Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM

Service Quality Manager For IPTV

Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM

Service Quality Manager For IPTV

Your Challenge
The cost of poor quality of experience (QoE) can be enormous. QoE is critical because it is the primary driver of customer loyalty which is directly proportionate to customer retention/churn. Failing to deliver QoE that subscribers expect from the IPTV service can lead to increased OPEX and lost revenue. Lack of quality causes customer dissatisfaction, which translates into increased customer complaints and more truck rolls. If the IPTV quality is not good, there is a higher chance that customers will churn. Not only will the service provider lose IPTV revenue from the customer, it may also lose voice and data revenue altogether. Because the only way to understand what makes a customer unhappy about the services being delivered is by actually measuring QoE, it is paramount that operators have a continuous monitoring solution in place from the moment they launch their IPTV services. Investing in a service quality management solution means having the all-important ability to understand and manage the customer experience and win the customers loyalty. Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM is a complete service quality management solution, with the capability needed to:
> Manage real user quality of experience > Detect problems before customers do > Locate problems and perform root-cause analysis > Gauge customer/value impact and prioritize trouble

Our Answer
Alcatel-Lucent 8920 Service Quality Manager (SQM) provides powerful service quality management capabilities based on best practices. It allows operators to monitor video from the head end to the set top box (STB) for the most accurate assessment of what customers are really experiencing down to specific regions, channels and other such dimensions.

resolution
> Support customer problem troubleshooting with user-

centric diagnostics
> Protect and optimise investments through proactive

capacity planning and trend analysis

> Gather audience measurement data for business and

operational intelligence/analysis

Key Benefits
> Optimize business outcomes by improving end users quality of experience > Minimize revenue risk associated with customer churn due to unacceptable quality or performance problems > Lower costs by reducing the number of level-1 calls from customers due to service quality degradation > Greater cost-savings and efficiency through reduction in call-handling times, higher first-call resolution rates, and elimination of truck rolls > Reduce CAPEX through increased network and service platform utilization while leveraging existing infrastructure investments > Leverage current and future investments through easy integration into existing and evolving network environments > Retain customer base and increase ARPU by delivering quality and quantity of video content based on accurate identification of consumer preferences
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End-to-End Service Quality Management

QoS performance monitoring information collected from the network often does not accurately correlate with the perceived QoE by users owing to error correction and recovery mechanisms at the application layer. Also, aspects such as application control plane latency (e.g., channel change delay) and actual picture distortion may go unnoticed in the network. Therefore, to measure QoE requires the collection of measurements from various sources to determine actual service state and quality, as well as root causes of quality degradation. Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM leverages active and passive measurement techniques to provide a complete endto-end view of the quality and conditions throughout the service delivery path:

a
> Subscriber activity and quality measured using a

combination of IPTV middleware, STB diagnostics and probe-based measurements

> Video source and encoding analysis via MPEG2/4 analyzers

and video probes

> Diagnostics through integration of network performance

statistics from respective managers, test robot systems and probes

> IT and network infrastructure availability from respective

managers (e.g., acquisition, distribution and VoD servers) Available data may be sent to a wide range of Operations Support Systems for seamless integration into existing service assurance management systems, such as fault, service fulfilment and customer problem troubleshooting.

SERVICE QUALITY MANAGEMENT FOR EVERY CUSTOMER, EVERY SERVICE, END-TO-END: > From a single management location throughout the service delivery path > Easily deployed and integrated into existing OSS environments > Scalable and carrier-grade

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Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM

