French Telecom Operators Launching Soft At Home Middleware
February 2008
Three French telecom companies-- France Telecom, Sagem Communications and Thomson--launched a joint venture looking to create open source middleware products that “better fit the needs of Telecom Operators.”
Their initiative, called Soft At Home, acts as middleware, competing with Microsoft’s IPTV Mediaroom platform.
Although the companies wouldn’t say how much they’ve invested in the company, their budget was for about 80 employees. FT will hold 60% of the company, while the other two will each have 20%.
An executive for France Telecom said they were looking to develop a standard for the industry and take on the needs of Telecom Operators.
The software will include applications like photo viewing, receiving calls on TV and more. They plan to commercially launch the software in the 3rd or 4th quarter 2008 in France.
This deserves monitoring, because France Telecom/Thomson will now find itself competing with other Tier-1 developed middleware products like Cascade (PCCW) and MyViewTV (Telefónica). Conceivably, Verizon (which largely developed its own middleware for FiOS after firing Microsoft) also could spin off its middleware, although we don’t see that happening soon. A major impact will be on potentially reducing the market for Microsoft’s Mediaroom middleware.
{Note: analyst comments are italicized}
For more information, consult our: MRG, Inc., February 2008 IPTV Bulletin
Survey Shows Video Quality Critical to IPTV Success
February 2008
A study conducted by Multimedia Research Group found that video quality is critical to the growth and success of IPTV. By increasing quality of experience (QoE), IPTV Operators can significantly, reduce overall costs, lower customer support calls and reduce customer churn.
Source: MRG, Inc. and Symmetricom
The study found that many Service Providers feel their existing monitoring solutions lack an accurate measurement of perceptual end-user quality.
Key results of the study:
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84% reported video quality monitoring as critical or a very important part of their video initiative.
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Over 90% of respondents were notified about service quality problems from subscriber calls.
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77% say video quality is a main reason for customer churn.
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The top three issues are video freeze, macroblocking and video blackout.
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Over 72% of all problems come from access, core and home networks.
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77% of participants feel that existing video quality monitoring solutions are not an accurate measure of end-user quality and 78% feel that they are not true end-to-end solutions.
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Less than half of respondents conduct deep packet inspection (MPEG), P and B frames, and groups of pictures.
A summary of the report can be downloaded at: http://qoe.symmetricom.com/lp/IPTV_Study1/
For more information, consult our: MRG, Inc., February 2008 IPTV Bulletin
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