Delivering the Quality of Experience viewers expect is critical to IPTV success, says Brix Networks CTO
Nov 13, 2007 8:59 AM
In the view of Brix Networks VP of engineering and CTO Kaynam Hedayat, IPTV service roll-outs are not meeting the quality expectations of viewers.
If IPTV providers wish to compete successfully with satellite and cable operators, they must deliver the same user experience TV viewers have come to expect of those media.
According to Brix Networks VP of product management and CTO Kaynam Hedayat, so far they are generally failing to hit that mark. Facing problems in their core networks and particularly in the last mile and in the homes of consumers, IPTV operators have a formidable task ahead of them. However, Hedayat says there are sound approaches available to tackling the problem of assuring Quality of Experience.
IPTV Update: Could you put the overall issue of network quality into perspective when it comes to IPTV networks?
Kaynam Hedayat: The requirements for the quality of networks have reached a new level in terms of IPTV. If you look at the evolution of services on the Internet and over IP networks, we first started with data. Data was e-mail, and then transitioned into Web and transactions. There were some requirements in terms of quality of service, but ,in general, it was something that fixed itself. It was driven by technology, and really not people.
For example, a Web page would show up in 10 seconds. Over time, with broadband, better servers and the evolution of technology, we experienced better quality. Pages would come up faster, and our personal experience with the Web became much more friendly.
Then came VoIP. And with it, demands all of a sudden were higher. Now, small packet loss or small latency would impact user experience and conversation quality. In that way, VoIP put a lot of pressure on providers to manage their networks better and pay a lot of attention to quality of service. At the same time, VoIP, by its nature, is a bit resilient to quality impact on a network. For example, if you and I are in a conversation and one of my sentences drops because of packet loss, you can come back and say, “What did you say? I didn’t hear you.” And I would repeat what I said. Also with VoIP, we were so conditioned at the time that particular technology was emerging by our experiences with the mobile market that we were sometimes willing to trade quality for lower-cost calls.
Interestingly enough, the demands for quality are getting higher and higher at the same time the mobile market — with the advantage of mobility — trained us to accept some level of bad quality. So people just psychologically were willing to accept some impairments. Again, I don’t want to diminish the importance of quality of service to VoIP, but the pressure on the providers was not as high as some people had expected.
Now with IPTV, the name of the game has changed. There are no more excuses, and operators know that. For example, if while watching the Red Sox in the recently concluded World Series, I missed an important play because there was huge packet loss followed by a froze frame on the screen, I wouldn’t have called Verizon and said, “Please unfreeze that frame for me.” I would have probably called Verizon and canceled my service.
IPTV Update: What about network demands?
Kaynam Hedayat: With IPTV, the demands on the network are much higher. In VoIP, you are talking about 64kb/s for a voice session. In IPTV, we are talking about 2Mb/s to 10Mb/s for one channel.
Then there is the whole personal experience. People are going out and purchasing high-definition TVs for thousands of dollars. They are expecting crisp pictures on their screen without any pixelizaton for any impairment. If they experience anything bad, they simply change their service provider.
With Telco TV and providers coming to the game, the stakes are extremely high. They’ve spent a lot of money and they know they have to win customers, and they have to win based on quality.
IPTV Update: So, in your view are IPTV roll-outs meeting the quality of service and user experience customers expect?
Kaynam Hedayat: As a technology vendor, I wish my answer was “yes.” But as someone who has experienced IPTV firsthand and has also talked to a lot of providers, I have to say they have not met these goals.
The reasons are multiple. I believe all providers underestimated the challenges as to the demands on the network, both in terms of bandwidth and the quality of their network. Second, I believe a lot of providers underestimated the quality of the network of the last mile. I am mainly talking about providers that are using DSL for the last mile.
With our experience, right now we are seeing 10 to 20 percent of the problems happening in the core of the network, and 80 percent happening in the last mile and the home of the customer.
So, in short, I believe they have underestimated the challenges and now they are hurrying to address them. I believe they can address the core because it is under their control, and in the core network, they have the option of throwing routers and bandwidth at the problem.
In the last mile, the problems are more challenging. You are at the mercy of the environment. You are challenged by the customer’s home network. I believe after the technology challenges of rolling out the network, the next challenge will be monitoring and understanding and managing the customer end to end — basically having the ability to look into what the customer is experiencing. It’s what we call the Quality of Experience (QoE). After QoE, there is the need of having enough information to turn around and solve those problems very quickly. The key is detection of QoE problems and the ability to turn around and correct problems in a matter of minutes instead of hours.
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