TelcoTV: QoE vendors take opposing views of quality monitoring

ANAHEIM, Calif. – How quality is addressed in IPTV might depend on where a vendor starts in the network. Two companies, Mariner and Ineoquest Technologies, focus on quality assurance for IPTV services, but they take opposite approaches to monitoring and addressing issues in the service delivery. While both launched new content-monitoring technologies at the TelcoTV show this week, Ineoquest starts in the network, and Mariner starts with the consumer.

Canadian-based systems integrator Mariner this week launched ExecVu, which puts quality of experience (QoE) monitoring in the hands of the consumer. The service, which builds on Mariner’s line of xVu products, is designed to cut down on the number of customer care calls that are made by first exhausting the consumer-related possibilities. ExecVu provides information and data to business executives to improve new service innovation, content scheduling and selection, metrics for ad opportunities, customer issue monitoring and business planning.
“We are empowering the consumer in the home and cutting opex,” said Brock Sansom, vice president of sales and marketing for Mariner. “It’s an efficient way to start a dialogue and message with the operator on problems.”

It also complements HomeVu, which provides information purposed for the consumer. Through an executive dashboard, the consumer gets a comprehensive view of its IPTV platform and is walked through potential reasons for the service disruption. For example, if it’s simply a matter of plugging in a cable inadvertently knocked out or reconnecting a cord, the HomeVu interface would first indicate this.

“The traditional approach to manage quality of service is to look at the network out to the home,” Sansom said. “ExecVu turns that around to see what customers see. Operationally, it is a very different approach.”