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The Ultimate Guide to IPTV is a supplement to the June 2006 issue of Telecommunications“ Americas. Copyright 2006 Horizon House Publication

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Service providers and vendors are
working collaboratively to define
the architecture, requirements and
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The ability to provide real-time,
standards for IPTV. deliver what the customer wants. flexible billing, provisioning solutions

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Maria Estefania, ATIS Andrea Sorensen, Amdocs will be critical to the success of many
service providers as they enter
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Renata Silva, Siemens
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Ethernet networks to deliver Helping service providers redefine the Telecom providers with rich IPTV
innovative TV services wherever, end-user service experience. service creation platforms will be the

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whenever and however your Jim White, Alcatel masters of their own fate.

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customers want them. Phil Thompson, mPhase Technologies
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Rob Piconi, Lucent Technologies
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Video/IPTV-to-network linkages the reliability, QoS and ‘always-on’ Tom Nolle, CIMI Corp.
are needed in order for providers bandwidth availability essential for IPTV.
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Savvy service providers are embracing
IPTV as the winning platform
for delivering the latest revenue-
generating entertainment and
communications services.
Christine Heckart, Microsoft TV,
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Service providers need to look beyond
IPTV alone and bundle it as one of
many services. Adopting this strategy
will help dramatically increase
broadband service revenue.
Gary Southwell, Juniper Networks
players, hybrids will deliver more
reliability and fewer customer service
calls, having a significant impact on
customer satisfaction and
brand loyalty.
Kurt Scherf, Parks Associates

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and Carl Rijsbrack, Alcatel

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Take nothing for granted,
early adopters say.
Jim Barthold, The Ultimate Guide to IPTV is a supplement to the June 2006 issue of
Telecommunications® Magazine Telecommunications® Americas. Copyright 2006 Horizon House Publications.
+
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8K@J @J pleased to partner with Telecommunications® Magazine in presenting
to you The Ultimate Guide to IPTV. In this publication, you will find the latest
information supporting IPTV service deployments, by the communications
industry’s leading equipment and software companies.
Over the past several years, service providers have made enormous investments
in new network infrastructure and fiber deployments, all designed to bring
unsurpassed bandwidth speeds and new services to the user. Among these new
services is IPTV, or Internet Protocol Television.
IPTV offers an unparalleled and revolutionary video and entertainment
experience. That’s because it offers much more than just “live television.” IPTV
offers a dizzying array of entertainment options and functions – iTV, gaming
options, Video on Demand, Pay Per View, and much more. It is capturing the
imagination of consumers
who’ve already had the
opportunity to either subscribe,
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or in some cases preview this exciting new service
in various test markets.
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for industry collaboration. Critical to the ongoing
rollout and mass deployment of IPTV service is
the ability of service providers and the vendor
community to reach consensus on critical architecture requirements, as well as standards that support
content delivery, digital rights management, Quality of Service, interoperability, and other technical
and operational considerations. It is for this reason that the Alliance for Telecommunications
Industry Solutions (ATIS) moved forward with the creation of the IPTV Interoperability Forum
– an industry venue where leading service providers, manufacturers and software companies are
fleshing out the architecture and standards that will further support the delivery of IPTV into the
marketplace. In this Ultimate Guide to IPTV you will learn more about this exciting initiative, and
the path ATIS member companies are taking to fully realize IPTV service.
Also featured in this informative guide are valuable contributions from several industry leaders
in IPTV. From their articles, you will learn more about how these companies are supporting IPTV
with solutions for service assurance, middleware, service integration, billing, and much more.
Thank you for your interest in the Ultimate Guide to IPTV. We hope you find it most useful as
you give consideration to the technology and operations path and real business opportunities that
IPTV service offers to our industry and its users.
Susan M. Miller
President & CEO, ATIS
-
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Service providers and vendors are working collaboratively to define
the architecture, requirements and standards for IPTV
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for purposes of deploying real-time
entertainment video and TV service
offerings. Providers of “traditional” telecom
services throughout the world currently
utilize, or are presently deploying video
services over IP networks.
From the telecom service provider’s
standpoint, IPTV encompasses service
provider network subscriber services that
deliver secure broadcast-quality audio and
video to devices for display or recording.
Services may include broadcast type services
beyond live TV, to include video on demand
(VOD), Pay Per View (PPV) services, Live TV
Pause and Rewind Functionality, Interactive
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TV (iTV) services and even distribution of
content by IPTV service users/consumers.
Such IPTV services are delivered across an
access agnostic, packet switched network that
employs the IP protocol to transport the audio
and video signals. In contrast to video over
the public Internet, with IPTV deployments,
network security and performance are tightly
managed to ensure a superior entertainment
experience, resulting in a compelling
business environment for content providers,
advertisers and customers alike.
Broad industry agreement on both
the standards and the most appropriate
technology path is a critical step towards
effective deployment of IPTV services,
and the desired revenue generation that
will follow. It is for this reason that the
Alliance for Telecommunications Industry
Solutions (ATIS) – the communications
industry’s technical planning and standards
development organization based in
Washington, DC – established the IPTV
Interoperability Forum (IIF).
The ATIS IIF is responsible for developing
business-driven technical requirements and
standards,andforfacilitatingrelatedtechnical
activities that enable the interoperability,
interconnection and implementation of
IPTV systems and services. The scope of
work within the ATIS IIF includes:
• Develop interoperability agreements,
technical reports, or other types of ATIS
standards where appropriate.
• Provide a venue for interoperability activities.
• Provide a venue for the assessment of IPTV
issues in the context of NGN directions.
• Coordinate standards activities that
relate to IPTV technologies. This includes
providing a liaison function between various
standards organizations and forums that are
each working on important components for
Maria Estefania, ATIS
multimedia, but may not have visibility to
other aspects of the application.
Companies active in the ATIS IIF
include service providers such as AT&T,
Bell Canada, BellSouth, BT, Qwest,
Rogers Wireless and Verizon; as well as
industry vendors, to include Alcatel, Cisco,
Ericsson, Fujitsu, Juniper Networks, Lucent,
Microsoft, Nortel Networks, Siemens, and
Sun Microsystems. ATIS established the IIF
in June 2005, following the recommendation
of an exploratory group of ATIS member
companies, which identified a series of
technical and operational issues surrounding
IPTV that need to be addressed by the
industry. Those issues include:
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To support the smooth and effective rollout
of IPTV, it is critical for the industry to
reach consensus on an overarching reference
architecture that addresses all elements
of an IPTV solution. In response to this
need, the ATIS IIF Architecture Task Force
recently completed its IPTV Architecture
Requirements Document (ATIS IIF-WF-
100R12), which defines, in broad terms, the
scope for IPTV services, and identifies the
high-level requirements that will guide the
developmentofarchitecturespecificationsover
time. Areas of focus within the IIF Architecture
Requirements Document include:
• A finite definition of services that qualify as
IPTV services.
• The functions necessary for content
providers to provide content to the service
providers.
• Functions required by service providers to
offer IPTV services.
• Functions required by network providers
to deliver IPTV services.

• Functions in the home networking
environment that ware necessary for the
consumer to receive IPTV services.
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Because there are no accepted metrics
for assessing requirements for content
security and quality of content delivery,
unique to IPTV service, but is needed to
support a consumer’s quality of experience
(QoE) expectations while multiple
service traffic types are also on the same
network. While today’s deployments are
finding pragmatic solutions, end-to-end
QoS for multiservice (voice, video, data)
networks is definitely viewed today as a
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circuit–based networks that impact QoS
and network performance.
• Assuring that satisfactory end-to-end IP
performance is actually achieved, which
could require seamless signaling of end-
to-end QoS parameters across both
network and user interfaces.
• Path establishment (call set-up,

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content providers today are somewhat
unilaterally establishing requirements for

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purposes of granting rights to distribute
content via IPTV.
Regarding quality of content delivery,
while some standards do exist, a planning
tool for video may be needed, which might
be similar in scope to the “E-Model” voice
transmission planning tool as specified in
ITU-T Recommendation G.107. Such a
technology independent metric would
allow service providers to engineer their
content networks from an application
layer to overcome impairments that may
be specific to a particular technology.
For these reasons, the ATIS IIF is
actively defining the requirements
for the interoperability of systems
and components in the IPTV digital
rights management (DRM)/security
environment. Its Digital Rights
Management Task Force is now
completing work on the new ATIS
work in progress, or perhaps better stated
as “works in progress” because there is no
single solution to the issue.
While industry standard definitions
exist for QoS and network performance
requirements for delivering video
content, some substantial challenges
remain for QoS in the context of IPTV.
As examples, lacking are proven, robust,
and scalable standardized mechanisms
for the following:
• Rapid and complete restoration of IP
layer (not just physical layer) connectivity
following severe outages (or attacks) of
heavily loaded networks.
• Path availability levels comparable to
channel-switching delays, network server
responses) comparable to what users have
experienced with non-IPTV services.
• Reliability and robustness of service
components and critical protocols (e.g.,
routing, especially multicast routing).
• Operation during, and recovery from,
commercial power outages.
• Assuring that satisfactory end-to-
end performance is actually achieved,
especially when disparate networks (e.g.,
fiber and wireless) are being traversed.
The ATIS IIF’s QoS Task Force
is presently working on a series of
requirements for QoS that are based on
user QoE tests that address these areas

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standard, IIF-WT-008R11, which
defines such requirements, for purposes
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Source: Atis
of creating an IPTV DRM/security Core
interoperability specification during Transports region-Independent video content
– Premium channels, Broadcast network feeds,
its next phase of work. Additionally, a centralized video ser vers
third IIF Task Force that is addressing Region-Independent Region-Dependent Metro/Aggregation
QoS is giving consideration to defining Video Content Video Content Transports region-Independent video content
Transports region-specific video content
applications and requirements for a “V- – Community content, local network feeds,
Multicast
distributed video servers
Model” planning tool. Traffic Multicast
Traffic
Unicast
RecognizingthatIPTVserviceproviders Traffic Unicast
Traffic
must have the flexibility to select, adopt,
and deploy solutions according to their
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specific business needs, a key objective of
the ATIS IIF is to enable the widest range
of IPTV business models, while keeping
IPTV content secure, and enabling Core Metro/Aggregation Access Home Network
Segment Segment Segment Segment
security vendor competition and platform
operator choice.
what users have become accustomed with and others, and seeks to identify or
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=LE:K@FE8C@KP • Timing and synchronization IPTV. Such metrics would include fidelity
The need for end-to-end QoS is not mechanisms similar to those present in standards for subscriber video delivery;
/
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allowance for transcoding and packet loss;
error “link budgets;” specifications for error
concealment in video codecs; and definitions
for measuring channel change latency.
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While considerable work is underway
on interoperability testing for some
of the components of IPTV (DSL, for
example), there appears to be little work
on interoperability testing at the IPTV
application level. Some areas where
interoperability standards would help in the
delivery of IPTV services include:
• Customer – network interface specification for
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customer equipment (such as set-top boxes)
• Content provider – network interface
specification for third-party content
providers.
• Encoder – Set-top box compatibility for
MPEG-4 AVC.
• Video Encoder – Network QoS standards
for joint optimization of the network
and codec algorithms.
• OSS and BSS interfaces.
A fourth ATIS IIF Task Force – the
Testing and Interoperability Task Force
– was established to define interface
specifications; identify appropriate testing
and interoperability work within the
standards development community; develop
test plans for equipment based on interface
specifications; and serve as a potential
sponsor of testing and certification activities.
This Task Force will begin its work once the
guidelines and requirements are established
by the other IIF Task Forces.
IPTV service is critical to the business
strategies of today’s telecommunications
service providers. The IPTV video and
entertainment experience is receiving an
enormously positive response in test markets
throughout the U.S., and globally. To fully
seizethebusinessopportunitiesnowavailable
with IPTV, service providers, manufacturers,
and software companies must collaborate on
the technical requirements and standards
needed to move IPTV technologies and
applications ever more aggressively into the
marketplace.
For more information on the work of the
ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum, and to
obtain IPTV standards and architecture
requirements, visit the ATIS web site at
www.atis.org.
Maria Estefania is vice president of
Industry Forums at ATIS
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Leveraging the power of IMS and intelligent, content-aware optical/
Ethernet networks to deliver innovative TV services wherever, whenever
and however your customers want them
KF;8PËJ K<C<:FD consumers have
changed – they want communications
experiences to be available when and where
they are, and provide a richer and more
interactive experience. They want their TV,
Internet, e-mail, IM, and personal voice
services to find them – whatever device
they are using and wherever they are, be it
at home, at work or on the go. They would
also like to be able to sign-on to the network
once to access all of their services, and to
receive a single bill that is clear and easy to
understand. Most importantly, they want
all of these features to be personalized to
address their individual needs and interests
and to be delivered in a way that is simple
and seamless and that enhances their
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lifestyle, rather than complicates it.
To compete with competitive triple play
offerings from cable TV multiple service
operators (MSOs), many traditional telecom
service providers are beginning to introduce
IPTV offerings to address consumers’
entertainment needs – IP provides an
attractive method for delivering TV and
video services because it offers operators and
their subscribers a great deal of flexibility in
terms of the ability to personalize service
offerings and in the future support access to
a virtually unlimited channel line-up created
from multimedia content anywhere in the
world, that can be sent to anywhere in the
world, with channels selected based on each
individual user’s preferences. These video
and new multimedia services represent
significant growth opportunities for service
providers, who will be required to offset
the degradation in their traditional voice
revenue as VoIP and other service offerings
from new competitors begin to take share.
Service providers are exploring ways to
address these customer demands, and have
taken steps to simplify things for their
subscribers. For instance, many operators
have introduced service bundles designed to
give consumers a single, integrated package
of the key services they are looking for, most
notably voice, broadband Internet access,
and TV – typically over cable or satellite – as
well as mobile voice and data services.
However, while standard IPTV offerings
are likely to help operators retain and
acquire customers, these services do not
address one of the fundamental challenges
inherent in bundling of services, namely
price erosion. Typically, when multiple
services are bundled, subscribers pay a
single, low price, driving down the average
revenue per user (ARPU) derived from each
individual service. Additionally, in most
Rob Piconi, Lucent Technologies
cases bundled services still require separate
services platforms or “stovepipes” for each
type of service, so capital and operational
costs remain quite substantial.
The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)
architecture, however, offers operators an
opportunity to move beyond conventional
bundled services to create profitable,
personalized, blended services. It is
important to point out that services blending
is very different from the services bundling
described above.
Blending comes about by enabling
traditionally independent services to interact
with one another, typically by sharing
information such as buddy lists, location
data, presence information and subscriber
preferences and profiles.
Because they are based on a single delivery
platform, services such as instant messaging
can be combined with voice and IPTV
capabilities to create such new offerings as
multiparty video-enabled messaging on TV.
Additionally, because IMS-based services
are delivered using a standardized network
framework, operators can take advantage
of both capital and operational savings and
quicker “time to service delivery,” which
over time could give them a competitive
advantage against other providers. While
some level of blending is possible using
the “stovepipe” approach, offering blended
services in this way would be both costly
and complex.
As service providers begin to rollout more
widespread commercial IPTV services,
they will need a way to compete with, and
take share from other more established
players in the field -- cable and satellite TV
providers – and IMS can provide the edge
they need. With IMS, operators will be able

