TelcoTV: Zeugma, Roku Demo QoE for Pay-Extra Services

Zeugma Systems will demonstrate the ability for service providers to deliver movies and TV episodes from Netflix Inc. (NFLX) to Roku digital video players with guaranteed quality of service, as the foundation for pay-extra Internet offerings.

Zeugma sees the TelcoTV show demo as proof-of-concept that it has been pushing since its inception, and especially since it announced availability of the SmartVideo app, the first in a series of offerings that harness the upstart’s infrastructure.

In the demo, the Zeugma Services Node (ZSN) and the recently announced Zeugma SmartVideo application “will dynamically identify Netflix Internet video streams, perform connection admission control, and incrementally allocate the appropriate amount of bandwidth exclusively to that video stream.”

Together, these capabilities represent the basis of an opt-in premium Internet video service that the company believes consumers increasingly desire and are willing to pay for, thus creating new revenue streams for ISPs looking to leverage current capacity.

With telcos and cablecos conducting Internet bandwidth metering and/or applying monthly usage caps to their access services, it’s increasingly believed that pay extra tiers will begin to replace the current, all-you-can-eat capacity for a flat monthly fee services.

Such a development is likely to raise the ire of net neutrality and privacy proponents, in part because the technology used to enable these so-called “premium” Internet services looks into user packets and sessions. It also remains to be seen how consumers will react to paying extra for bandwidth they can already use now.

Operators have claimed that a very small percent of Internet access users have been consuming a disproportionate amount of local bandwidth and are applying resources that they say are designed for more effective bandwidth and congestion management.

For operators looking to new revenue opportunities, as Zeugma contends many already are, they can add the ZSN, a service delivery router, to DSL- or FTTP-based broadband networks. That facilitates the delivery of enhanced Internet bandwidth services to support gaming, VOIP, corporate VPNs, and streaming video.

“There is no question that the Roku digital video player, in conjunction with Zeugma’s ability to ensure video quality, gives broadband service providers an additional product that they can use to increase per-subscriber revenue,” said Tim Twerdahl, Roku‘s vice president of consumer products, in prepared comments. “This is especially important as we begin to deliver high-definition video over the Internet directly to consumer TVs.”

The TelcoTV demonstration will employ two live video feeds from Netflix, one of which will be protected using the SmartVideo application. Zeugma says additional load from other services on the broadband network will not cause any impairment to the SmartVideo-enhanced stream.

Zeugma added it will also demonstrate SmartMonitor, an application within the Zeugma Smart Suite that produces quality of experience (QOE) metrics. SmartVideo application is designed to help operators with troubleshooting, auditing, and billing.

“In many ways this is the last piece of the Internet video puzzle,” said Zeugma Vice President Kevin Walsh, in prepared comments. “Internet video storefronts, such as Netflix, and digital video players, such as Roku, have done an outstanding job bringing a vast array of video content to consumer televisions. The Zeugma Services Node facilitates this video entertainment model by ensuring that video quality meets subscriber expectations when viewed on large, flat-panel HD TVs.”

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines