Dr. Athul Prasad is an experienced senior manager, researcher, innovator and technologist, with a passion for change through disruptive innovations. He has worked with various telcos such as Huawei, Nokia, and NEC, in research, business management and product development for 10+ years in various roles. Currently, he is part of Nokia’s end-to-end 5G leadership program and is the head of 5G business modelling & analysis, based in Helsinki, Finland. He has also contributed to the 5G-PPP phase-2 flagship project on multicast/broadcast called 5G-Xcast, as the technical manager of the project, and was part of European Union's 5G technology board (Horizon 2020 5G Infrastructure PPP). His research interests include technology enablers for end-to-end 5G system especially in new verticals and markets such as media & entertainment, and is always on the lookout for disruptive technology innovations in 5G which drives value creation within the ecosystem. He is the co-author and co-inventor of over 90 international publications, patent applications (including granted patents), technical reports and standards contributions. He has won the best paper award at IEEE VTC-Spring 2013, best 5G paper award at IEEE BMSB 2018 and best paper finalist at IEEE 5G World Forum 2018. He received his Masters', M.Sc. (Tech.) (with distinction) and Doctoral, D.Sc. (Tech) degrees in Communications Engineering from Aalto University, and graduated from the one-year executive management education (LEAD) program from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.

The talk will focus on the various activities on the media and entertainment vertical in the context of 5G currently taking place across Europe (e.g., 5G-Xcast project) and in Finland (Wireless for Verticals – WIVE project and related 5G – Test Network Finland). The end-to-end architecture and technology enablers for a unified framework for Xcasting in 5G – where Xcasting implies the efficient use of uni-, multi-, and broad-casting mechanisms, to efficiently transport data using a 5G network will be presented. The focus will also be on the holistic approach to harmonize media delivery across Xcast communication modes, to provide a seamless user experience, as well as common application programming interfaces to content service providers. The unique value proposition that 5G offers - with the ability to deliver immersive media to a massive audience will be discussed during the talk.