Call Center Services Featured Article

ADB & Mariner Intro Proactive Service Monitoring Solution

By Raja Singh Chaudhary
TMCnet Contributor

Advanced Digital Broadcast, or “ADB,” resolution software, a provider of technology to the global digital television industry has announced to introduce a new solution that will enable proactive pay-TV service monitoring which will increase the quality of subscribers’ experience and will also reduce operator costs. The company has developed the solution in partnership with Mariner, a provider of innovative IP video technologies. Both the companies have incorporated new software capabilities in ADB’s latest IPTV set-top boxes with Mariner’s flagship service assurance suite, xVu, to bring the new solution that is based on TR-069, a Broadband Forum (News - Alert) developed protocol for remote management of end user devices.

Offering quantifiable metrics on the quality of the video, audio and performance of each set-top box in each home, the new solution enables the operators to have a deeper look into problems of long channel change times, errors within the video such as frame drop, and also proactively resolve them, sometimes even before the subscriber notices them.

According to Francois Pogodalla, CEO of ADB, as operators continue to invest a significant amount of resources to acquire new subscribers, the importance on retaining these has never been higher and a key aspect to subscriber retention is video service quality. Pogodalla noted that the operators who deploy the joint Mariner-ADB system will be able to anticipate and more efficiently address service glitches, thus reducing disruptions and enabling a seamless consumer experience.

Curtis Howe, President and CEO of Mariner commented that the recent integration of Mariner’s xVu into ADB’s set-top box technology is the next step in proactive service monitoring, and company’s collaboration with ADB in this venture brings end-to-end service assurance to the set-top box ecosystem, which equips IPTV (News - Alert) providers with invaluable insight into the cause of service disturbances, helping them improve the quality of the end user’s experience and reduce call center costs and truck rolls.

In the words of Robin Mersh, COO of Broadband Forum, the TR-069 protocol provides a single remote management system for the configuration of both fixed and mobile devices, which enables service providers to reduce operating costs for network and set top box management. Mersh continued that the joint service assurance deployment from Mariner and ADB demonstrates the broad range of applications possible with TR-069 and opens the door for even more diversified applications moving forward.

February 2010, ADB announced that Telekom Austria (News - Alert) has introduced advanced ‘connected home’ capabilities on its aonTV IPTV service using ADB set-top devices and software technology. The new aonTV MediaBox service enables Telekom Austria’s subscribers to view DivX content on their TV, and the company is the first operator in Europe to provide DivX Certified set-top boxes to its subscribers.