Service Quality Manager For IPTV

Maximizing IPTV Quality
Detect Problems before Customers Do The application comes supplied, as standard, with predefined thresholds or rules that encapsulate expert operational knowledge and provide detection of typical service degradation scenarios. These rules function by comparing data to expected quality levels in order to reveal degradation quickly and easily. These predefined rules may be modified to suit differing operational needs. By pinpointing service degradation problems in real time, our solution eliminates time-consuming manual analysis ensuring corrective actions are taken well before customers are affected. Manage the True Customer Experience Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM measures the viewing experience for all subscribers via non-intrusive monitoring of the video session quality. Measuring quality goes beyond simple packet-based network metrics, such as packet loss and jitter. In the 8920 it embraces the calculation of key quality indicators such as channel change delays, audible and visible quality degradations. It is these indicators that reflect more concisely the perceived customer experience. Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM provides a complete service quality management solution with diagnostic functionality to pinpoint the exact cause and location and offer tactics for problem resolution. Impact analysis is done using real-time correlation of resources, topologies and affected customers. Such capability enables service providers to create trouble tickets based on type of affected customers, rather than on the type of degraded network resource. Additionally, the predefined thresholds or rules can trigger the automatic gathering of information that is needed to diagnose and correct problems ranging from Powerful Diagnostics Customers will have problems despite the best monitoring efforts. In order to reduce truck rolls, diminish the number of calls to customer service and minimize the duration of service and support calls, it is necessary to deal with diagnosis. Technical staff and customer service representatives (CSRs) need to have access to detailed service troubleshooting information and analysis needed to assure quick problem resolution in the least time possible.

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The unique Quality of Experience approach provides a true understanding of the customer experience and the only way to measure service levels from the customers perspective.

Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM employs an advanced perceptual video quality assessment model developed as a result of extensive Alcatel research and contributions to various standardization bodies. Our assessment model* provides non-intrusive real-time MTBF-like ratings for user sessions by leveraging the capabilities of the IPTV infrastructure. It uses session-based measurements taking into account transport impairments all the way down to the STB. This lightweight approach means cost-effective end-to-end and last mile monitoring capabilities without investment in additional hardware probes.

* Patent Pending

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picture degradation to delivery of video-on-demand all without the need of a truck roll. Customer service troubleshooting is fully integrated to Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM enabling customer CSRs to uncover and resolve customer issues without having to escalate the trouble ticket. This integration with customer service systems provides queries on accurate and up-to-date customer troubleshooting information with personalized diagnosis based on STB, network and session quality conditions. And as the network environment changes, Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM automatically updates the diagnostic information through intelligent discovery. This information is automatically retrieved from the service platforms, element and inventory management systems and during the service fulfilment process. Proactive Capacity Planning Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM provides comprehensive service usage measurements and accurate trend analysis to help in understanding the network and the traffic that it carries.

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To help meet this growing requirement, Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM gathers, stores and provides both detailed and summarized viewing data that quantify the size and composition of the IPTV market. With deep insight on viewing habits, channel/program audience and asset popularity, the marketing and product management staff can measure service take-up, refine service bundles, monitor promotions, drive better carriage negotiations with content providers and charge favourable ad fees for spot advertising on the local avails. All audience data is extracted from the IPTV middleware in an unobtrusive, light-touch manner. This means audience measurements can be collected from a live network without impacting other applications and without having to install people meter-like probes in subscriber STB. Business Intelligence for Integrated Reporting and Analysis Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM employs the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence solution to provide web-client drag-and-drop simplicity and powerful analysis capabilities suitable for both novice and advanced users. A Multi-vendor and Multi-technology Solution

With this insight, the network may be optimized and expanded to meet the needs of subscribers, redistribute traffic load, downgrade link sizes or determine if network segments will support new service deployments. If new capacity is introduced in time, customers are more likely to get the quality of service that was promised and endcustomers can be retained more easily. Building a Better Customer Experience with Audience Measurements Quality and quantity of video content itself are also important issues that drive consumer preferences, retain customer base and increase ARPU. As telecom operators become entertainment providers, they face the increasing need to understand what the customer interests are and offer value-added services that build on that interest to generate more revenue.

Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM is designed to easily accommodate new services and multiple technologies from different vendors. It supports wireless, fixed, full triple-play and convergent fixed/wireless networks, including GSM/GPRS/EDGE, DSL, TDM and VoIP/IMS networks. Carrier-Class Scalability Alcatel-Lucent 8920 SQM delivers service quality management with the carrier-class scalability and flexibility required for IPTV services and initiatives like OSS consolidation and network convergence. The application may collect and store virtually unlimited amounts of service and customer data from any network technology, service platform and OSS.

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