to go beyond traditional service offerings
to provide powerful, high-demand IP
multimedia applications such as:
• Caller ID on TV: Displays Caller
ID information on the TV screen and
allows consumers the option to pause
programming, answer the call – and
resume the video where they left off
when they’re done -- or send the call
to voice mail.
• Video and data services bundling:
Enables subscribers to use their TV to
launch new applications during TV
programming, letting them browse the
web, shop, or vote in interactive programs,
or access their voicemail or e-mail.
• Locator for Family Finder applications:
Locate specified friends and family
members and have their location
displayed on their TV, using their
loved one’s existing cell phone presence
enablement features.
• Personalized Advertisements: Users
will receive and view ads that are
targeted to them and selected based
on their preferences and viewing/
purchasing habits.
• Mobile Multimedia: Access TV services
from any location, using any device, while
enjoying the same selection, look and feel
of home applications.
The examples noted above are just a few
of the service blends that IMS-enabled
TV services -- or IP Multimedia TV -
- can enable operators to offer. Each of
these blended services share some fairly
unique, and compelling attributes that
current-generation TV providers will be
hard-pressed to match in the near term.
Perhaps most notably, IMS enables
services to be easily personalized to
address the needs of individual users. IMS
also addresses the need for portability,
ensuring that services can be delivered
seamlessly across wireless and wireline
networks of various types, reaching
subscribers wherever they are in the form
most appropriate to their location, and
preferences.
In addition, IMS includes elements
that support dynamic allocation of
bandwidth, enable the network to
adapt to particular customer needs, and
supply the appropriate level of network
resources to ensure a given level of
quality for a particular application. The
service can thus be delivered in a way that
is compatible with the device being used
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personalized to the needs of the specific
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While these new services present enormous
opportunities for operators, they also
present some challenges. The introduction
of video onto service provider networks is
expected to generate network traffic that
will dwarf the volume of traffic generated
by both current and future data and voice
services; recent bandwidth studies highlight
this expected growth (see Figure 1). From
a network infrastructure perspective,
distributing this video traffic effectively,
scaling it to support thousands and even
millions of users while delivering a superior
quality of experience will be priority
number one.
To achieve this, the network
infrastructure must be resilient and able
to uphold the level of QoS, reliability,
and availability demanded by users.
Though the network must continue to
support traditional voice and data traffic,
it also needs to scale to support much
higher-bandwidth blended services.
Such services have substantially lower
tolerance to network errors and require
the network to support the following
service capabilities:
• High availability – deliver user expected
quality of experience with hardware,
software and network redundancy and
sub-50 millisecond network recovery,
avoiding service interruptions
• High scalability of bandwidth,
subscribers, and QoS to support delivery
of multiple services to a large subscriber
base
• Efficient multicast for high video
scalability - support both Layer 3
protocol independent multicast (PIM)-
based multicast to optimize bandwidth
usage and Layer 2 virtual private LAN
service (VPLS)--based multicast to
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simplify multicast hierarchy and service
management
• Cost efficiency enabling competitive
service bundles
Many large carriers have selected VPLS-
based carrier Ethernet infrastructure to
aggregate the subscriber traffic coming
over DSL, FTTH or wireless connections,
for its reliability, scalability and lower cost.
To maintain sub-50 millisecond recovery,
carriers can implement technologies such
as SONET APS, SDH SNCP, and VPLS/
MPLS
Ultimately, the technologies employed
depend on several factors including
expected capacity requirements, traffic
engineering and QoS requirements.
Operators also need to evaluate existing
infrastructure investments, and the
economics of the business case. In order
to achieve greater effectiveness in the
design of the solution, the best approach
may entail the split of the network into
several parts with the best technology
chosen for each. In other instances,
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converged platforms combining the
latest Ethernet and VPLS capabilities
combined with TDM, WDM and routing
capabilities may be employed. The key to
success is combining all these technology
and infrastructure choices with integrated
management and services.
Continued on page 14
()
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Video/IPTV-to-network linkages are needed in order for providers to be
able to deliver a high-quality experience to millions of customers while
maximizing resources

David Benham, Cisco Systems

?@>?$>IFNK? M@;<F and IPTV services,
especially a mix of new high-definition
channels and on-demand video, will drive the
need for large amounts of bandwidth. Service
Providers need intelligent video-to-network
of on-demand services and the conversion
to high-definition further accelerate video
bandwidth requirements.
So, how much bandwidth is needed to
support a robust video/IPTV service? For
experienced on Friday and Saturday nights
have already climbed to as high as 20 percent
of all set-top boxes in many U.S. markets.
UsingtheexampleinFigure1,adistribution
network that is designed to deliver on-
demand content to 4000 subscribers served

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out of one central office with an assumed
20 percent peak concurrency rate requires

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about 4 Gbps of capacity for the on-demand
service alone.

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Because video, especially on-demand
services, can quickly consume much more

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network bandwidth than the Internet access
and VoIP services, it is easy to see why the
network must be optimized for it.

linkages in order to provide a high quality of the bandwidth-consuming on-demand GIFK<:K@E> K?< M@;<F J<IM@:< =IFD
experience (QoE) to viewing audiences. service, the most difficult factor to predict FM<I$JL9J:I@GK@FE
is the peak concurrency rate, which is the What happens when demand rises above
LE;<IJK8E;@E> 98E;N@;K? number of subscriber devices, such as set- the peak concurrency rate that was assumed
I<HL@I<D<EKJ top boxes, that will want to acquire any when designing the network and/or video
The amount of network bandwidth required on-demand stream at the same time. With on demand (VoD) service capacity? If a
to transport video services is typically much the addition of premium channel content particular VoD server complex cannot
more than what is required to support voice available on demand and bundled inside a service a particular request, it may get
and Internet access services. Increased use subscription service, peak concurrency rates rerouted to another VoD server complex that
has capacity. If the network capacity over a
=@>%( FE< K<C:FËJ M@;<F ;<GCFPD<EK GC8EJ 8E; 8JJLDGK@FEJ set of link(s) is exceeded, allowing too many
VoD sessions to be set up could cause a high
9Xe[n`[k_ ]ifd M`[\f ?lY F]ÔZ\ kf :\ekiXc F]ÔZ\ :F packet drop rate for nearly all of the video
MF; streams. This will result in many subscribers
4M Homes / 400 CO = 10,000 average homes perceiving an outage.
Video Play Take Rate = 40% = 4,000 Video Subs/CO Why? Video is very intolerant to packet loss,
2 TVs/Sub x 20% VoD Peak Concurrency = 1600 streams/CO in large part because it is highly compressed.
94% VoD at SD @ 2M/stream + 6% at HD @ 8M/stream Losing a packet may result in the loss of
~ 4xGbps / CO valuable encoded information and a visible
9IF8;:8JK degradation of video quality. To achieve a
300 channels w/ 20% HDTV at 8M/each & 80% SD at 2M/each goal of no more than one visible artifact per
~ 1xGbps/CO 2-hour movie, the allowed packet loss rate
for video is 10-6. Assuming a random loss

pattern for video packets means that both
drops caused by congestion and drops
caused by bit errors on physical links
must be avoided or concealed.
Instead of allowing more video sessions
to set up than the deployed bandwidth
can handle, operators need a network-
based admission control that can
deliver a busy signal to the requesting
subscriber. While a busy signal is not
what the subscriber wants to receive,
the possibility of mass degradation of
the VoD service is much worse.
An intelligent solution could support
more sophisticated busy signals. For
example, if a service knows that streams
are ending soon, busy messages could
give subscribers choices such as a
delayed start of a VoD or an alternative
service offering.
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Performing admission control for the
VoD service, for example, is a key video-
to- network linkage that can preserve a
high QoE for subscribers. The admission
control solution must be able to take into
account complex network topologies
that have redundant and load-sharing
paths in the transport network as well
as access link utilization and/or business
policies that may be enforcing other
types of constraints on the subscriber’s
service. To do this, the network’s routers,
in coordination with policy managers
and on-demand servers/managers, need
to collectively perform an admission
control function called Integrated Video
Admission Control.
First, an in-path method performs
admission control for the complex core
and distribution network topologies
found in service provider next-generation
network designs. The solution utilizes the
Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP)
for in-path signaling, sent by the VoD
server or a component on its behalf prior
to starting the VoD session.
The RSVP message traverses the exact
path the VoD session will use, thus
tracking in real time any changes in
the complex network topologies in the
core and distribution layers. Along the
path, IP routers perform a bandwidth
accounting function, either allowing the
session or denying it if bandwidth is not
available for that VoD stream. Having
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IP, or Layer 3 routing, present on every efficient way for an admission control
network element from the VoD server solution to decide whether or not a
complex to the aggregation router in the new VoD stream should be allowed to
central office makes in-path admission a specific subscriber and their video-
control possible. consuming devices.
Second, to prevent a video stream from
being sent to a set-top box if the access D@K@>8K@E> 9IF8;:8JK
link to a subscriber’s home doesn’t have J<IM@:< FLK8><J
enough capacity to carry the stream, the Unlike with the on-demand service,
VoD server or a network component in subscribers that experience a complete
the path mechanism will send a request outage in the broadcast service cannot
to an off-path component. The off-path come back when the outage is over and
component may be a policy server, as continue where they left off. Thus, the
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shown in Figure 2, that is keeping track availability requirements for the broadcast
of the access network, which is usually service are understandably high.
a simple and static topology. The policy When the aggregation router is
server can check to see if the access link configured as the Layer 3 edge device for
has enough unused bandwidth as well as video, the distribution network can take
check business policies that may or may advantage of “anycast” support for a quick
not allow the stream to be supported, and failover of video encoders/streamers
then either allow the VoD session or deny in separate headend facilities. With the
it at that time. anycast feature, you configure two or
Only using an off-path component to more multicast sources that are sending
perform admission control for the core to the same IP multicast group (same
and distribution layers, where tracking multicast destination address) and have
in real time any changes in the complex the same IP source address. IP multicast
network topologies is needed, is sub- technology uses a reverse path lookup to
optimal. The combination of in-path determine which IP source is closest to
admission control with an off-path policy any particular PIM edge node.
server at the edge is the most reliable and The result is that the replication path
(+
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for a single multicast group can consist of
a separate multicast tree for each broadcast
encoder/streamer, in this case, splitting
the subscriber base between two headend
facilities as shown in Figure 3.
From page 11
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It is clear that IPTV services offer a
very attractive opportunity for telecom
operators to generate incremental revenue,
and retain subscribers that might be
considering triple-play bundles from
traditional TV competitors. IP Multimedia
TV, however, could provide these operators
the opportunity to take share from their
competitors by introducing value-added,
personalized multimedia services that other
providers simply can’t match. Though it is
critical that these new services be delivered
reliably and in a manner that meets or
exceeds the expectations that customers
When anycasting technology is combined
with the ability of the network to detect
the failure of an encoder/streamer, routing
protocolswillreconverge.Thisreconvergence
will result in the reverse path from the
have become accustomed.
To this end, IMS-enabled network
elements allow providers to offer such service
assurance, and to derive premium value
from their network investments through a
tight integration with the IMS architecture.
These elements interoperate with the
IMS architecture via ITU-T’s Resource
Admission and Control Functions (RACF)
to provide bandwidth and QoS policing
and monitoring either on a per user session
or on an aggregate of user sessions. This
enables service control and transport to be
bridged thereby providing dynamic resource
aggregation routers to the core edge router
being recalculated to take into account the
change in location of the multicast source.
None of these actions involve the
subscriber’s video-consuming equipment.
The quick failover between redundant
broadcast encoders/streamers using the
anycast approach results in only a portion of
subscribers experiencing a brief disruption
to the quality of their broadcast while the
remainder of subscribers experience no
disruption at all.
While the example shows two sources with
presumably the same channel line-up, they
could be supporting different ad zones with
different content inserted. This solution
gives the greatest flexibility in failover design
while minimizing the number of subscribers
that might experience a very brief outage in
the event of a failover.
JLDD8IP
Innovative video service-to-network
linkages, plus enough bandwidth to support
a successful launch of VoD and HDTV,
can enable service providers to provide
video/IPTV services with a high quality of
experience to their subscribers.
David Benham is Senior Manager, Video/
IPTV Solutions Development, Cisco Systems
allocation across transport networks and
achieving end-to-end QoS.
Clearly, the key to success is optimizing
the underlying infrastructure to support
all of these services while providing a very
high-quality user experience at an attractive
price point. By leveraging an IMS-based
core network, combined with an intelligent,
content-aware transport architecture
integrating carrier Ethernet and converged
optical/Ethernet technologies – controlled
through RACF -- operators will be able
to meet the challenge of competing in the
emerging world of real-time multimedia
services. This combination offers operators
something that traditional TV service
providers can’t easily replicate.
IPTV + IMS = IP Multimedia TV – IPTV
the way it should be.
Rob Piconi is vice president and general
manager, Broadband Solutions,
Lucent Technologies.
(-
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Savvy service providers are embracing IPTV as the winning
platform for delivering the latest revenue-generating
entertainment and communications services.
@GKM @J “the next big thing” in the industry.
As a network operator, can you succeed in
transforming your business model from
transport-centric to content-centric? What
models will prove most successful during
this transition? Perhaps most importantly,
when and how should you enter this market?
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Further Is now too soon, too late, or the right time?
down the road,
The first step is to transform your disparate
consumers will
be able to view voice and data networks into a single IP-
programming based service delivery environment for
from the guide in creating and delivering new video, voice and
a smaller picture data services.
within the guide
Building IPTV capability into a network
itself.
allows you to deliver TV and video content
over a common IP network. And it allows
voice and data to be fully integrated as well.
That fulfills the promise at last of a single,
Christine Heckart, Microsoft TV, and Carl Rijsbrack, Alcatel
secure IP network over which all services
can be delivered. This is crucial because
it serves to fundamentally change your
operational costs over time. Since this is a
two-way network, it also provides you with
a competitive advantage over traditional
broadcast networks and contains the seeds to
transform the entertainment and advertising
industries, as well.
So while the part of the acronym IPTV
that’s most widely understood is TV, this is by
no means the most important element. The
shift toward “all-IP”-based communications
will not only change our entertainment
experience, but our entire communications
experience. It places users squarely at
the center of their own communications
universe and allows them to choose which
device is most appropriate at a given time.
As the content and advertising industries
have become better acquainted with IPTV,
they’re already beginning to see the real
opportunities for their businesses, from
improved security, enhanced content
packaging, more interactive programming
and advertising, and more measurable
business results.
@GKM @J I<8C KF;8P
First-generation IPTV services, often based
on ATM technologies, have been in the
market for several years and provided the
formative learning experiences needed to
create today’s enhanced platforms. These
new, all IP-based systems are now being
adopted by the world’s largest and most
respected telecom companies, including
AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom,
and many others.
The IPTV industry has made remarkable
progress in developing a platform that will
drive the future of television and ultimately
meet and exceed consumers’ expectations.
It will give consumers greater selection of
TV content and services, tailored to their
individual tastes, as well as cross-device
connected entertainment services. Most
importantly for you, this platform is the
foundation for a dramatic service provider
business transformation that brings new
revenues, new profits, new business models,
and an entirely new relationship with
customers. The platform provides entry into
markets for content and communications
and can be expanded to include commerce
and community aspects, as well. We are
on the edge of a new frontier, and it is the
pioneers that will reap the largest rewards.
If there is “gold in them hills,” not to
mention the land grab opportunities, how
do you enter this market and initially take
share? And is there an opportunity beyond
just the share shift? Can we, in fact, find
gold? Can we increase the overall size of the
industry as we expand beyond basic content
into whole new offerings and business
models?
The opportunity is significant, and the best
method for seizing this opportunity is to
think big, get started, and move fast.
K?@EB 9@>
IPTV is an underlying technology that
creates a whole new range of services to be
delivered to homes. The goal of entering

