity portion of one or more titles in a channel of a service, wherein the channel includes one or more titles and the service includes one or more channels, wherein the one or more titles are encoded with a code having a property that source symbols can be recovered from any subset of encoded symbols of size equal to or larger than a number of source symbols, K, wherein the parity portion comprises a subset of the encoded symbols less than K;

receive, from a UE of the plurality of UEs at a second time, a request to access a title of the one or more titles; and

provide, to the requesting UE of the plurality of UEs, an enablement item, which is a portion of the requested title comprising additional encoded symbols that, when processed with the provided parity portion of the requested title, is sufficient to allow the requesting UE to decode and access the requested title.

44. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the parity portion of the requested title comprises a parity portion of a fountain code encoded title, and wherein the enablement item comprises one or more repair symbols that when added to the parity portion of the fountain code encoded title allow the requesting UE to decode the requested title.

45. The apparatus of claim 44, wherein the requesting UE is configured to store the provided parity portion of the requested title in decode order.

46. The apparatus of claim 44, wherein the fountain code encoded title is a Raptor code encoded title.

47. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

determine whether a level of interest in the title among the plurality of UEs is greater than a first threshold; and

provide the parity portion of the title for a broadcast transmission upon a determination that the level of interest is greater than or equal to the first threshold among the plurality of UEs;

or

provide the parity portion of the title for a unicast transmission to any UEs of the plurality of UEs that have a level of interest in the title above the first threshold upon a determination that the level of interest is less than the first threshold among the plurality of UEs.

48. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

determine at least one of a network congestion value or a unicast connection throughput value; and

provide the parity portion of the title for a unicast transmission when at least one of the network congestion value is below a first threshold value, the unicast connection throughput value is above a second threshold value, or any combination thereof.

49. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

receive title access information from the at least a portion of the plurality of UEs;

generate a hypothetical title list for at least one UE of the plurality of UEs;

determine whether one or more titles in the hypothetical title list is not cached by the at least one UE; and

provide at least a time to the at least one UE for when the parity portion of the one or more titles from the hypothetical title list that are not cached will be provided.

50. The apparatus of claim 49, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

generate a list of titles within a channel of the one or more channels in the service;

or

generate a list of titles across multiple channels of the one or more channels in the service.

51. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

bind an advertisement content item to access of the requested title; and

provide the advertisement content item to the requesting UE.

52. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

use at least one of a cellular network, a peer-to-peer connection, a wireless local area network (WLAN) connection, or any combination thereof, in which a broadcast mode and unicast mode of communications are available.

53. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to use at least one of:

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a type of delivery to avoid duplicate symbol delivery;

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a unicast transmission to avoid duplicate symbol delivery;

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a broadcast push to avoid duplicate symbol delivery, or any combination thereof.

54. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to use non-overlapping symbol sets for multiple unicast connections for the an individual user to avoid duplicate symbol delivery.

55. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the requested title is formatted in segments for delivery using dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH), HTTP live streaming (HLS), or mobile streaming service (MSS), and wherein the requesting UE is configured to organize memory blocks in a UE cache to correspond to the formatted segments.

56. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

provide a bill of lading indicating a list of one or more titles that will be available from a broadcast transmission prior to providing the parity portion of the one or more titles.

57. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the enablement item is selected to allow the requesting UE to decode a corresponding portion of the requested title prior to completion of playback of a previous title.

58. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

determine whether an allotment of memory in a first UE of the plurality of UEs is sufficient to store the parity portion of the one or more titles; and

prompt the first UE of the plurality of UEs to allocate additional memory for caching upon at determination that the allotment of memory is insufficient to store the parity portion of the one or more titles.

