Symmetricom (News - Alert) Inc. has released a study conducted by Multimedia Research Group Inc. This study assessed the telecommunications service providers’ requirements for IPTV test, measurement and monitoring solutions.


Results of this study confirm that video quality is critical to the growth and ultimate success of IPTV (News - Alert), significantly affecting customer support calls and customer churn.

 

The study also revealed that service providers feel their existing monitoring solutions lack an accurate measurement of perceptual end-user quality. Most service providers also believe that an end-to-end solution is required to monitor and understand quality issues occurring at the headend, access networks and the home where the majority of video quality problems can occur.

 

Key results from this study reveal that 84 percent of respondents reported video quality monitoring as critical or a very important part of their video initiative; more than 90 percent of respondents were notified about service quality problems from subscriber calls; and 77 percent say that video quality is a main reason for customer churn.  

Results also showed that the top three issues are video freeze, macroblocking and video blackout; more than 72 percent of all problems come from access and home networks; 77 percent of existing video quality monitoring solutions are not an accurate measure of end-user quality and 78 percent are not end-to-end; and less than half conduct deep packet inspect (MPEG), P and B frames and groups of pictures.

 

President and Principal Analyst of MRG Gary Schultz commented on the study's findings in a Tuesday statement, "Service providers understand the importance of video quality to their bottom line, yet feel they do not currently have the right solution for monitoring and managing video quality from the content ingest point at the headend to the customer premises equipment (CPE) in the home.”

 

“This Symmetricom study strongly suggests that video quality is top-of-mind with IPTV service providers and a main driver for telco customer churn," Schultz added.

 

"Service providers need a true end-to-end solution for monitoring IPTV services to deliver a high quality video experience to their customers," added David Cox (News - Alert), Symmetricom's EVP GM of the Quality of Experience (QoE) Assurance Division, in Tuesday’s statement.

 

"The demand for high-definition TV programming is exploding, raising the video quality bar by consumers as they become dissatisfied with anything less than an HD experience. Service providers need to implement a comprehensive perceptual video quality monitoring solution that can ensure they meet their customers' expectations, or risk losing some customers."

Quality delivery is imperative for customer service as this is often the only gauge customers have to measure their experience. If carriers hope to continue to increase revenue streams and protect the customer base, they must be able to monitor the quality of the experience. The results of this study support the importance of this ability and its impact on the IPTV industry.