this market isn’t just to provide a package
of TV services. It is really to provide
a connected TV experience. We’ve all
heard about the triple play of voice, video
and data, but the real value comes when
service providers can deliver converged
services running seamlessly across a
unified service delivery environment.
There are a wide variety of converged
services that can be created as you mix
and match the underlying elements. And
since we’re thinking big, we should stretch
into new territory, like the integration
of commerce, communication and
community. Combined with content,
these are the four “Cs”.
An example: As your customer comes to
the end of a great movie they have rented
from your service, you can give them
the opportunity to buy the DVD or the
soundtrack, right from their TV. You can
offer them the opporutnity to record a
program from the cell phone service you
provide them while they commute home,
and then watch that recorded show from
any TV in the house, with advertising
appropriate to their interests. Today, as a
provider, you can connect people using
PCs and phones. With IPTV you can turn
the TV into a two-way communication
vehicle that provides your customers
a rich window into the lives of their
extended family and friends.
And as a provider you can link all these
together to help cement your relationship
with valued customers. Your customers
can send a home video of their children
straight to grandma’s TV set from across
the country, or take a picture from their
cell phone while at the beach and send it
to their TV screen for immediate viewing
and they can even talk about it. These are
examples of converged services, and it is
one part of the “think big” vision of IPTV.
For the service provider, IPTV is an
opportunity to transform the business
model from bandwidth-based to
content-based services and applications.
It is a chance to deeply entwine voice,
video and data into rich experiences.
It is a chance to complement existing
pay TV experiences by monetizing
new commerce, community and
communications experiences.
><K JK8IK<;
Do you know the killer application for the
television? It’s watchingTV.Mostpeoplereally
just want great content, great entertainment,
in a relaxed environment. In the United States
alone, the average American spends a few
hours in front of the TV set daily.
We’ve painted a picture of what TV can
and will be with IPTV. But for now, it’s
time to frame that picture, hang it on the
wall, roll up our sleeves and get to work.
That work starts by nailing the basics.
First, you will need to go to market
with a better TV offering. Start with
a strategy for three critical types of
transformation–aservicetransformation,
a network transformation and a business
transformation. These must work together
to bring about the total transformation
needed to survive and thrive in the next
decade. The service transformation
requires strategic planning of the
converged personal services you want to
offer and acquire the right content to do
it. You can also find third-party content
aggregators if you don’t want to cut
individual content deals on your own.
Second, you need one IP network that
can deliver any type of service mix with
a great experience. This probably means
upgrading your network bandwidth and
converging disparate networks. Invest
early in your IP network architecture for
service orchestration between IPTV and
IMS service delivery, a strategic step to
prepare for a seamless user experience of
voice, data and video.
Third is the potential for business
transformation. This involves upgrades to
(.
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customer care, payment systems and the
service creation environnement, as well
as strategies for service packaging, value
creation, and entry into new markets.
As IPTV
evolves,
consumers
will be able to
get caller-ID
on their TV
Recent consumer research shows that
a package of features that tie the PC,
the TV and the phone are much more
enticing to customers than a lower price.
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New thinking is required as the industry
moves into this new territory. Grabbing
share with lower prices simply starts a
price war and erodes the very margins
that will pay for the transformations
needed and the new innovations desired
by consumers. Focus on delivering
new value, not on lowering prices for
traditional packages. As tempting as low
prices may be, it is a short-term solution
and a long-term problem.
DFM< =8JK
If you’re a service provider and you’re not
in this market yet, are you behind? Not
yet, but you will be if you don’t move fast.
The market is evolving quickly. Today’s
Continued on page 39
(/
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Take nothing for granted, early adopters say
JFD< K?@E>J you can’t take for granted.
•The dentist isn’t lying when he says “This
may hurt a teensy bit.”
•The federal government will step up and
help when a natural disaster flattens your
community.
•Video is just another IP application.
For this article, only the third point is
serious; the others are facetious. There is no
way that video is just another IP application
running on a telephone network.
“Deploying IP video is a very large effort
that becomes more difficult as the network
becomes larger because the problems
tend to compound themselves,” said Bob
Larribeau, program director for IPTV at
MRG Research.
MRG has identified several key areas
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that service providers must address when
provisioning an IPTV network:
•The access and aggregation networks for
distributing the content;
•The video headend and equipment for
dealing with the content;
•Content protection, including digital
rights management for encryption around
Jim Barthold, Telecommunications® Magazine
broadcast content;
•The home networks and set-top boxes.
K?< 8::<JJ E<KNFIB
If the carrier is not deploying fiber to the
premises — a relatively safe assumption
— the access network can be a tricky piece
of the video provisioning puzzle, because
twisted-pair copper, no matter how clean,
was never expected to handle video’s high
bandwidth requirements.
Even if that copper is already carrying high-
speed Internet over DSL, it’s not necessarily
up to the challenge of video.
“Data is a best-effort attempt, so if
a packet of information is lost during
transmission, the system knows to resend
the packet. In the case of video, we can’t
tolerate any lost packets because that would
show up as an anomaly on the screen,” said
Bill DeMuth, CTO of northern California-
based SureWest Communications, an early
service deployer.
Still, for the sake of argument, it seems as if
video should be just another IP element on
an advanced telco network.
“It sounds like it ought to be easy enough
to do, but because IPTV or video is such
a bandwidth hog, it creates its own set
of problems,” said Rick Vergin, CEO of
Chibardun Telephone Cooperative.
Chibardun, Vergin emphasized, “didn’t
have too much of a problem” with its existing
copper infrastructure delivering signals about
6,000 feet to suburban and rural Wisconsin
customers over a VDSL network.
“We haven’t found there’s too much
problem with our plant, but some people
are going out 12,000, 18,000 feet (with more
conventional DSL products), and they’ve
had some problems with reduced capacity,”
Vergin said.
K?< :FGG<IËJ 8CC I@>?K
That scenario — the infrastructure’s good
enough to carry the content as long as you
provision the content correctly on that
infrastructure — was a recurring service
provider theme.
“Everyone likes to believe that the access
network is not important — the copper wire
and provisioning it. But when you think
about it, they have to install new service
in new neighborhoods,” said Dan Baker,
research director for Dittberner Associates.
While not everyone takes the copper for
granted, most believe it’s good enough.
“You’re always going to have a line here
or a line there where you may have issues,”
said Brian Eltom, director of marketing and
business development for digital interactive
video at Canadian carrier SaskTel. “We were
quite fortunate in that our copper plant was
in pretty good shape.”
Actually, Eltom said, most copper plant
is serviceable.
“There are going to be cases where we have
to replace drops, but we would probably
have had to perform that work just for the
Internet or voice products,” he said.
SureWest has approached the video
business from almost every angle: fiber, coax
and twisted pair. Its technical foundation
has always been to deliver two video streams
and have enough bandwidth left for at least a
megabit of high-speed data throughput and
voice.
“That’s going to take about 10 megabits of
delivery,” DeMuth said.
With those requirements in mind,
the operator must then determine what
percentage of the network can be fed with
10 megabits in the near term then expand
that to a longer term view accomplished
“either by tightening up the network or

