Switched Digital Video (SDV) Quality and Service Assurance

Calvin Harrison, Vice President of Marketing

IneoQuest Technologies

Gino Dion, Vice President of Business Development

IneoQuest Technologies

Jim Welch, Senior Consulting Engineer

IneoQuest Technologies

Introduction

Cable MSOs across North America and Europe are already aware of the potential benefits and rewards of implementing Switched Digital Video (SDV) networks. By implementing SDV, cable MSOs will be better positioned to compete against the telcos and their promise of advanced services which will be delivered to the home at bandwidths greater than 50Mbs. But these forward-thinking MSOs also realize that quality—of subscriber features, customer service and picture—are going to be the true differentiators in this increasingly competitive market. How will cable MSOs roll out SDV networks and all the features that go with themwhile reducing the operational expenses (OPEX) associated with a new delivery model?

There are numerous advantages to implementing a Switched Digital Video network for cable MSOs.

They include:

• A more cost effective and efficient use of spectrum that will support the delivery of more HD video channels, Video on Demand services and DOCSIS 3.0
• More bandwidth for data usage
• The opportunity to deploy advanced consumer services such as market specific niche
programming, and targeted ad-insertion

The combination of improved bandwidth efficiency (while simultaneously offering a more diverse channel lineup) and advanced services is expected to increase the average revenue per user (ARPU) for the MSOs.

These advantages, however, come with a significant increase in network and video delivery complexity including:

• Increase in required network compute resources
• Increased communication overhead
• Real-time association and switching of video flows to the home

In order to insure superior video quality, it is imperative that these complexities are comprehended and managed, not only during early stage design, testing and deployment, but also during normal operation of the system. This requires capabilities for testing the network and its components prior to deployment, as well as the implementation of a true, end-to-end Quality & Service Assurance solution to provide the capability to monitor, analyze, fault isolate and troubleshoot a switched digital video implementation.

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