no bluffing

EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT THE TRIPLE PLAY — offering phone service, television and high-speed Internet via one high-bandwidth connection to the home has become the hand telcos and cablecos alike are betting the farm on. Of course, in the increasingly crowded triple play marketplace, poor quality service is a certain ticket to loserville. Rather than bluff their way through a high-stakes market, smart network operators are using network analysis and management solutions to shorten time-to-revenue, save on operational expenditures and ensure that fickle end users get top quality across the triple play portfolio the first time they try the service.

The video portion of the triple play presents particular challenges. In the past, telcos have offered satellite service by partnering with DIRECTV Inc. and others. But facilities-based telco TV has increased the proposed infrastructure/ service complexity in the carrier environment, and thus the testing requirements.

“Carriers have been struggling with how to roll out toll-quality IP telephony and, before they could get their arms around that, the directive to work on IPTV comes down,” says Bahaa Moukadam, vice president of IP telephony at Spirent Communications, which released at SUPERCOMM a suite of 20 test scenarios for the triple play, encompassing testing for the infrastructure, media quality and access network, and field testing. “IPTV certainly requires a lot more bandwidth than voice, and people’s expectations for television [are] good quality all the time. Telco TV has to be at least equal in quality, and should have added value against the cable companies. The business challenge is to do it quickly, and to do it right, the first time. Those conflicting goals are presenting a huge challenge to service providers.”

Although IPTV is still in the lab, Beth Wingerd, senior director of IP services at Spirent, points out that the mixing of IP voice, video and data on one line is a new challenge for carriers. “There will be a mix of traffic on one line. The typical family may have two televisions, on different channels, someone making phone calls and a teenager playing Quake with his buddies on the Internet, all at the same time,” she says. “No one knows what kinds of interdependencies and bandwidth are required to support all that, as well as what people are used to with existing options.”

To ensure customers get the service performance they expect, carriers can simulate end-user behavior on the network and correlate that to quality of service. Agilent Technologies Inc. introduced new triple play solutions at SUPERCOMM, including the Network Tester for high-speed data, VoIP and video testing on a single port within a single test system. Network managers can use this tool to emulate thousands of users; change the traffic application mix; and measure the impact of data applications on voice and video performance as well as multiplay applications, including peer-to-peer file sharing, games and messaging.

Media signaling is another crucial aspect of testing for the triple play. For IPTV, for instance, ensuring the channel changes within a reasonable amount of time after the consumer hits the button on the remote (to the correct channel, with no blur, lag or edge noise), requires intensive testing on a media signal level. At SUPERCOMM, Agilent also rolled out a new automation toolkit, N2X Productivity Advantage, which provides turnkey solutions including a tool that measures IPTV channel-zapping time under various real-world stress levels and loads.

Customer care and maintenance issues also loom large for telcos offering the triple play. “We all know they need to reach triple play to increase revenue per customer and reduce churn,” says Jim Nerschool, vice president of telecom field services at Acterna LLC, “but no one wants to add another call center, and there are lots of things that can go wrong and it’s a complicated measurement for service assurance.”

Acterna’s Service Assurance Solutions (SAS) division during SUPERCOMM launched NetComplete test and management for IPTV, metro Ethernet and VoIP. The company also showcased optical fiber mapping software, which enables users to simplify processes and manage documentation for provisioning, asset management, troubleshooting and customer care related to fiber installation. Combined with products that proactively probe the network and emulate end-user behavior, Nerschool says Acterna can help ensure telcos have an application-aware network backed with service guarantees and reliable customer service.

Also, Fluke Networks took the wraps off TroubleEvaluator at SUPERCOMM, a customer care management system with integrated line testing and direct switch provisioning, which allows entry-level agents and seasoned network administrators to resolve customer troubles rapidly, letting the customer care center handle more calls faster, with fewer dispatches and call-backs.

The ability to pinpoint network degradation proactively results in reduced trouble tickets and truck rolls for the service provider. To that end, Tollgrade Communications Inc. recently unveiled the DigiTest HUB next-generation CO test platform to support multiple testing and network assurance scenarios in FTTx deployments. It retains links to legacy equipment while providing testing ability on the new network elements.

The bottom line is that using testing solutions is a key part of drawing a Royal Flush as the triple play gamble begins to roll out. “Consumers have choices where they didn’t 10 years ago, whether it’s free VoIP from Skype [Technologies S.A.] or satellite TV,” says Wingerd. “And if I as a consumer don’t have a quality and support experience that instills confidence at the very beginning, I’m going to take my money and walk.”