hoping that some of the new compression
technologies will get you the coverage,”
he said.
8>>I<>8K@FE E<KNFIB
Cavalier Telephone, a CLEC launching
IPTV on the eastern seaboard, uses
carrier network infrastructure primarily
from Verizon Communications and has
adopted the new compression technology
approach.
The Richmond, Va.-based carrier is one
of the first telcos to embrace next-gen
MPEG-4 over an ADSL2+ platform. The
combination gives the carrier 10 Mbps
to 15 Mbps over a copper pair and “was
a catalyst for our ability to deliver this
service,” said Andy Lobred, Cavalier’s
vice president of product management
and marketing.
“We feel like we have a convergence of
the network technology; a convergence of
the ADSL2+ technology as well as things
that are going on with respect to MPEG-4
in the video platform,” he said.
As if that isn’t enough, the carrier is also
eyeing some forms of copper bonding to
increase capacity even more.
ShaneBroyles,researchanddevelopment
coordinator at Rural Telephone Service
Co. in Lenore, Kan., agreed that clean
plant is only part of provisioning networks
to carry big chunks of bandwidth.
“You certainly need to be doing at least
ADSL2+ because with 2+ you’re getting
anywhere from 20 to 23 megs on the
downstream,” Broyles said.
Since Rural consumes about 4.5 Mbps
per standard video stream, ADSL2+ is
plenty of bandwidth to deliver two viable
video streams and high-speed data.
E<KNFIB N8K:?@E>
The access network also must be
monitored closely before, after and
during provisioning. This is where
vendor-provided and generic cable test
equipment “is extremely important,”
Broyles said. “We could probably do a
better job of using it. Without those,
you’re just working in the dark.”
Even then there are problems
because the copper network is loaded
with passive devices “which you can’t
interrogate or provision; you have to
have a guy go out there and hook it up,”
Dittberner’s Baker said.
When it comes to video on demand
— a key piece of any IPTV offering
— measurable quality assurance goes out
the window, Larribeau said.
“QoS does not work when you go to video
on demand because you’re sending unique
streams to the subscriber and your network
becomes dominated by video traffic,”
Larribeau explained. “That means there are
very few lower priority packets to discard,
not enough to discard when congestion
occurs and you have to start discarding
video or voice-over-IP packets. That’s not a
good situation and that’s an issue in terms
of how these networks are engineered and
deployed.”
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Cable companies have delivered video
since their inception and have always used
headends to receive, encrypt or otherwise
format and send out the video streams.
Carriers have had COs and switches.
Video, as everyone concedes, is a different
beast and a headend is not a CO.
Project Mutual Telephone in Rupert,
Idaho, evinces cable’s headend model
with its IP television system. It has a main
CO and a remote headend or satellite
ranch, of sorts, at its construction yard
about two miles out of town.
“We pull video signals off a Simulsat
dish and a dish that’s tailored to pull in
HITS (headend in the sky) signals. We
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transport that into town via fiber optic
cable and that signal is transported out on
our local network,” said Mike Tylka, vice
president and plant manager.
Of course, Project Mutual was already
in the cable TV business and “had the
analog headend, and it became a natural
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progress to migrate into the digital world,”
he said.
Provisioning work within the headend
or CO isn’t as complex as it once was,
or at least it doesn’t have to be, said Dan
Prokopetz, vice president of software for
SaskTel International, the carrier-owned
equipment vendor.
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“What you have to do is extend your
POTS provisioning processes into your
high-speed Internet ... and then you extend
it into your video,” Prokopetz said. “You
need one integrated platform that will
provision all these services, and, of course,
you have to mix VoIP into that as well and
whatever else comes down the pike.”
Too many providers, he said, layer
one OSS on top of another on top of the
existing infrastructure in a vertical pile
that’s sloppy and inefficient. Prokopetz
suggests scraping away the layers and
using what’s familiar.
“Itmakessensetouseasingleprovisioning
process and extend the base application out
to encompass everything else. If you can
do POTS, you extend it into high-speed
Internet, extend it into video, extend it into
VoIP, extend it into whatever else happens,”
he said.
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Another headend headache is just
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starting to throb: getting MPEG-4 content
from satellite providers and mixing that
with formatted off-air signals. At the very
least this is going to require several hundred
thousand dollars of headend investment.
“We’re looking to NRTC (National Rural
Telecommunications Cooperative) and
SES Americom. They’re going to do all the
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compression and converting the signals into
an IP signal then beam it up to the satellite,
which is going to beam it down to ILECs in
IP format,” Vergin said.
The carriers must install an MPEG-4
headend to receive and retransmit the
satellite signals then spend another chunk
of change to translate local off-air channels
into MPEG-4 as well.
“The cost of the headend is one of the major
barriers to small telcos getting involved in
this,” Vergin said, pointing to an average cost
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of around $300,000, about two-thirds of which
would be to get the local off-air channels and
convert them to MPEG-4.
While a grouping of disparate pieces, the
headend is driven by middleware that “sets up
whatchannelsthecustomergets,” saidBradEvans,
CEO and chairman of Cavalier Telephone.
“We tied our middleware into our OSS
system, so we’re going to have flow-through
provisioning, where it will automatically set
up the channels the customer wants, flow
through to our DSL and loop orderings, and
set up the phone features, Internet features
and video features,” Evans said.
Middleware also drives Cavalier’s billing,
tying everything back to the base POTS
provisioning infrastructure.
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In the past, except for a few premium
channels, there wasn’t overwhelming
demand for encryption, scrambling or other
video content security. That’s now becoming
a hot button for telcos provisioning IPTV.
“Certainly we have encountered that on the
video-on-demand platform, [and] we are seeing
a few more broadcasters beginning to ask about
content security,” SaskTel’s Eltom said.
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SaskTel is implementing a system
proactively that will deliver across-the-board
security for every channel — even though
Eltom thinks that’s overkill.
“Today, because it’s a closed IP network,
we have some security and content controls
in place. We also have an audit process that
goes on at the router points in the city where
there’s a check that looks at what a customer’s
channel subscription looks like and what
channels they are accessing,” he said.
The problem is, IP equates to Internet and
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that throws a scare into content providers.
“More and more content providers are
requiring encryption,” Cavalier’s Lobred
said, suggesting that it’s a good idea to use
an encryption software provider that has
a relationship with those who develop the
content. “That helps move through some of
the hurdles with some of the content guys.”
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Provisioning the home, everyone agreed,
is the biggest IPTV hassle. With a number
of new players getting into the set-top, cost
shouldn’t be a big problem for a situation
where every television set needs a box.
Outside that, though, the home is a free-for-
all battle zone.
“The phone company can bring the IP
signal up to the household like they do
now for DSL [but] can’t necessarily rely on
the inside wiring being as high quality as
it needs to be,” said Jonathan Hurd, vice
president of broadband and media practices
for Adventis.
While phone companies spend a lot of
time making sure that the fiber or copper is
up to snuff, an old or badly connected home
network can stop the service in a finger snap,
and even a well-wired home is an added
provisioning expense.
“We’re still looking for cost-effective methods
to handle that,” said SureWest’s DeMuth, who’s
been delivering IPTV so long he’s coined the
term IPTV-2 because “we’re at the second
generation of IPTV in my mind.”
Home phone lines could possibly have
been installed when AT&T was “the phone
company.” They work for phones and usually
deliver adequate high-speed Internet to
modems that sit near computers that sit
near phone jacks. Video is another story; the
television, unlike the computer, probably
doesn’t sit near the phone jack.
“If there’s old coax in the house, maybe we’ll
use some devices to utilize that coax, but in
some cases you’re going to have to rewire the
house with Cat 5 wiring. That gets expensive,
either through additional labor or through
hardware,” DeMuth said, warning, “don’t
underestimate the time spent in the house.”
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Larribeau agreed the home is a landmine.
“It’s a reasonable guess to say that half the
calls to the telco center on IPTV are going to
be related to problems in the home. Service
providers need to look very seriously at what
they can do to manage, or at least monitor,
the home network so they can quickly
resolve these issues and possibly even
anticipate them,” he said.
Besides that, Hurd said, while most people
don’t think of the computer hooked to
the DSL network as the phone company’s
responsibility, a set-top box hooked to the
television belongs to the telco.
“The user might hook it up incorrectly or
move it from one room to another ... and
break it,” Hurd added. “Then there’s the
connection from that set-top box to the TV
where you get into things like ground loops
and interference with other video that can
cause degradation of the signal.”
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Just as an overview, the network must be
provisioned to deliver top quality video
Continued on page 39
))
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Using IMS and IP convergence to deliver what the customer wants
<M<I ?8M< your phone ring when you are
right in the middle of your favorite show, at
that critical turning point in the show? You
miss the show’s turning point, and when you
hang up from your phone call, well, you’re
lost and don’t know what is going on, so you
may as well just turn the TV off and go do
the dishes.
We are all increasingly busy, and
perhaps our busy lifestyle is due in part to
new communications tools that keep us
connected. However, as consumers, we
should be happy to know that the plethora of
acronyms out there -- IPTV, IMS, SIP, FMC
-- are also going to help us to relax and be
entertained on our terms in the future.
This provides excellent fodder for
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service providers as they move beyond
basic bundling and discounts and into the
feature-rich offerings that will come with IP
convergence.
Traditional players in today’s telecom
market are facing stiff competition from
all directions. Cable operators are focusing
on the triple- and quadruple-plays, moving
beyond traditional TV services and into
voice, wireless and Internet. Search engines
like Google and Yahoo! are becoming
providers of converged offerings. Even eBay
has jumped on the convergence bandwagon
with their acquisition of Internet-voice
provider Skype. With all of these new
entrants, how do the traditional wireline
providers replace revenue and subscribers
lost to these competitors?
Wireline service providers have a strong
base to support not only the triple play and
grand slam offerings, but they are suitably
positioned to be leaders in convergence.
However, simply delivering these services
is not enough to differentiate from the
competition. Providers must deliver to
consumers what they want – a grand slam
bundle of fully integrated services tailored to
meet their specific needs.
IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), a new
network abstraction layer based on a 3GPP
standard, should enable service providers to
do that and more. By ‘unhooking’ services
from networks and devices, IMS will
enable service providers to roll out a “killer
environment” characterized by ubiquitous
Andrea Sorensen, Amdocs
access to blended voice-data-content service
experiences no matter the network or
device. Initially designed for wireless service
providers, IMS has recently been adopted
by the European Telecommunications
Standards Institute (ETSI) and CableLabs.
These announcements have significantly
strengthened IMS’ standing, practically
converting it into the only available roadmap
for reaching the new frontier of ubiquitous
communications and entertainment.
A vision of a future offering where IMS
and IPTV interwork, and convergence has
been achieved is shown in Figure 1.
Of course, the vision of IMS enabled IP
convergence will not be easily achieved.
Most analysts agree that real IMS will reach
significant adoption in three to five years.
However, this is something that service
providers can and are beginning to include
in their planning.
The journey to IMS and IP convergence
has significant challenges in the areas of
marketing, organization/business process,
and, of course, technology. One of the most
significant challenges is BSS/OSS. To ensure
successful delivery of the sophisticated
services enabled by IMS, service providers
must realign their business strategies to
focus on the customer and their specific
needs – this is called adopting an integrated
customer management strategy.
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Figure2isagoodrepresentationofintegrated
customer management. By adopting an
integrated customer management approach,
a service providers’ resources are aligned
around the customer, providing visibility
across all services supported by the IP
platform and insight into how and when
customers use their services as well as their

personal preferences such as payment,
billing features and services. This creates
unlimited opportunities to leverage
the customer experience to maximize
value for both the service provider and
the customer, particularly in the area of
personalization.
Marrying IMS and IPTV to deliver
bundled services in the future is
perceived to deliver greater value
and empowerment to the consumer.
However, these technologies need to
be implemented and rolled out in the
context of the BSS/OSS supporting
customers. Consider that the majority
of customers have had less than optimal
bundling experiences. For example, a
leading North American service provider
recently offered a highly attractive service
bundle that included fixed voice, wireless,
satellite TV, and high-speed Internet with
a common monthly bill. An independent
sampling of this service found that for one
customer, it took a total of three weeks to
switch from his existing service to this
bundle. During this three-week period,
the customer had over 21 interactions
with the service provider, including four
technician visits, more than six hours on
the phone with CSRs and seven different
welcome letters!
The problem: The service provider
operated along line of business silos
in which the organization structures,
business processes and front- and back-
office systems were all network-centric
and operated in isolation. As a result,
each line of business interacted separately
with the customer to configure, provision
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and support its service without insight
or regard to the other services in the
bundle, or the customer’s behaviors and
preferences. This fragmented approach
meant that the service provider had
no insight into their customers and
any customer experience was merely
a by-product of the service provider’s
operating activity.
From the customers’ perspective, even
though they were actually only dealing
with one service provider, their perception
was that they were dealing with at least
four different companies. Any perceived
value of the bundle was negated by a
customer experience that was inefficient,
impersonal and extremely frustrating!
As well, such a clearly disjointed process
gives the customer the message that true
convergence is a long, long way away.
:FE:CLJ@FE
Serviceprovidersarenotonlyrollingoutnew
services and capabilities based on enabling
technologies like IPTV, IP convergence
and IMS, but they are also recognizing
the impacts on BSS and OSS, as part of
the overall delivery of true convergence.
Without this overarching strategy, ultimate
convergence will elude all parties.
Take the example outlined earlier – the
consumer watching television. When the
phone rings, they pick up and miss some
(or all) of their show. In a truly converged
environment, enabled by IMS, ubiquity
will be achieved across the IP network,
and an integrated customer management
approach will deliver options to the
consumer. Firstly, the consumer may
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not even be watching their show in their
living room. They could be watching
from their laptop as they sit in a coffee
shop, connected via the local hot spot.
When their “phone” rings, the person
calling may have dialed the consumer’s
home number, but the consumer is not
there. So follow-me functionality sends
the call to the logged-in laptop on the
advise of the consumer. The consumer
can then point and click to answer the
phone, but at the same time select the
option to have their show paused, or even
recorded, to be resumed after they hang
up from their conversation.
The same consumer could have selected
an option to send a message back to the
caller “Hey, I’m chillin’, I’ll call you later.”
So, now simply being well connected
doesn’t just mean more ways to find the
consumer, it means empowering the
consumer to manage up-time and down-
time on their own terms.
Theconsumerisinfullcontrol. Aswehave
already seen in the market, it is not enough
to just rapidly bundle services together and
present a common bill. To achieve market
leadership, service providers must undergo
a significant business transformation from
legacy platforms and network-focused
business models to an agile, customer-
centric business model that facilitates
selling and buying in the supermarket
of digital, multi-media services and an
intentional customer experience at all
touch points – true integrated customer
management.
Andrea Sorensen is marketing manager,
Wireline & IP Convergence, at Amdocs
)+
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Helping service providers redefine the end-user service experience
K?< @E;LJKIP is undergoing a broadband-
powered competitive transformation. IPTV
completely changes the competitive landscape
for the broadband household. Users demand
a better, more empowered experience and
service providers must deliver it now or miss
the opportunity to enter the market with a
compelling service offering. But, the urgency
and complexity require a services integration
partner who translates user expectations
into game-changing services that are the
foundation for competitive transformation
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and who can help shift service providers’
focus from managing networks to managing
the user experience and developing new
business models.
A services integrator is a partner who can
manage and implement a service provider’s
service-driven network transformation:
consulting with the service provider about
detailed service definitions and reference
solution recommendations, and ensuring that
the IP transformation is delivered on-time
and within budget via integration services.
Triple play represents the first global telecom
service transformation that supports a real
services integrator approach where services
definition, globally proven reference solutions
and integration services can accelerate the
transformation process.
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Triple play represents both a mass-market
opportunity and threat for service providers,
completely redefining the residential
communicationsbundleanddrivingstrategic
decision-making. Any service provider
with a revenue stream from either phone,
Internet or TV must re-think their service
offering to address this change. Many service
providers now realize that their business will
be completely different in five years, and that
their network must be transformed to drive
a new business direction.
The amount of associated change is
daunting and service providers are looking
for help. They need:
1. A service transformation that changes
the relationship service providers have with
their residential customers, from service
transaction-based (phone, Internet and
TV) to a relationship where the service
provider manages the communications and
entertainment experience residential users
experience at home and away;
2. A new network that supports mass-
market IP services, fixed and mobile
services, customer specific configurations,
lower operating costs and proactive service
assurance;
3. Business transformation that reduces
innovative services deployment risks and
allows new business models.
The market urgency and complexity of
Jim White, Alcatel
triple play implementation means service
integrators need to demonstrate experience
in implementing new technologies such
as IPTV, IP multimedia subsystem (IMS),
broadband infrastructures; and flexible
architectures that leverage installed assets
and significantly shorten time to market.
9<PFE; KI@GC< GC8P
User-centric triple play services represent
the first significant opportunity for service
integrators, but network transformations
can also start in other ways. For instance,
many service providers have taken their
own strategic steps to be ready to make
transformative network investments around
strategic service opportunities such as
fixed-mobile convergence and managed
communication services for small, medium
and enterprise businesses. Other service
providers initiate network transformations
as a prerequisite for new services by focusing
their initial effort not on any specific service,
but on achieving other strategic business
objectives. For example, changing business
cost structures in anticipation of regulatory
or market changes and enhancing business
support systems (BSS).
The services integrator engagement model
can facilitate the development of these
opportunities as well by focusing customers’
efforts on their primary economic purpose,
which is to provide services to users that add
value. The reference solution for each situation
can adjust to each specific customer situation.
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In simple terms, services integration is

