Where quality is king

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Dr Stefan Winkler, Principal technologist, Symmetricom.

Ensuring content quality is essential when it comes to advanced IP video services. However, digital video has introduced many new challenges to maintaining that quality. In this article, Dr Stefan Winkler discusses the importance of monitoring video quality from the source through to playout and delivery to service subscribers.

Ensuring high video quality at the source - specifically the video coming into, and being processed at the headend - is essential to guaranteeing quality of service for viewers downstream.

The challenge lies in monitoring the hundreds of hours/channels of video accurately and in real-time. One consideration is video content before it is encoded, which involves video content quality received from the content provider. Another consideration is the use of encoders, transcoders, rate shapers and similar equipment, which may further affect video quality.

Monitoring is important for the fundamental reason that managers need information to run their businesses. Video quality monitoring solutions allow operators to determine where issues are coming from and how service issues are impacting the business. Bottom line business objectives, including improving and growing the service, lowering operational costs, and reducing customer churn are achieved through the implementation of a monitoring solution.

The importance of monitoring is further evidenced by the results of two Symmetricom video quality studies, which were conducted among service providers and cable operators. More than 70 percent of service providers consider video quality monitoring critical or very important.

Availability of timely and accurate video service quality information can radically improve bottom line business metrics. The data gathered from IPTV and cable operators highlights the top three business benefits of video monitoring, which are summarised in the following.

Reduced operating expenses

Maintaining and managing a video service offering is a key expense that needs to be controlled. Support calls generally cost a minimum of US$30 per call while truck rolls can run upwards of $800 per instance. Support costs for video services have been steadily growing and poor video quality is a key reason for this. These costs need to be controlled if operators are to deliver profitable video services.

Reduced churn

Lost customers are a key metric to measure IP video service success and unfortunately, poor video service quality is a key driver of churn. The high cost of new customer acquisition makes losing customers even more painful. Because of negative impacts on churn, it is extremely important to deliver high quality video and measure this quality to ensure ongoing video performance.

Without the right monitoring tools, the following may be a typical scenario:

• Customer calls complaining of poor video quality.

• In response, service providers send a truck, make a test, and determine video is good. In an effort to ensure the customer is satisfied, the set-top box is replaced and tested by the manufacturer.

• Same customer calls a few days later with the same issue.

• Due to frustration, customer moves to competitive digital video service.

Such a scenario represents a lost revenue stream of nearly $100 per month. What's worse is customer acquisition costs, often upwards of $250 per customer, need to be expended to replace this lost revenue stream. All these factors quickly escalate total cost of rolling out a poor quality video service and rationalise video monitoring solutions.

Speedier deployments

Because high-quality video is of central importance to IP video services, and the adverse affects of poor quality, operators need to ensure service performance before the signal reaches customers. On the other hand, extreme pressure exists to turn up large numbers of video customers to meet overall business objectives. Deploying monitoring tools, which validate video quality, speeds deployments and is key to faster service monetisation.

Video monitoring approaches

Since the early days of networking, operators have used monitoring tools to help them understand problems with their system. In these early days, continuing through today, operators have relied on data provided by monitoring systems to understand their networks and services, and rapidly diagnose, troubleshoot and resolve issues.

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