Visionary Delivery: Service Management for IPTV

Service management is becoming a critical part of IPTV implementations for telcos, since the triple play brings with it triple the delivery concerns: Differentiation with features and personalization while keeping it simple for the user; ensuring quality; and cost optimization as the service scales. It’s an end-to-end process that covers the network, service installation and the home network.

And telcos need to be sure to get it right to recapture and start realizing revenue on its large expenditures on infrastructure such as fiber, DSL and other upgrades. “A burning question is, how do you get as many customers as soon as possible to pay for it?” says management vendor SupportSoft Inc.’s Marc Itzkowitz, director of product management. “An average scenario puts the ROI tipping point for IPTV at around five years.”

He adds that telcos have one shot at making that ROI goal, because they are competing against two established entities – cable and satellite. “They must differentiate and win the hearts of the consumers, and that takes service management,” Itzkowitz says. “If they differentiate on price, they need management to take out the costs. Differentiating on quality requires good installs from the get-go. And, most importantly, differentiation on features requires management because that introduces complexity and more failure points.”

The greatest selling point for IPTV may be in its whiz-bang features. “It’s a technology-driven revolution of entertainment and personalization,” says Marco Wanders, chief marketing officer at Redback Networks Inc. “The way content is pushed toward the user is changing. That is the beginning of the battle for the home and the couch.”

Redback gear recognizes, authenticates and delivers services based on the subscriber profile. It works at the network layer to enable services for each subscriber, via a database of profiles, to make sure the service is delivered with the right quality and authentications. It integrates with existing telco OSSs for billing.

IPTV affords the ability to pause and rewind live TV, offer multiple camera angles and present individualized channels. IPTV can offer an unlimited amount of channels, while broadcasters are limited by the finite spectrum – meaning telcos can offer more niche programming, more often, such as foreign language content. It also can offer premium and time-sensitive programming, such as a 48-hour promotional rate to try out HDTV. “There will be a Google-like browser, so you can type in ‘5:00 news,’ click and watch it,” says Wanders. “Television will be interactive, and there’s a need for comprehensive management in order to provide the user experience necessary for adoption.”

Because of all this complexity, “IPTV operators need an integrated service and subscriber management platform,” says Jay Fausch, senior director of strategic marketing of the broadband networking division at Alcatel. “It has to be easy for the consumer – we’re talking point-and-click – and has to not break the bank for the service provider.”

Alcatel’s 5750 Subscriber Services Controller for IPTV provides an interface for the user to hook into the service provider, order services, and have elements of network configuration so the service provider can authorize and bill the service. It interfaces with billing and OSS, but talks to the network elements to configure services on the fly. It includes automatic flow-through provisioning and security policies.

Ensuring quality is more difficult than with other IP services, for one because IPTV requires more bandwidth. “Only 50 to 60kbps is the average for Internet access,” says Wanders. “With IPTV with DVD-like quality in MPEG-4 compression, you need 1.5mbps minimum – 30 times the average bandwidth an operator is used to delivering. Also, you can’t provide an average speed – you need the full bandwidth all the time to deliver the right quality – a delay in delivery is lethal with IPTV.”

SupportSoft’s ServiceVerify product checks signal quality and other network resources, and provides visibility to the CSR if the customer calls with a problem. “Telcos are moving to sophisticated information peering packages, channel maps and video quality control,” says Itzkowitz. “A lot of the network providers have some tools to gauge overall network health via probes. But there is still a need to bring the right information to field techs and CSRs.” ServiceVerify also collects data from different billing and OSS platforms, then “triages” the passes and fails to decide what should happen next.

Instead of replicating the signal at the end of the network, IPTV is a one-to-one connection from start to finish. With mass adoption, that will be a lot of bandwidth to ensure and a lot of signals to route. So service management for IPTV doesn’t stop at the network elements, it requires an end-to-end strategy that includes managing home networks. When a consumer uses the remote to set up an individualized “favorites” guide on the set-top box, that action triggers policy changes all the way back to the core. “Service routers, aggregation equipment, access nodes, residential gateways, all need to be configured as the parameters change for an individual subscriber,” says Fausch.

“As the telcos reinvent their networks from best-effort Internet, they’re finding some things don’t translate well to the full triple play,” he adds. “It’s a fundamental transition to a higher-speed DSL, fiber and Ethernet, but it’s also cultural. Things need to be on 24/7. The quality of the user experience is related directly to how well the network can handle it, which comes down to the network components and how well service management governs those.”

Operators need to be able to pre-allocate the network resources, and hand them to the application when asked, because there’s a move to managing the individual, adds Scott Jeschonek, senior product manager at ECI Telecom’s data networking division. ECI’s Shade Tree Management Suite service creator includes a subscriber manager that tracks location, timed access, portal activity and provides middleware to request and make changes to the subscriber account. “There are packages of channels, but competitive pressure will cause the need to provide flexibility for what the subscriber ultimately can get. So you have to make sure there are resources and permissions to attain the service.”

From an operational expenditure standpoint, the residential gateway is a strategic part of the picture. “The traditional demarcation point for the telco was where the wire hit the house,” says Fausch. “Not anymore. So telcos have to look at the broadband endpoint and decide how to see into it to fix any issues on the home networking side.”

The home network may include a set-top box, an IP phone, data services for the PC and a Wi-Fi access point, all controlled by a gateway. “When a triple-play customer calls with a complaint, you don’t want to have to send a truck,” says Fausch. “You need to be able to diagnose and fix that remotely. And it’s a fundamental part of the ROI/opex equation. Operators have to be able to scale this, and that means handling operational tasks from a central location.”

A home device manager allows the service provider to do a variety of things – assess the access line condition, check if service rates can be supported and do remote troubleshooting, for instance. SupportSoft’s ServiceGateway, for instance, manages the set-top box. “You want zero-touch configuration,” says Itzkowitz. “Just plug the box in, the network becomes self-aware, then ServiceGateway provisions the box. It can also pull information into the box from the CSR and can push the necessary updates. So it installs, confirms from the network, then updates the box.”

Netopia Inc. also offers device management through its Element Management System. Based on the Netopia Broadband Server, it manages and provisions broadband gateways and the triple-play devices that are attached to the gateway. "Our service provider customers have been upfront about what they need to successfully deploy triple-play services,” says Dano Ybarra, Netopia's senior vice president of sales and marketing. "Their No. 1 success factor is to offer triple play without increasing operational expenses to support the plethora of devices associated with voice and video services.”

Netopia’s solutions allow providers to provision, manage and support centrally all devices in a service delivery path, including those that sit at the customer premises beyond the broadband gateway – such as VoIP systems, set-top boxes and DVRs.

Also on the home network side is service management during the installation. SupportSoft offers SmartAccess for self-install or guided technician install. “If it’s an average projected period of five years to ROI, getting the install right is critical,” says Itzkowitz. “Truck roll avoidance can save major money, and it can isolate poor configurations. This makes sure the tech gets it right before they leave.”

Whether it’s in the network or the home, and governs feature management, QoS concerns or efficiency, it’s clear that service management is a crucial part of the IPTV scene. “The first hurdle to IPTV was designing the proper infrastructure to ensure a quality experience,” says Fausch. “Now, the focus is on the service delivery, managing network elements and the subscriber interface.”

Alcatel www.alcatel.com
ECI Telecom Ltd. www.ecitele.com
Netopia Inc. www.netopia.com
Redback Networks Inc. www.redback.com
SupportSoft Inc. www.supportsoft.com

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