an end-to-end customer engagement
process that includes three critical pillars:
services definition, reference solutions
and integration services. Whereas a
systems integrator focuses on closing the
gaps between various systems, a services
integrator focuses on the services provider’s
service and provides the critical resources,
tools and experience to bring a strategic
new service, such as triple play to market.
Redefining the end-user service experience
with the right services definition includes:
• Application development which focuses on
packaging the most important user attributes
• Trend and service evolution analysis
to describe and shape long term service
requirements for reference solution
development
•Market-entrystrategy(pricing,segmentation,
business case modeling)
• Technical service description or the
translation of user requirements into viable
solutions
Reference solutions that anticipate the
services definition and network design
relationship to deliver the right service
experience comprise:
• Flexible reference architectures
• Product portfolio breadth to bring new
technology, standards and economics together
• Specific technical knowledge to ensure
that the reference solution delivers on
expectations
• Technology ecosystem leadership to align
partners around a common plan
Integration services accelerate and manage
the reference solution implementation and
include:
• Program management (plan of record,
technical requirements and specifications)
• Vendor management and leadership
(critical project deliverables, managed
proactively)
• Service delivery expertise that brings
important implementation know-how to a
project
• Portfolio integration to ensure that
the services integrator has leverage over
important solution aspects
Combined, these critical elements define
the services integrator role making the
services integrator the service provider’s
focal point for an end-to-end project.
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Global triple play-driven IP transformation
projects demonstrate that traditional
equipment vendors have many of the pieces
required to become a leading services
integrator.
• Services definition: Involvement in
defining the broadband industry and
application development expertise provide a
service evolution vision based on real world
implementation experience.
• Reference Solutions: Flexible architectures
provide service providers with pre-validated
solutions based on product solutions that
use a mix of proven technologies and new
technologies that can shift the economics of
delivering new services.
• Integration Services: The ability to provide
the critical new technical skills necessary for
new services, such as IPTV, along with assets
required to test and validate the entire end-to-
end solution initially exist inside companies
that invent, develop and implement these
new products inside networks.
The three pillars of the services integrator
role allow equipment vendors to engage
customers early in the decision process before
they define the network transformation
required to deliver a strategic new service.
Thisearlyengagementsavesserviceproviders
valuable time and money. A services
integrator offers foresight. While service
providers imagine their services vision
they can test these ideas against technical
feasibility, they can prototype services with
the latest application development tools and
they can model network costs to ensure the
economics line up.
Product portfolio breadth and deep
knowledge of key technologies enable
vendors to tailor reference solutions that
target service providers’ specific requirements
and concerns. A reference solutions architect
),
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needs to understand the environmental
economics and conceptualize how a service
provider can operate services in a particular
way. The ability to bundle professional
services with technology and products allows
vendors to partner much more closely with
service provider customers.
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The power of broadband to create new
business has never been more evident,
but it’s up to service providers to shed the
restraints of traditional telecommunications
and network boundaries and deliver the
most powerful user experience possible _
and deliver it fast.
Nowthatbroadbandnetworksarebecoming
ubiquitous worldwide, service providers
recognize that they must turn their attention
to moving up the value chain from being pure
connectivity and bandwidth providers; they
must also deliver value-added, user-centric
broadband applications and services such as
IPTV, Mobile TV and converged services.
They must offer a highly differentiated user
experience in order to establish a sustainable
competitive advantage.
The emerging services integrator role
provides an end-to-end focal point for
critical transformation projects. And, to get
there, vendors can build on their triple play
experience of translating user experience into
real network impacts, to help service providers
better manage their resources by shifting the
service providers’ focus from their network to
their end-user customers.
Jim White is a vice president of market
development inside Alcatel’s Global
Marketing organization.
)-
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The traditional emphasis on managing networks must change to provide the reliability, QoS and
‘always-on’ bandwidth availability essential for on-demand, prime-time IPTV broadcasting
:FDDLE@:8K@FEJ J<IM@:< providers
(CSPs) worldwide are either evaluating or
deploying IPTV to fulfill several promising
objectives. Regardless of whether the
revenue strategy is exploiting billion
dollar advertising opportunities, push
video on demand (VoD) and personal
video recorder/set-top box (PVR/STB)
telescoping; recapturing residential voice
customers, Internet access up-selling and
service bundles; or improving ARPU with
videophone, gaming and personal music
library premiums, the customer demand
is real. While equipment suppliers and
network operators race to identify winning
feature functionalities, more than 1 million
IPTV subscribers globally have already
validated demand-side opportunity with
40 percent growth in the first half of 2005
alone. Research indicates revenue potential
from services alone could reach $38
billion by 2009, which does not include
infrastructure investment. Regardless of the
individual operator’s motivation or medium
(copper, fiber or air), each of these CSPs has
something in common. Managing a complex
network to provide capable and robust ’triple
play’ video, data and voice presents key
operational obstacles that must be overcome
to keep customers subscribed.
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Conventional television broadcasts delivered
over a transmission network maturing over
a span of 70 years have established viewer
expectations for near-perfect quality.
Prospective subscribers will compare IPTV
to the traditional delivery system and expect
the challenger’s quality and availability to
meet or surpass those associated with its
predecessor. Further, IPTV research has
shown that television viewers who encounter
viewing hindrances typically lose interest
immediately and switch providers rather
than report the incident, making churn a
serious issue. Significant operational factors
with the potential to negatively impact
successful service management include:
• Packet Loss. When IPTV networks
become heavily congested, packet loss
tends to be more problematic than jitter, as
most receivers have 200 msec buffer sizes
sufficient for handling small variances in
packet arrival times. The resultant broadcast
quality degradation is related to the transport
protocol mechanism in use. Solutions
implementing UDP unicast or multicast
with MPEG-2 encapsulation can experience
significant image disruption when entire
frames of the video transmission are
dropped. TCP can be ameliorative for lost
and improperly ordered packets; however,
its packet retransmission delay can cause
the playout buffer in a subscriber’s receiving
STB/PVR to pause video playback.
• Bandwidth Availability. If a network node
or router becomes congested, the outgoing
interface buffer can overflow and squeeze
the bandwidth delivered to a DSL, fiber or
cable access link. The receiving STB/PVR
will generally be impacted and the customer
experience will then suffer. When variable
rate codecs are used with a video broadcast,
temporary spikes in the bandwidth required
can introduce buffering instability for network
elements at both the source and destination. As
a result, unfavorable overflow and underflow
conditions can materialize and cause the
viewer to experience picture freeze, macro
blocking or jerky playback symptoms.
• Encrypted Content. The IPTV architecture
incorporates a Conditional Access (CA)
element, which interacts with back-end
systems to determine if and when to encrypt
content and send keys to authenticated
subscribers. Broadcasted content is often
encrypted in real time to protect against
unauthorized use whereas VoD takes place
Sameh Yamany, Ph.D., Trendium
before being stored on a VoD server and
must be periodically re-encrypted to achieve
heightened content security. The variance
in proprietary Digital Rights Management
(DRM) implementations introduces
performance complexity for different areas
of the IPTV network, and solutions with the
ability to monitor encrypted streams and
correlate the impact have not yet evolved.
• Codec Impairments. The difficulty of
isolating and measuring network and codec
impairments in the IPTV environment is
exacerbated by the variety of video encoders
and decoders currently in use and planned
for the future. While MPEG-2 TS is typical,
video payloads can be delivered using UTP
or RTP over UTP. MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264/
AVC) offers the promise of video payload
compression and delivery of DVD and
HD streams using less bandwidth. Each of
these codecs dramatically alters the amount
of time required to join multicast video
streams and receive the initial image from
a multicast group (‘Zap Time’) and will
impact subscribers, particularly those who
live far from the CO or headend.
• End-to-End (E2E) Manageability. IPTV
subscribers will expect service to work
around the clock. For broadcasts to perform
as expected, both the network infrastructure
and service delivery equipment must be
continuously available and performing in
accordance with specified service levels. The
IP network itself is not the only potential
impairment source. VoD and broadcast
servers inadequately provisioned to
support high densities of users during peak
viewing times can become congested and
lead to pauses in video playback after the
subscriber’s decoder buffers have consumed
all available stored data. The widely
heterogeneous and diverse number of
elements, network devices and application
resources complicates E2E manageability
)/
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troubleshooting and impedes CSPs’ ability
to isolate root causes and network hot spots.
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Unrelenting subscriber demand is catalyzing
CSP awareness of IPTV’s hybrid blend of
engineering-centric and viewer-centric service
measurements: an evolution of Operational
Intelligence (see Figure 1).
Traditional QoS network monitoring
solutions tend to be operations-oriented and
focus on important network parameters such
as delay, jitter and throughput. While certainly
critical to network health, these metrics have
little meaning to the average television viewer.
For this reason, increasing emphasis has
been placed on a higher-level measurement
abstraction commonly referred to as quality
of experience (QoE). Significant QoE
measurements might include the time needed
to switch IPTV channels, change Electronic
Program Guide listings, load a web page on a
non-PC device with an IPTV display or view a
long-form ad pushed to a PVR/STB.
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IPTV networks must be able to monitor
fundamental network parameters like delay,
jitter and loss rate, as well as server parameters
such as memory, CPU, I/O and general health
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states. There is a growing need for high-volume
infrastructure performance data collection
engines with the ability to extract service and
performance data from all IPTV infrastructure
including STBs/PVRs, home gateways (TR-
069 enabled), DSLAMs, LAN/WAN switches,
VoD servers, active and passive probes, and
applications,toallowfordeeppacketinspection
and statistical traffic analysis. These service
management platforms should be vendor-
agnostic and capable of normalizing SNMP,
TL1 or XML outputs to compute trends and
estimates of key QoE performance indicators.
To manage IPTV networks, operators will need
future-proof service management solutions
capable of summarizing lower layer transport
key quality indicators (KQI) across higher IP
layers to predict and produce aggregated KQIs
at the higher level.
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To match subscriber claims of poor quality
to the source of the problem, CSPs will
require intelligent root-cause analysis across
layers of the E2E service hierarchy through
intuitive GUIs that assist operators with
pinpointing the actual cause of impairments
in real time and provide a historical
perspective. To apply valuable insight
where traditional service management falls
short of IPTV expectations, this impact
analysis must be relationship-aware in that it
examines the nature of network relationships
before determining how the impairment
at a specific layer in the network hierarchy
impacts the service or application residing at
other layers of the hierarchy.
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Data collection and analysis sequences
yield genuine value only if a means exists to
integrate these immense outputs and display
the findings in meaningful and intuitive
ways. Practical systems should demonstrate
future-proof support for adapting to every
NMS interface in order to generate reports
measuring TCP Application Response Time
analysis, EPG selection intervals, Zap Time
measurements for live channel join/leave
and UDP multicast/unicast packet arrival
timing analysis. Reporting capabilities
should incorporate integrated fault and
performance depiction, with a unified
view of impairments combining events
gathered from fault management systems
such as fault correlation and consolidation.
Customized user specific and self-updating
heat charts should be displayed graphically
to empower the CSP to rapidly isolate the
service degradation and correct network
health before trouble ticket call volumes
accelerate.
LEC<8J?@E> I<M<EL< GFK<EK@8C
Operational Intelligence functionalities
are emerging as critical components for
CSPs who recognize the inherent ROI from
reducing the time and cost needed to scale
IPTV service to thousands of subscribers
per day while reducing wasteful capital
expenditures tied to over-provisioning
bandwidth-intensive video service. The
ultimate goal is to reduce customer
churn by assuring QoE and satisfying
viewer expectations. Achieving this goal
mandates that CSPs have tools in place
capable of reducing costly outages and
service degradations, minimizing trend
Mean Time to Detect (MTTD), lowering
trend Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), and
isolating and removing hotspots. The ITPV
adoption curve is accelerating due to a
confluence of factors: video compression
advancements, increased fiber availability,
greater affordability for access solutions like
DSL and PON, computational and storage
technology advancements, and STBs/
PVRs that have validated VoD business
models. Fully unleashing the hidden
revenue potential of increasingly complex
IPTV networks requires changes in the
service management paradigm. The era of
Operational Intelligence promises to deliver
monumental advancements in rapid root-
cause analysis, relationship-aware impact
analysis and the multi-protocol network
infrastructure layering capabilities essential
for triple play deployment stability.
Sameh Yamany, Ph.D., is senior vice
president product management and
corporate CTO for Trendium, Inc.

