AT&T Inc., the former SBC, is betting big on IPTV as they plan to spend $4 billion to bring 18 million homes online with this cutting-edge technology by 2007. The project, if successful, will turn the company into one of the largest purveyors of IPTV in the world, setting the stage for what surely will revolutionize the telecommunication subscriber’s experience. Wow. More services, more options, more revenue from personalizated, simple, easy-to-use communications. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There are some significant hurdles to cross before we get to IPTV nirvana. Like making sure, really sure, that IPTV will work the first time, all the time.
Getting IPTV right the first time is the key to winning business, retaining customers and building a sticky triple-play service offering. Service providers must insure a positive customer experience from the get-go by validating IPTV service readiness in the provisioning process; scaling IPTV operations to meet aggressive subscriber growth projections; and controlling operational expenses as the service scales.
Of course, service providers face significant technical challenges in getting IPTV right and making sure, without a doubt, that Day One service meets subscriber expectations and provides an acceptable quality of experience (QoE).
Think back to the early days of DSL and the difficulties carriers had in rolling it out. Unlike DSL, where the only alternative was slow dialup services, IPTV carriers are competing against established and reliable TV service alternatives. Service providers now need to deliver high-quality voice, data and video services without any of the deployment issues they experienced with early DSL adoption.
We have learned a thing or two from our DSL experiences. Although DSL copper issues get all the press, we find that the logical and service-level problems account for 80 percent of the troubles on this simple service. Service-level testing is critical. With just a physical-level test solution, you miss a majority of the problems that affect the subscribers’ experience.
Today, the average number is five trouble reports per DSL customer in the first year and two per year afterward, and this is for best-effort Internet services. Think about what that means for higher speed data and, now, IPTV video services.
These potential QoE problems quickly can sink service providers’ plans in bringing IPTV to market. Triple-play rollouts are not the same as DSL rollouts. They must include a service-assurance model that guarantees a perfect Day One experience.
I recently heard a service provider who was an early adopter of IPTV discussing his inability to support video and emulate the customer experience to measure QoS for that subscriber. What was his short-term answer? Send a technician to the subscriber’s home for an hour and watch the service. Not only is it not practical, it is ineffective. The technician would need to visit several times to fully see the customer’s experience.
Acquiring customers from the competition requires a rapid and successful provisioning process that works right the first time or the customers will return to the competition. With acquisition costs around $1,000 per subscriber, one cannot afford to lose them. Many providers are coming out and preconditioning the F2 (the loop), and that is adding to the costs of subscriber acquisition.
One way to guarantee a competitive subscriber experience from Day One involves a centralized test and diagnostic tool that emulates the video applications as well as the data and voice services over the provisioned in-service network. The service providers can validate the same service experience that the subscriber will have once the service is live.
State-of-the-art diagnostics tools provide a new way for carriers to validate IPTV service prior to launch and as the service scales. They can quickly isolate and pinpoint deployment issues and avoid delays in service availability. As part of the provisioning process, they ensure the IPTV service works before the subscriber has a negative experience.
Service assurance of the triple play requires an evolution from manual processes and simple automation to expert operational support tools with fully automated solutions. This new service-assurance standard will enhance existing performance and fault systems as well as network equipment, and ultimately improve the expertise of operations personnel.
Once the service is running and there is a problem (and there will be), service providers must be able to resolve and restore service quality quickly. They must be able to avoid long mean-time-to-repair intervals and the possibility that the subscriber’s experience will turn sour. At the heart of triple-play service assurance are solutions that provide critical service visibility.
Triple-play services, including IPTV, are much more technically challenging than the best-effort Internet service that operations deal with today. More protocols, more trouble points, and more services will create a mountain of potential troubleshooting guidelines in the field.
The solution is the deployment of testing and diagnostic tools that provide an automated, virtual diagnostic assistant that enables Tier 1 technicians to resolve complex IP service issues, both physical and logical, without escalating to Tier 3 experts. It’s critical that the source of the trouble is verified and diagnosed before the technician is dispatched, so he can spend his and the customer’s valuable time fixing an actual problem versus attempting to find it – A “Fix Not Find” approach is essential for the field personnel to provide the level of service necessary to satisfy customers in the long run.
Getting it right the first time means validating service readiness and measuring the subscriber’s QoE within a new provisioning model; controlling operational expense by finding and fixing troubles fast; isolating and resolving the problem without a dispatch and when a dispatch is required, sending the technician directly to the trouble spot with a diagnosis in hand; and scaling to meet demand by empowering Tier 1 technicians with virtual diagnostic expertise.
Successful IPTV operations are based on sound diagnostic and service analysis systems. They are all but guaranteed to improve a service provider’s ability to see what the subscriber is experiencing, while handling the inevitable volume of trouble calls. This ultimately enhances service scalability by rapidly resolving trouble tickets and enabling technicians to spend more time on service validation and provisioning of new subscribers.
IPTV presents the best opportunity for telecom carriers to retain their subscriber base, reclaim customers who have been lured away by cable companies and recapture a larger share of subscriber revenue. A positive subscriber quality of experience with IPTV leads directly to a more robust telco service model and positive financial growth, leveraging the advantages of having a larger subscriber base and providing a full bundle of competitive, high-value and market share winning services. Moreover, with a successful launch of IPTV, service providers will reclaim their leadership position in the telecommunications industry, but, we must get it right the first time.
Jeff Schmitz is vice president of marketing at Spirent Communications. He can be reached at Jeff.schmitz@spirentcom.com.
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