Digital video has now become prevalent in fixed broadband networks. IPTV subscriptions have reached 46m at year-end 2010, which is a 38% increase over 2009. In 2010, the number OTT TV viewers have reached 27m worldwide. As the availability of broadband becomes a reality in 3G and 4G wireless networks, the consumption of video over wireless will only continue to increase.

IPTV service revenue has increased 45% between 2009 and 2010 to reach nearly $12bn. It is clear that a consumer will pay a premium for watching a video only if the quality is right along with suitable content. As IPTV has become successful, the focus has now shifted to wireless, where the customer experience of video quality has been often poor, and video has not yet been a proven revenue generator.

Customer Experience analysis continues to be crucial to the success of video delivery in networks. The variety in the types of display of the handsets and tablets continues to add greatly to the challenge of delivering video service consistently.

FirstMedia has created a solution that effectively analyses the exact customer experience at the end device be it a smartphone, tablet or a TV. Continuously monitoring device performance, usage statistics and network parameters, First Media’s patent pending Subscriber Viewing Experience (SVE) model translates these into easy to understand Mean Opinion Score (MOS). These insights are available on the web based frontend that correlates data from different probes across the network to provide a cohesive and structured view into the video quality as it travels from source to screen. This intelligence helps identify, measure, verify and resolve complex obstacles that often arise in a video delivery network.

Quality with an endless choice of content is a deciding factor in any customer’s choice of multi-screen video delivery network. With no reliable way of measuring the service quality, Quality of Experience suffered hugely. Typically high volume of customer complaints or phone based feedback provided a small window into the actual customer experience. First Media’s unique QOE management platform eliminates cumbersome manual verification of channel quality, provides near real time quality reports and also correlates media quality parameters across the end-to-end deployment to provide a unified view.

With proven solutions in the market First Media’s Xpertis™ product suite has reduced 1st call issue resolution from 50% to 80% and resulted in 75% reduction in number of truck rolls.

First Media’s QOE management platform helps improve service availability by providing alerts on service outages and reduces repair time and cost hence decreasing operational expenses drastically.

With evolution in digital broadcasting, complexities in delivering good quality video has also increased. Dealing with the associated challenges is First Media’s QOE Verification platform.

Iprecitas™ family of products provides capability to measure, verify, and analyze video content quality over broadcast/cable/DTH delivery platforms. Improving the quality of content verification and fault isolation by providing individual frame level quality information, customer service availability has tremendously improved by providing continuous alarms and alerts for the video content impairment.

Since the Service Assurance team is equipped with continuous alarms and alerts for the video content quality, there is significant improvement in call resolution. Using Iprecitas™ suite of products fault isolation and detection has improved over 75% hence reducing the cost of content verification by over 60%.

Complexities involved in IPTV Provisioning has increased with new technologies entering the fray bringing in new technologies involved and a need to manage active IP devices at customer premise in millions of homes. With 1st year installation and support cost started at $750and rising up, the significant need of the hour is to reduce provisioning time and cut down installation costs.

First Media’s Mapan Diag is a comprehensive field tester for IPTV provisioning with an integrated workflow management system. Providing easy availability status and quality analysis Mapan Diag provides increased number of installations, reduced backlog ensuring higher productivity per technician and quicker revenue generation.

It is observed that with Mapan Diag deployment on 100,000 subscriber base, savings in installation alone is over $5million. With 100 technicians equipped with Mapan Diag, revenue generation is increased by almost 25%.