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Service Providers need to look beyond IPTV alone and bundle it as one
of many services. Adopting this strategy will help dramatically increase
broadband service revenue
=FI J<IM@:< providers facing
competitive threats from multiple sources,
IPTV promises to increase the average
revenue per subscriber, helping offset
diminishing residential voice revenues
and possible market share erosion. An
IPTV service alone, however, will not
differentiate one provider from another
in the long run. Rather, the ability to offer
a range of flexible, customizable services
will enable true differentiation, opening
up the opportunity to potentially double
service provider revenue.
By deploying a flexible, intelligent network
infrastructurefromthestart,serviceproviders
will be able to offer IPTV immediately
without compromising the ability to offer a
range of flexible and customizable services
in the future. A shortsighted architectural
decision may be acceptable for IPTV, but will
limit differentiation and hinder future service
development opportunities in the long term.
Network architecture decisions can
minimize the risk associated with
implementing and offering IPTV alone
and also potentially double revenue by
increasing service choice; improve time
to market; decrease cost; and reduce
customer churn—all without resorting to
price competition.
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A flexible, customizable service bundle
begins with a broad menu of broadcast
TV tiers and on-demand options.
Combining this with VoIP services
and high-speed data provides a solid
foundation upon which new services can
be added. Unfortunately, if the provider
stops here, their service bundle is not
going to be significantly different from
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LCK@D8K<
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Gary Southwell, Juniper Networks
other Provider offerings, leaving price as support these highly sought-after customers
the only possible differentiator. on the same infrastructure.
It is the combination of services and
the ability for the subscriber to create ;<GCFP 8E @EK<CC@><EK @G
a customized bundle that appeals to DLCK@J<IM@:< E<KNFIB
each consumer and provides true @E=I8JKIL:KLI<
differentiation. These services can be Ensuring the best user experience requires
broadcast television tiers and packages, a multiservice network infrastructure
enhanced services such as video on that can dynamically adapt to each
demand (VOD), integrated services such subscriber. Adding this intelligence with
as Caller ID on TV, or brand new services IP routing enables the network to ensure
such as video telephony and on-line that enough bandwidth is available for
gaming (See Figure 1). each service and that critical information
In addition, new services targeting receives preferential treatment.
specific market segments can also be The intelligence can be controlled in
a strong differentiator and strategy the Point-of-Presence (POP) or it can
for growing service revenues. For be distributed further into the network.
example, hosted gaming services and
video-telephony services often appeal =@>%( DLCK@GC8P J<IM@:<J 9LE;C<
to the twenty-something crowd, while
integrating home security and monitoring Entertainment Productivity / Reference Communications
can appeal to the traveler. Quality cellular
ONLINE GAMING SECURITY Voice (VoIP)
backhaul over WiFi appeals to the growing Downloads Anti-Virus
Tiered VPN
Real-Time play Firewall
segment of users ready to “cut the wire” Multiplayer hosting SPAM Personal Video
URL Filtering
and go with only a mobile phone. Tens of Streaming music Email
Home Monitoring
Streaming Audio Fax Services
millions of small businesses and SOHO Radio INFO SERVICES
Concerts Financial, News, travel Instant
workers are connecting through high- Messaging
VIDEO Distributed Printing
speed Internet connections today. What’s IP/PC TV Photos, Etc
Video on Demand Video Telephony
unique is that these users are accessing Pay per View PERSONAL STORAGE
Digital Video Recording Images, Video, data Online Collaboration
mission-critical applications that rely on
INFO SERVICES Dinamic Bandwidth Wireless Backhaul
consistent timely delivery. Sports, Games, hobbies Upgrades
From ERP to on-line collaboration
and web services, to secure commerce Based on the requirements to implement
transactions, these users need more the former, the Broadband Services Router
granular data services that work with (BSR) has emerged, which manages all
higher consistency and reliability than services for all users. As an alternative, IP
today’s best-effort data services. DSLAMs or so-called intelligent Ethernet
By segmenting the market, providers will switches can attempt to evolve to provide
find a large mix of currently underserved these intelligent routing functions in
customers to target. Yet to maximize a distributed fashion in the access and
profitability, any service offering must also aggregation network.
*'
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The challenges of a distributed architecture are: entertainment services at night. satisfaction requires a consistent level of
• Managing numerous distributed devices The centralized BSR approach makes service delivery to ensure a high quality
in every CO (instead of having fewer BSRs such service segmentation possible and experience. Offering a broad mix of services,
centralized at Metro POPs) significantly manageable, as the policy is applied at fewer in which many services can have a high
increases complexity to plan, provision and points rather than at thousands of DSLAMs. desired priority, can cause problems when
operate the network. For example customizing The BSR, by queuing each subscriber multiple high priority services contend for
each device, capturing network usage separately, can keep subscribers from the same limited bandwidth. When services
statistics, and assigning QoS parameters for interfering with each other. of similar priority contend for limited
each service is far simpler when performed in The dynamic bandwidth management bandwidth, the BSR may not have enough
fewer devices in fewer locations. capability of the intelligent BSR approach low priority services running to a particular
• Adding the required intelligence to every differs from today’s more simplistic subscriber to accommodate additional
DSLAM and switch adds considerable cost distribution overlay approaches that treat capacity. This condition impacts all services
and complexity to configure new subscribers each service separately and force the carving to that subscriber.
or modify the services packages to which out of bandwidth to support each priority The industry recognizes this trend,
they subscribe. service. This limits the number of offered and network vendors are working with
• Most “smart” DSLAMs will take years to priority services to just a few, limiting the application vendors to solve this problem.
mature to provide the advanced service revenue-per-subscriber potential and forcing The result, shown in Figure 2, is an
management functionality. all subscribers to take a “one-size-fits-all” open service policy manager that allows
• Any intelligent IP applications to query the
DSLAM and aggregation policy manager before
=@>%) :<EKI8C@Q<; DF;<CËJ J<IM@:< GFC@:P
switch solutions require
D8E8><D<EK =LE:K@FE setting up a service
proprietary ESS/OSS request. Openness
systems for provisioning requires a published
and management. This set of APIs and use
locks providers into of standards-based
single-vendor solutions message exchange such
that prohibit mixing as SOAP. The policy
best-of-breed access and manager tracks the
aggregation products. statusofeachapplication
by interacting with
:<EKI8C@Q< K?< the BSRs as to what
@EK<CC@><E:< services are active at
A network that centralizes any time and how much
service and subscriber bandwidth is available
control into carrier- to every subscriber. The
grade BSRs avoids the policy manager then
above-mentioned issues of a distributed service bundle with no means to customize. can allow or block the application from
architecture. BSRs become the service control With an intelligent centralized approach, setting up a new service connection,
points where service policy can be set on a access activity of DSLAMs and aggregation
per-service, per-subscriber basis. The devices switches entails fewer functions. Services JLDD8IP
feature a built-in, scalable queuing system can be shaped to fit into existing ATM An open, centralized, intelligent
that applies policy, marks the packets and infrastructures, thereby allowing providers to infrastructure solves the long-term service
shapes the service dynamically to fit through move into the market quickly and selectively bundle differentiation dilemma, enabling
the access network local loop to deliver each upgrade the access network. Providers also subscribers to select the desired service mix
service with consistent quality. canimplementsimplerEthernetDSLAMsand in their service bundle and prioritize those
BSRs can better react to service activations switches today, as opposed to waiting for more services via a self-provisioning, web-based
and reshape services on-the-fly to fit the complex intelligent DSLAMs to be ready for service portal. The centralized BSR provides
defined service policy. The benefit is that production. The savings and reduction in risk choices in the access network and timing of
at any moment, all available bandwidth can of a centralized architecture can be substantial. required net upgrades, lowering TCO and
be allocated to any active service(s). When TCO actually can come in at a fraction of that reducing customer churn. The combination
TVs are off, all bandwidth can be made associated with a distributed model because of the BSR and the service policy manager
available to the high-speed data services of the delayed capital expenditure and the creates a means of consistent service delivery
and further prioritize the VPN services large operational savings characteristic of the even in conditions of similar service priority
versus instant messaging and peer-to-peer centralized model. overload that can double the potential
file transfers. Time-of-day policies can be number of revenue generating services sold
set per subscriber, where the home office ;<GCFP 8E FG<E E<KNFIB per subscriber.
users can prioritize particular applications The open architectural approach also Gary Southwell is the director of the IPTV
during the day and change priorities to applies to service applications. Customer Program Office at Juniper Networks.

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The ability to provide real-time, flexible billing, provisioning
solutions will be critical to the success of many service providers
as they enter new markets
9IF8;98E; K<C<:FDDLE@:8K@FEJ
service providers throughout the world
are offering IPTV services and other home
entertainment content to stand out from
the competition, boost revenues and retain
customers. The pressure for new revenue
opportunities is at a fever pitch as cable
companies are now offering competitive
telephone services in addition to expanding
cable entertainment packages.
IPTV, according to telecommunication
experts, is the new battlefield for gaining
the residential customer base of the
future. More interactive entertainment
and communication options – pay-per-
view, high-definition programming,
video conferencing and distance
learning, for example – will surely capture
consumer attention. However, the real
winners of the new residential services
dollar will not likely be the operators
with the swankiest technology offerings,
but those who can deliver and interact
with customers without hitches. In other
words, the smooth provisioning and
billing of services.
This will be particularly challenging
for IPTV services, especially when the
greatest value proposition of IPTV is
consumer choice -- putting an end to
one-size-fits-all entertainment packages
of the past. This will put tremendous
emphasis on support applications. While
entertainment and communication
*(
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Renata Silva, Siemens
choices grow, home users will continue to
want simple provisioning procedures and
easy-to-follow billing rules. Along with
more choices, they will expect to be able
to activate and deactivate new services
– perhaps even on a daily basis.
Servicesproviders,ontheotherhand,must
assure the correct delivery of services with
minimal internal complexities. There are a
number of considerations service providers
should make when exploring the back-
office software applications that support
subscriber and service provisioning and
charging, and manage other components
such as IPTV set-top boxes.
Providers are already loaded down with
plenty of things to do in setting up new
*)
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customers for services. For example, they
need to configure bandwidth for subscribers,
put in place set-top boxes in customer
homes, set up the in-home cabling, provide
and manage the necessary gateways and
provision the package of services selected by
the subscriber.
To simplify the process, providers should
be able to manage subscriber, service and
set-top box provisioning from a single API
toward the IPTV solution, so they don’t have
to deal with several workflow provisioning
processes in different network elements.
This way, providers can easily assure the
consistency between their IPTV offerings and
their Operational Support Systems/Business
Support Systems (OSS/BSS) databases.
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One way to achieve this simplification is to
have the middleware back-office application
as the unique home entertainment subscriber
provisioning point. The advantage to this
approach is that it gives the service provider
a single interface that is easy to integrate
with its OSS/BSS. This single API, when
supporting all provisioning fields, enables the
service provider to do everything it can do
manually using its own OSS system. Another
advantage is that the provider does not need
to change its provisioning process each time
the solution is upgraded. This interface
must support several provisioning scenarios
including manual, self-provisioning and
mass provisioning.
In fact, the self-provisioning feature
is becoming more and more important,
as it enables a subscriber to activate and
deactivate services by logging on to a self-
service Web portal on his television screen
and make selections with a simple click.
The screen would show which services are
available and how much they cost.
Automating the provisioning function
in this way can save the service provider
time and money. It can boost service usage
as well, as users are able to easily try new
features without having to pass a complex
subscription process.
Set-top boxes also need to be simple to
configure. Set-top-box auto-provisioning is
an increasingly relevant feature as it enables
the subscriber to activate automatically all
his services with the first STB connection,
without manual intervention from the
service provider’s customer care assistants.
After the box is installed at a subscriber’s
home, the subscriber is able to immediately
access services on his TV after inserting a
personal identification number (PIN) using
the remote control. The subscriber can
use the PIN number issued by the service
provider to automatically provision the set-
top box, but also to rent movies, set parental
controls for TV programs and movie ratings,
and perform other personal configurations.
When problems arise with the set-top box,
the service provider must be able to perform
diagnostics and, if possible, fix the problems
remotely using a software tool that performs
this function. This eliminates the need for
the service provider to retrieve the box from
a subscriber home, make the necessary
repairs and then return the box to the
subscriber each time a problem comes up.
Set-top box remote diagnostics and repairs
can help providers keep operational costs
extremely low and simultaneously provide
better customer service.
I<8C$K@D<# =C<O@9C< 9@CC@E>
Billing for home entertainment services is
another critical issue for service providers.
Charging for home entertainment such
as on-demand content is quite different
from the current pricing models for voice
communications or Internet access. Voice
services are usually based on per-minute
charging; for example, five cents per minute.
Internet service generally involves flat fees.
Home entertainment, on the other hand,
often involves charging on a per-use basis,
such as when a subscriber accesses a pay-
per-view program. A service provider’s
billing system needs to support the most
appropriate charging models associated
with each kind of content, whether it’s
subscription-based fees (mainly for basic
IPTV service, premium channels, Internet
access); or event charging (video on demand,
pay-per-view, walled-garden content).
The billing system should support post-
paid and prepaid charging, and real-time
price information between the subscriber
and service provider for event-based
services such as video-on-demand is a must.
For example, when a subscriber selects a
video, the provider immediately shows the
subscriber information on the associated
charges and requests authorization and
authentication(PINnumber).Thesubscriber
accepts the charge and enters a PIN number,
the service provider begins streaming the
video, and the system generates a transaction
record. This is all done in real time so that
the billing process and prepaid charging can
be performed efficiently.
Not all the service provider’s billing
systems available today support this kind of
interaction. For instance, many of the legacy
billing systems used by providers are not
equipped to support real-time charging for
event programming such as pay-per-view.
Service providers must ensure that their
billing system is capable of real-time
interaction, and that it allows them to adapt
pricing to a particular target audience. Many
service providers will charge different prices
depending on the content, or use different
pricing models for the same content
depending on the subscriber.
When the subscriber base achieves a
critical mass, owning a flexible rating system
will also enable service providers to set
promotional fees depending on the time-
of-day, content type or even by content
characteristics such as movie director or
main actor. The IPTV/home entertainment
charging system has to be able to support
that level of flexibility.
The ability to provide real-time, flexible
billing solutions will be critical to the success
of many service providers as they enter
new markets such as IPTV. As subscribers
change services through self-service portals
operated by service providers, they will want
to view billing trends and see what impact
changing services will have on billing.
The provisioning and billing functions
are vital for service providers looking to
launch new home entertainment services.
How well providers handle these functions
will go a long way toward determining how
successful they are in these exciting new
business opportunities.
Throughsimplifiedback-officeapplications
that enable a variety of provisioning options
such as self-provisioning, and real-time,
flexible billing, service providers will enjoy
lower total cost of ownership and a higher
return on investment.
Renata Silva is product line manager, home
entertainment, at Siemens. She specializes in
OSS/BSS issues.
 **
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Telecom providers with rich IPTV service creation
platforms will be the masters of their own fate

