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December 15, 2008
IXIA on Challenges for the IPTV Provider
By Richard Grigonis, Executive Editor, IP Communications Group
Triple Play service (voice, video and data) is becoming a common offering by traditional cable and telephone operators. Triple Play’s video component, IPTV (News - Alert), is charged with operating successfully within a multicast-capable network, delivering broadcast service television over the IP network by ensuring the efficient use of network resources. IPTV services are thus delivered directly to the home and replace the traditional video delivery network.
IPTV however, often seems more like a loss leader than a big money maker for service providers, owing to the number of truck rolls needed to support it and other triple play services. Fortunately, companies such as Ixia, provider of IP performance test systems, offers a triple-play active monitoring, post-deployment testing solution called IxRave. The Remote Access Verification Engine helps address the typical $1,100 cost of installation and first year support that service providers are incurring by providing remote test capabilities.
Ixia (News - Alert), in fact, knows a great deal about what it takes for a service provider to succeed as an IPTV player.
Ixia’s Taran Singh (News - Alert), Product Manager for Video Solutions, says, “You can look IPTV from various points of view, such as from the customer point of view, the provider’s business imperative point of view, and the technical point of view, all relative to moving the field forward. Essentially IPTV provides video service over a service provider’s managed network. It’s not related to video-over-the-Internet.
To be clear, what we’re talking about is a managed service over a private service provider network. Today, 2008, we stand about three or four years after IPTV was initiated globally. It’s no longer a question in a business sense. It’s imperative to do it simply because service providers have moved beyond offering fat pipes for high-speed Internet. They offer Voice-over-IP services and that proved challenging. Data services were easy for them to deploy.
Voice was difficult and now IPTV has come along, which is far more complex than the two combined. The fact that the same resources on the network side are competing for bandwidth and various requirements in addition to voice and video, make it that much more challenging to deliver.”
“So, from the business point of view, it’s not like something someone on the sidelines is toying with the idea of doing,” says Singh. “The service providers are in fact doing it — it’s just a matter of time. Many deployments have occurred and continue to happen worldwide. Asia and Europe are well beyond determining the technical feasibility; they’re into large-scale deployments, literally into the millions of users. North America has been something of a laggard in general in this area, but AT&T (News - Alert) and Verizon have been picking up the matter very, very effectively in 2008. So they are catching up, and they’re poised to become a top 10 provider in terms of the number of subscribers.”
“Having said this, it sets the foundation for what is happening at least right now,” says Singh. “That brings to our attention some of the problems and challenges that these providers have with IPTV, beyond just getting a system off the ground. Once a system is deployed, what does it take to maintain customers and innovate so that providers can keep ahead of and distinguish themselves from competitors? Many challenges really focus on a few key items: First is the matter of scalability. That really refers to how a provider is poised for growth if they expect the subscriber base to grow from 50,000 to 100,000 to 500,000. So scalability is crucial from the network delivery standpoint, but that directly translates into cost that the business must justify to maintain a network that can deliver to more subscribers.”
Singh continues saying, “Second is performance. ‘Performance’ really refers to the fact that TV is an always-on service — you turn it on and you expect it to work instantly. That’s a pretty demanding situation, because the Internet Protocol [IP] was never designed to deliver real-time traffic. If you experience slow Internet service for a day, you’d likely complain about it a bit, but more or less you wouldn’t be too upset. However, the level of expectation for video is very high. As a result, performance remains key for service providers looking to move beyond me-too service, when they compare themselves to cable providers or when they reluctantly compare themselves to satellite operators.”
“The third and final differentiating aspect is usability,” says Singh. “Usability really centers on a couple of things. You must turn things about and look at it from the point of view of your customer. Are they happy with your service? Is the response good? Are what you as a service provider providing sufficiently innovative so that it ‘sticks’ with the customers? Is the service personalized well enough to so that it makes the subscriber wants to beat a path to the service? These are things that differentiate an IPTV service from TV over cable. These things are not possible today in cable TV. It is possible in IPTV because there exists a platform on which you can develop services rapidly for deployment and use over IP. So usability from the customer viewpoint is highly important.”
“Also, video quality, which is related to performance, is paramount,” says Singh. “No one will deny that high definition [HD] is very well-received in the U.S. It’s increasingly becoming more popular in Europe and Asia. But that ultimately really translates into a big block of traffic that must be transported on the network. This is one the key reasons why you can, for example, take any large provider such as Verizon, and you can see that they have spent billions upgrading their infrastructure, particularly what’s called the ‘last mile’ or the “first mile’, depending on how you look at it. They’re upgrading to run fiber into customers’ homes. This is why AT&T has upgraded certain areas to high bandwidth DSL, and increasingly new deployments are using fiber too. Providers clearly recognize that without the proper bandwidth, they cannot expect to achieve a competitive advantage of offering new services. So video quality remains key as part of the usability requirement.”
“So these are some of the really ‘big rock’ challenges faced by any new service provider looking to get into the IPTV game,” says Singh, “or a service provider that’s fairly well entrenched, but are looking to create a wider base of customers.”
Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC (News - Alert)�s IP Communications Group. To read more of Richard�s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Jessica Kostek
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