59. The apparatus of claim 43, wherein the apparatus is a service provider server.

60. An apparatus for communications including a user equipment (UE), comprising:

a processing system configured with processor-executable software instructions to;

receive, at a first time, a parity portion of one or more titles in a channel of a service, wherein the channel includes one or more titles and the service includes one or more channels, wherein the one or more titles are encoded with a code having a property that source symbols can be recovered from any subset of encoded symbols of size equal to or larger than a number of source symbols, K, wherein the parity portion comprises a subset of encoded symbols less than K;

cache the parity portion of the one or more titles;

transmit a request to access a title of the one or more titles at a second time after the first time;

receive, over a unicast transmission, an enablement item for the requested title, wherein the enablement item is a portion of the requested title comprising additional encoded symbols that, when processed with the provided parity portion of the requested title, is sufficient to allow the UE to decode and access the requested title; and

access, upon receipt of the enablement item, the requested title through addition of the enablement item to the cached parity portion of the requested title.

61. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

receive a bill of lading indicating a list of one or more titles that will be available from a broadcast transmission;

determine that at least one of the one or more titles is not available on the UE; and

receive the at least one of the one or more titles is not available on the UE using the broadcast transmission.

62. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the parity portion of the one or more titles comprises a parity portion of a fountain code encoded title, and wherein the enablement item comprises one or more repair symbols that when added to the parity portion of the fountain code encoded title allow the UE to decode at least a portion of the requested title.

63. The apparatus of claim 62, wherein the fountain code encoded title is a Raptor code encoded title.

64. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to cache in a decode order.

65. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to use at least one of:

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a type of delivery to avoid duplicate symbol storage;

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a unicast transmission to avoid duplicate symbol storage;

non-overlapping sets of repair symbols per a broadcast push to avoid duplicate symbol storage, or any combination thereof.

66. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to use non-overlapping symbol sets for multiple unicast connections for the same user to avoid duplicate symbol storage.

67. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

receive the parity portion of the one or more titles as part of a broadcast transmission;

receive the parity portion of the one or more titles as part of a unicast transmission, or any combination thereof.

68. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

transmit, to a service provider server, title access information indicating which of the one or more titles have been accessed; and

receive at least a third time when the parity portion of the one or more titles associated with a service provider server generated hypothetical title list will be provided.

69. The apparatus of claim 68, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

receive the parity portion of the one or more titles from the service provider server generated hypothetical title list at the third time.

70. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

receive an advertisement content item that is bound to access of at least one title of the one or more titles; and

access the advertisement content item prior to providing access to the at least one title of the one or more titles.

71. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

access a first portion of the requested title; and

decode a second portion of the requested title prior to completion of the access of the first portion, wherein a size of the enablement item is selected to allow for the decoding a corresponding portion of the requested title prior to completion of accessing of the first portion of the requested title.

72. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

determine whether an allotment of memory is sufficient to store the parity portion of the one or more titles; and

allocate additional memory for caching upon at determination that the allotment of memory is insufficient to store the parity portion of the one or more titles.

73. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to bias title selection towards the one or more titles cached by the UE.

74. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

query one or more applications operable on the UE to determine whether any titles are available through the one or more applications; and

access a title through at least one of the one or more applications.

75. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

select to purchase the accessed title; and

provide the selected title for storage and access on the UE.

76. The apparatus of claim 75, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

determine whether the accessed title has a quality of playback sufficient for purchase; and

provide the accessed title for storage and access upon a determination that the quality of playback is sufficient for purchase;

or

provide the accessed title for access and prompting the UE to subsequently access a purchase quality copy of the title at a later time upon a determination that the quality of playback is insufficient for purchase.

77. The apparatus of claim 60, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

determine that the UE has not previously received the parity portion of one or more titles; and

bias a reception mode toward use of one or more of a broadcast transmission mode, a Wireless local area network (WLAN) communication mode, a peer-to-peer communication mode, or any combination thereof over use of a cellular network unicast transmission mode.

78. The apparatus of claim 77, wherein the processing system is further configured with processor-executable software instructions to:

transmit a message to a service provider server indicating at least one bias toward using the one or more broadcast transmission modes, or an identity of a communication mode that will be used.