Phil Thompson, mPhase Technologies

;LI@E> @KJ history, the telecom industry premises. Existing access technologies It almost seemed like magic that any of
weathered a great many upheavals. Every barely supported necessary bandwidth these systems actually worked. As the
new technology brought new competitive for video delivery. To deliver a high- urgency to find new revenue heated up,
players to the market, challenging quality user experience, the technology at service provider disparately sought new
incumbent operators and driving change the time was extended by each vendor in services. IPTV held great promise. Better
in core networks and business models. a different way. Remember, this was the service support than the cable company
We are now living through a new period time before multicast was built into the would be the ticket! And all the vendors
of change in the telecom industry. DSLAM, QoS was barely being discussed, were offering a vast array of applications,
Convergence of networks led to blending
of telecommunications, media, content,
information and entertainment. Telcos
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are facing eroding average revenues per
user (APRU), aggressive competition,
and increased subscriber churn. Cable,
satellite operators, and even utilities
companies are offering voice services
and Internet access, in addition to their
traditional services. New VoIP operators
like Vonage and Skype are driving prices
further down. Everyday innovative
products combined with novel network
services are being introduced satisfying
the consumer’s demand for content:
Google Video, personal video players,
video broadcasting on the web. What
does it take to succeed in this new
world? What lessons can we draw from
the past? What worked elsewhere in
the world? Early attempts to deliver
real-time streaming video over fixed DSL line impairments were not well open toolkits, custom user interfaces, and
networks date back to late 1990s. Back understood, and some vendors were still integration with voice services. While
then, a few companies offered solutions delivering CAP-based systems! the technology issues were understood,
for different network infrastructures. During this time, data equipment the challenges remained, as equipment
These deployments were motivated by vendors did not recognize the demand vendors were still learning. In addition,
extending reach of a cable provider to of delivering hundreds of UDP streams service providers suddenly needed new
serve DSL customers, or experiments in to thousands of customers, reliably. skills, like acquiring and protecting
delivering additional services. The first Business cases were thrown away as the content. The early efforts were niche
prototypes of Telco TV systems were deployments became frustrating lessons successes and failures, due to limitations
proprietary central office platforms that in system integration, video processing of existing technologies, and lack of
often required special network interface and network engineering. The center of technical, market and business synergy.
installations and wiring at subscriber activity was with the engineering staff. But the experiences of pioneer telcos
*+
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who ventured into unknown IPTV territory
were extremely beneficial in pinpointing
the crucial issues for the success of future
deployments.
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Despite all challenges, early technology
adopters warranted the future of IPTV.
Today telecom providers can deploy
interactive TV subscriber services quickly
and cost effectively.
1. Evolution of technology
We are now at an inflection point in
technology adoption. The technology
works: encoding rate and access networks
can deliver a quality user experience. The
embedded processors in set-top boxes are
fast enough to deliver an engaging user
presentation with advanced features. Back
end systems leverage the proven technology
to provide full time system availability at
assured service level.
But even today technology can represent a
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major hurdle. Video can place high demands
on network infrastructure, especially as
the number of channels and subscribers
grow over a large geographical area. Each
technology decision affects the total system
performance. Don’t jump to use unproven
technology, no matter how “cool” it might
be. The best deployments are those that start
with a small step, with mature technology,
and build on a solid base.
2. Making a Business Case
Starting with a business case is important,
though it may prove to be challenging. Cost
estimates vary dramatically from $500 to
over $2,000 per subscriber. Each new service
can add expenses, such as per-subscriber
licensing fees, which have to be traded off
with the possible revenue. Some carriers,
reporting on their experiences, indicate that
a minimum of 10,000 to 20,000 subscribers
are needed to make a business case. But
there are deployments as few as 2,000 that
have stemmed the revenue loss for a small
telco competing against a cable company. In
parts of the world, IPTV is being deployed
to raise company valuations as they move
into private ownership.
3. Design it for Everyone
DSL, Internet access, email, hosting
services target an audience of pretty savvy
subscribers. It is tempting to focus on this
group with computer-like user interfaces on
TV, sophisticated content search and sort
tools, toolbars, notifications, and menu-
driven designs. While good for the “geek”
in the family, watching TV is a universal
experience. Avoid the temptation of throwing
technology at subscribers; deliver content
the way they want to access it. Design for the
Living Room Experience.
4. Content is King
The Internet owes its success to availability
and diversity of content. Luckily for telcos,
the availability of digitized media and
entertainment content exploded over that last
decade. Telecoms can extend the notion of
content to include “infotainment” channels.
Telcos should expect to invest in producing
local content, even if it is as simple as local
weather, school lunch menus, or high school
sporting events. Telcos should examine local
demographics for communities of interest
that have content they would like to share.
Such unique service offer is a powerful
source of differentiation for telcos.
5. The Focus Shifts
Good technology is an essential component
to building a system, but it is only one
component. Excellent sales and marketing
can create a whirlwind sales behavior,
building sales quickly by word of mouth.
Telcos should consider special offers and
discounts to spur service use. If allowed
by the content provider, consider hosting
community events demonstrating IPTV.
The focus is shifting from technology being
a barrier to success to a service provider
becoming an entertainment company with
great marketing.
6. Open Standards
When selecting an IPTV system, it is
essential to take a close look at the internal
architecture and communications protocols.
Often providers are looking to redesign
the user interface, or develop new features
themselves. Open standards are the key
to rapidly creating highly personalized
and compelling services for premium
subscribers. Many vendors build their
systems on standard platforms: HTML,
XML, SOAP, WDSL, J2EE, AJAX, and
JDBC. Telcos who expect to build on
top of these platforms must be prepared
to think through user scenarios, feature
interactions, and invest in tools and
testing. Sometimes it is better to start off
by building specialized portal content for
custom services, than by redesigning the
EPG, which is already optimized.
7. Interoperability
One thing that remained unchanged since
the days of early IPTV deployments is the fact
that end-to-end systems are complex. From
head-end, to middleware, to access, to set-top
box – they combine hardware and software
from multiple vendors, who adhere to
multiple standards. Internal interoperability
testing of separate IPTV components’
performance for seamless video delivery
is technically challenging, expensive and
prohibitively time consuming. The solution
comes in pre-tested, certified configurations
from selected vendors. Vendors’ experience
and knowledge of telecom requirements is
essential for successful integration of IPTV.
8. Start Small, Align, and Grow
IPTV services are more likely to succeed
when telcos start small, align with subscriber
requirements, and then grow. This approach
allows service providers to quickly
determine the winning mix of potential
service package variations to maximize
profitability of future deployments.
Some companies now begin to offer pre-
packaged, complete IPTV starter system
kits for up to 1000 subscribers, designed
to help telecom providers jump-start the
market for revenue-rich video services
while minimizing capex risks. These
affordable, scalable pre-configured single-
cabinet IPTV systems are thoroughly tested
and certified, and designed for immediate
deployment and rapid time to revenue.
:FE:CLJ@FE
Change is inevitable. The telecom industry
has morphed in the past and now must
morph again. The operators who embrace
new developments, will gain the chance
to influence and control the way those
developments affect them. Operators who
equip themselves to quickly meet changing
customer needs will be the winners.
Telecom providers with rich IPTV service
creation platforms will be the masters of
their own fate.
Phil Thompson is Executive Vice President,
Product Management, mPhase Technologies.
*-
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The real lesson for service providers is evolution — and pricing
K?<P J8P content is king, and it’s pretty clear
content delivery is a major focus of providers
developing new revenue, of equipment
vendors justifying new deployments, and
of content providers trying to gain access to
new markets.
While it’s reassuring that content seems
to be the darling of these groups, it’s also
troubling because content might become the
victim of competing agendas.
With content, the network is the
middleman, a mechanism to deliver an
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experience whose value the consumer must
set, based on material generated by a group
of producers who may have other content
delivery strategies to balance.
For this reason, we must take a dualistic
view of content, from the top and from
the bottom, to see if the perspectives meet
usefully in the middle.
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Visual content (e.g., television, video, movies)
has been a rage with consumers since the
days of Edison. Sight is the most powerful of
all senses, capable of introducing the richest
experience into our brains. But the days
when a flickering silent movie could shake
our emotions (at least in a positive way) are
gone forever. Even television is changing
under pressure from:
• Time-shifted viewing;
• Mobile content;
• Personalized content; and
• A la carte channel subscription.
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The FCC’s latest report on television
competition shows that viewing hours have
increased, but more homes are equipped
with personal video recording capability and
are exercising it to “time shift” viewing.
Time shifting not only undermines
the notion of broadcast, it undermines
traditional advertising as a revenue stream
by letting users skip ads. Some advertisers
and agents are already changing their
formats so the ads still get a message across
when they’re played in fast forward.
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The popularity of mobile content, both in
the form of download-and-store formats
(e.g., the iPod) and the streaming-to-a-
mobile-phone form promoted by Verizon
and others, shows consumers are pulling
content out of the traditional in-home rut
and taking it on the road.
A user on the road is obviously not home
to view traditional content, and the ability to
consume content while mobile could reduce
audience size by creating other options.
Increased sales by DVD rental companies
such as Netflix and increased popularity of
cable video-on-demand services seems to
show a shift from reliance on broadcast for
content to personalized content.
Tom Nolle, CIMI Corp
As network performance improves and
movie download times are reduced, it’s
very possible more users will defect from
broadcast to a form of personal when-and-
what-you-want video.
8 C8 :8IK<
Pressure from the FCC to consider a la
carte channel subscription by consumers
is threatening cable companies and the
less popular channels at the same time by
eliminating the cross-subsidization of special
interest programming by more generally
popular material.
This could reduce the number
of channels available for selection,
undermining the channel multiplication
mechanism of competition that has
developed between cable companies and
satellite TV providers.
These consumption issues are creating
their counterparts on the production
side, largely in relation to how markets
are expanded, how current channels of
distribution are protected, and how to pay
for content.
K?< JLGGCP J@;<
The “where’s the money come from” point
is perhaps the most pivotal for content
providers. In a recent panel discussion by
content moguls at the IPSphere Forum
meeting in California, industry executives
told providers that content creation was
expensive and there had to be some
assurance of a return on investment.
In the past, video was largely multi-
syndicated and there were many ways a
content producer could hope to profit.
In the age of personalization, will content
providers be pressured to grant exclusive
*/
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distribution? If so, the exclusive distributor
may have to front some money to cover
costs or guarantee a minimum revenue
stream. Obviously that means figuring out
how revenue can be generated.
The industry has had two distinct
models of revenue generation for content:
the pay-as-you-go model and the ad-
subsidized model.
Motion pictures traditionally have followed
the former strategy and television the latter,
though both groups have shifted somewhat
over time into the alternative space (e.g.,
HBO’s popular Sopranos series and studio
release of films to broadcast television, paid
by ad revenues).
For the pay-as-you-go producers, the key
issue is getting in front of more potential
payers: That means getting more service
providers to offer for-fee content delivery
or more use of the Internet as a means of
getting content downloaded.
What the content providers would like to
see is a war between cable and carrier, with
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both sides differentiating their services by
more video on demand or store-for-play
downloads.
For this group, the challenge is digital
rights management, because the producers
are looking for additional market conduits
and not to replace the ones they have now.
Fortunately, the IPSphere panel and other
industry developments, such as the DirecTV
offering of broadband video downloading
directly to a PVR, seem to show that the
content producers are getting comfortable
with the notion of video downloading or IP
delivery of video.
The ad-based model of content funding
could actually benefit from personalization
because ad value is highest where the ad can
be targeted at the specific market segment
most likely to consume the product.
The problem with the broadcast
paradigm is that everyone sees everything,
and consumers who become accustomed
to tuning out irrelevant ads may become
adept at tuning out all ads.
The issue of how to insert a targeted
ad in on-demand material isn’t as easy
as it seems. You can’t just stick the ad in
with the content, or you lose the custom
targeting benefit.
If the ad has to be tuned to the consumer,
how do you decide who sees what, and
how is the ad linked directly to the rest
of the content?
There are a variety of emerging strategies
where ad links are embedded in content
and the specific content is then inserted
as the content is delivered, but not only is
this a more complex approach to content/
ad mixing, it may be impacted by issues of
consumer privacy.
How do you target an ad without
knowing your audience, and how do you
do that with so many watchdogs trying to
restrict what consumer information can be
collected and stored?
N?F ><KJ G8@;6
A final issue on the revenue side is the simple
matter of who gets paid. Content deliverers
pay content providers, presumably. The
consumer pays content deliverers.
Where does the network fit in? Most
people who want content today likely will
seek it from either their television provider
(e.g., cable, satellite or LEC) or from a portal
player such as Google or Yahoo.
If the broadcast model is in danger, does
that mean the momentum shifts to the portal
guys? If so, what happens to the network?
K?< E<KNFIB IFC<
How can carriers help bring these sides
together into a single business model?
The IPSphere panel seemed to show that
the content and network worlds weren’t
that far apart.
In fact, some content producers
advocated a walled garden approach,
telling the service providers they shouldn’t
get hemmed into a pure transport-and-
connection role. That position would
certainly resonate with the carriers, but it
doesn’t cover all the necessary bases.
It may be that the biggest issue for the
network content delivery is the net neutrality
debate. The FCC’s position is that DSL is
an information service and not subject to
wholesaling or unbundling, the same status
enjoyed by the cable companies for their
broadband data service.
So far, neither group has done anything
to impede other players’ access to Internet
consumers, but there is a general view that
if common carriers are going to deploy the
high-quality, high-bandwidth networks
needed for streaming video delivery, they’d
certainly want to charge for it independently.
That’s the real lesson, and issue, of content.
Consumer demand is still evolving. Content
provider attitudes are still evolving.
The access providers will have to deploy
billions of dollars in equipment to modernize
their networks to support even standard-
definition video in streaming form. Will
they do that without a clear return?
No more than the content producers will
produce the stuff without such an assurance.
Remember, content providers said they
wanted ROI. So will content deliverers.
The problem is that there’s a tightrope
to be walked here. Even if the FCC and
Congress permitted access providers to
either withhold premium bandwidth from
competitors or charge a significant premium
for it (say 25 percent or 50 percent), the
likely result would be to induce competing
players like the Yahoos and Googles to shift
to a store-for-play download video strategy
that doesn’t require additional QoS — which
could cut the carriers out of the whole
content pie.
Maybe nobody visits your walled garden. On
the other hand, if carriers charge no premium
for premium bandwidth, those Yahoos and
Googles will turn them into plumbing.
The content lesson seems simple: extremes
won’t work. You can’t expect investment
without return, but you can’t expect return
without some pretty tricky pricing policies.
In the long run, the question for
providers may be whether it’s easier to
find the sweet spot in QoS pricing or to
simply become a portal player of such
importance that you control user eyeballs
yourself...or to buy one.
The FCC may take the next critical step in its
deliberation over the proposed AT&T/BellSouth
deal. In the past, the FCC has used these mergers
to get providers to agree on conditions that
would otherwise be difficult to enforce.
We’ll have to watch how the deliberations
play out to see if recent mergers and
acquisitions will impact the future of
content.
Tom Nolle is the founder and
president of CIMI Corp.
This article was reprinted
from the April 2006 issue of
Telecommunications® Magazine

From page 17
entrants are not only capturing mindshare
in the marketplace, they are gaining first-
hand experience about the realities of this
important competitive transformation. Can
you afford to be left behind?
One way to move fast is to select a complete
IPTV service delivery platform that
incorporates all of the required elements of
a TV delivery solution. By having one IPTV
platform, service providers can quickly roll
out services that are integrated and secured
from the point of content acquisition to
delivery on consumers’ TV sets.
Moving fast can be done by leveraging
installed assets and partnering with service
integrators who have implemented the IPTV
solution. Experience and understanding
of the service experience and network
transformation can make all the difference
to get to market fast and effectively.
From page 20
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Choose an IPTV system based on open
standards so you have the flexibility to build
or incorporate next-generation hardware,
applications and services from a variety of
vendors over time. Having an open standards
environment will ensure that innovation
can proceed rapidly, further differentiating
IPTV from legacy video services on the
market. When that happens, consumers will
be the best IPTV marketers by spreading the
message via word of mouth.
=@E8C K?FL>?KJ
As popular as TV is today, it remains an
unconnected island of technology in the home.
For the better part of a century, the images on
our television screens have been chosen for us
and broadcast into our homes on a one-way
basis. But that is about to change.
IP, the same technology that changed the
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In the future,
consumers
who have
IPTV via
their service
provider,
could enjoy
multiple
camera angles
of a sporting
event at once
value and function of the PC, will have the
same impact on the TV screen. In fact, IP
networking and software technology will
help spark more revolutionary change for
television in the next five years than we’ve
seen in the previous 50 combined.
You will be able to bring the world to your
customers’ living rooms in new ways, and
they will be able to take their living rooms
to the world. If you’re a service provider,
you can be on the leading edge of this new
market opportunity and transform your
business in the process. Now is the time to
think big, get started and move fast to ensure
your business is not left behind in the biggest
opportunity to hit the services industry since
the Internet.
Christine Heckart is general manager of
marketing for the Microsoft TV division.
Carl Rijsbrack is vice president of marketing
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Jim Barthold is senior editor of
Telecommunications® magazine.
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For service providers and OEM players, hybrids will deliver more reliability and fewer
customer service calls, having a significant impact on customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
@E K?< mid-to-late 1990s, the promise of
technology to and in the home created high
expectations about what form and function
the home network of the future would take.
It’s safe to say there existed some fairly
heady expectations that the influx of
broadband Internet and other services
into the home would spur a renaissance in
development of a wide variety of connected
in-home solutions.
Spanning home computers and
entertainment devices, in addition to white
goods and home systems, the home network
was going to bring Metcalfe’s Law into clear
focus for the average consumer. The value of
data and content coming into the home would
be magnified as more devices, platforms, and
home and mobile systems could access it.
GI8>D8K@: 9<E<=@KJ
To date, the uptake of home-networking
solutions has reflected the value consumers have
assigned to the connectivity of devices at home
— with a twist. A key takeaway from the rapid
adoption of home data-networking equipment
since 1998 — from 2.5 million households to
nearly 25 million at the end of 2005 (see Figure
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1) — is the very pragmatic purpose these
connectivity solutions have and continue to offer
for the vast majority of U.S. households.
Although the industry is quite keen to
sell next-generation, home-networking
equipment to link home computers to
consumer electronics platforms (i.e.,
multimedia networks), the main benefit
to consumers remains the ability to access
broadband Internet from multiple locations
in and around the home.
K?< :8II@<IJË IFC<
The use of a home network largely as a
broadband sharing mechanism is just the
first of several stages in the evolution of
home networking. Both consumers and
broadband and applications carriers will use
connectivity for such applications beyond
shared Internet.
For consumers, shared multimedia content
(e.g., music, photos, video) from both home
computers and other storage platforms will
drive adoption of digital media adapters,
either stand-alone or integrated with another
platform such as a set-top box.
For the carriers, the deployment of
home networks is seen now as a service
differentiator and a means to promote
customer loyalty. However, carriers will seek
to monetize their CPE deployments by tying
them into additional services, notably voice
and multimedia. Expect to see them deploy
residential gateways as part and parcel of
their next-gen voice services and multi-
room video applications.
As the telcos in particular become more
aggressive in offering music and video
services to supplement their broadband and
voice offerings, they will seek residential
gateways that support multi-room
distribution of this content.
Beyond attracting new customers and
retaining their existing customer bases,
broadbandISPsareinvestingsignificantresearch
and development dollars to determine how
connectivity inside the home can be leveraged
for services other than data connectivity.
The move away from simple (though not full-
proof) data networking solutions is leading the
service provider community to consider the
requirements for next-gen, home-networking
solutions based on some key applications.
ISPs are investigating connectivity for
entertainment applications (i.e., streamed
Kurt Scherf, Parks Associates
video from a set-top box to multiple
televisions inside the home) and multimedia
applications, which involve streamed
content (e.g., audio, video, images) among
home computers and consumer electronics
platforms (PC-to-stereo for distributed
music; PC-to-TV for displaying digital
photographs, videos and other content).
Finally, voice services, including VoIP, and
the integration of mobile telephony into the
service mix likely will dictate the types of
CPE and home-networking solutions that
are employed.
For example, service providers must
consider if and/or how they will integrate
voice applications with home-networking
equipment. Furthermore, they will have
to consider the requirements for home-
networking solutions, including factors
such as throughput, QoS and coverage. In
other words, will the solutions in place today
provide for a user experience that is as close
to headache-free as possible?
I<HL@I<D<EKJ
The demands by service providers (including
players in telephony, broadband, and
television services) for networking solutions
that can meet today’s needs for data networks
and their plans to provide a host of services to
their customers will dictate a move to hybrid
networking solutions that incorporate both
wired and wireless components.
Specifically, service providers are demanding
that the home-networking solutions they
deploy meet the following parameters:
• Consistent throughput;
• Consistent coverage; and
• QoS.
:FEJ@JK<EK K?IFL>?GLK
Service providers are spending a great deal
of time developing market requirement
plans that will dictate their home networking
plans. Some convey very specific needs for
networking throughput, indicating that
(consistent) speeds of at least 25 Mbps are
+)
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an absolute necessity.
Other service providers haven’t yet defined
their throughput requirements, other than
to indicate that a home-networking solution
should be able to handle multiple streams of
data, voice and video.
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Because service providers are still
uncertain about the order in which their
next-gen services will be deployed (at what
point, for example, do telephone service
providers deploy IP-based multi-channel
video offerings?), the home-networking
solutions they offer will have to be scalable.
:FEJ@JK<EK :FM<I8><
Service providers want assurance that
content can be accessed from multiple areas
of the home. They are skeptical about relying
entirely on a wireless solution that may not
provide this consistency of coverage and have
indicated that hybrids of wireless and wired
networks hold a great deal of attraction.
Service providers do not want to be the
primary point of contact for customers upset
that video on the television is of poor quality
or that voice transmissions are choppy.
The home-networking solution(s) that
service providers embrace will have to
account for QoS for many different kinds
of content. Given the overhead that wired
solutions provide in terms of throughput
capabilities, they are seen as a necessary part
of a home networking configuration.
?P9I@; JPJK<DJ
No single home networking solution is
going to prevail as computer manufacturers,
consumer electronics players, and service
providers deploy next-gen content
applications and platforms.
Parks Associates found a single-
mindedness among industry leaders in
broadband and television services, chipset
development, consumer electronics and
advanced CPE to adopt hybrid solutions:
wireless and wired solutions combined in a
single system. As one major service provider
put it succinctly: “Don’t box us in” by forcing
us to choose only one networking solution.
K?< N@I<C<JJ IFC<
Over the past two years, Wi-Fi has emerged
as the networking standard of choice. In
early 2005, Wi-Fi products constituted
roughly two-thirds of networking sales and
a significant base of the home-networking
products deployed to date.
To consumers, the benefits of Wi-Fi
networking products are self-evident: They
allow home computers to access broadband
Internet connections and shared resources
without collocating the PC directly next to the
router or modem.
In addition, the cost of Wi-Fi networking
equipmentcontinuesitsdeclineasthetechnology
matures in an expanding consumer market.
JKIL:KLI<; N@I@E>
The market for providing next-gen, home-
networking solutions is wide open, and Parks
Associates is evaluating the prospects of a
number of different solutions, both wired
and those with “no new wires” that are vying
for market share as backbone solutions.
The wired solutions include the high
quality, reliable cabling systems being
installed in newly built and renovated homes
as structured wiring systems (which typically
use, at minimum, Category 5 UTP cabling for
voice and data traffic and RG-6 quad-shielded
coaxial cabling for video signals).
Structured wiring as a backbone is growing
in prominence, particularly for new home
construction. U.S. home builders report
that significant percentages of their homes
are being pre-wired with structured wiring
systems, and Parks Associates estimates that
more than 10 million U.S. households will
have a structured wiring infrastructure in
place by the end of 2008.
That total is somewhere around 10 percent of
theprojectedexistingbaseofallU.S.households,
but that figure will grow significantly as both
consumers and home builders alike recognize
the benefits of pre-installed, robust home-
networking infrastructure.
EF E<N N@I<J
Each of the three wired backbone
contenders — coax, phone line and power
line — has a significant opportunity for
success. For example, coaxial solutions are
being positioned for multi-room, video
distribution solutions that take advantage of
the influx of DVR set-top boxes that cable
and satellite TV service providers are using
as key differentiators.
With the advent of IPTV services, video
distribution in the home will become
mainstream in just a few years.
Service providers have also shown a
partiality toward twisted-pair phone line
solutions in the home, because they are
familiar with them. Not only will phone line
backbones be considered for applications
such as distributed data and voice, they are
also under serious consideration as a video
networking backbone.
Finally, power line solutions have become
far more reliable, and they will be touted for
their performance and ease of use.
Hybrid networks are promising solutions
because they offer end users a great deal of
flexibility, performance, and significantly
enhance their data, voice, multimedia and
entertainment applications.
For service providers and OEM players,
hybrids will deliver more reliability and
fewer customer service calls, having a
significant impact on customer satisfaction
and brand loyalty.
Kurt Scherf is principal analyst and vice
president of Parks Associates.
(www.parksassociates.com)
This article was reprinted from the April
2006 issue of Telecommunications® magazine