FROM OPERATORS

VOICE

Not content with just being the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias leading provider of telecommunication services, Saudi Telecom Company (STC) added IPTV to its portfolio on July 31 2010, by launching the countrys first IPTV service. Maziad Al Harbi, General Manager, Network Services Solutions at STC, talks about STCs IPTV strategy and the benefits it is expected to bring to all parties.
By Julia Yao

STC makes the IPTV leap

Entering the living room

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ne of STCs strategic priorities is to reinvent home communications by accelerating broadband adoption through multi-play and converged offerings. The launch of IPTV has brought STC customers one step closer to the Home of the Future. WinWin: Congratulations on launching Saudis first IPTV service, InVision. How does IPTV fit in STCs overall business strategy? Harbi: We have defined our future strategic priorities as a long-term plan composed of seven dimensions referred to as FORWARD. The R in the acronym stands for reinvent home communication, which aims to accelerate broadband adoption through multi-play and convergent

offerings while driving high-quality deployment and effective sales. To achieve this R goal, we are striving to accelerate the dissemination of broadband by providing high-quality, multi-purpose bundled offers. STC has many popular and flexible double play, voice and broadband packages. We have recently launched the InVision package. It is the first ever fixed triple-play bundle offering in Saudi Arabia. The offering includes free unlimited calls, unlimited Internet at speeds that reach up to 20Mbps, IPTV and satellite channels. Indeed, InVision is a critical component in STCs plan to reinvent home communications and to revolutionize the entertainment experience in the Saudi home. WinWin: The shift from voice to data requires significant investment in network and technology. Can you tell us about STCs network preparations related to IPTV deployment?

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There are no cinemas in Saudi Arabia. So the attractiveness of IPTV mainly stems from the vast and growing video catalogue, and that is the primary reason why STC has focused a lot on VOD.

Harbi: To accommodate high-speed Internet and offer integrated Internet solutions, STC in 2008 launched the fiber to the home (FTTH) service for Internet at speeds of up to 100Mbps another first in the KSA. We also initiated the commissioning and installation of many more Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN) as roadside cabinets, across all the major cities in the KSA. Thus, we are able to provide high-quality services with high speeds reaching up to 20Mbps through our most popular AFAQ DSL Shamel broadband package. In order to further enhance customer satisfaction, Quality of Service (QoS), Quality of Experience (QoE) and to assure service delivery, we invested in an end-to-end (E2E) IPTV centric monitoring solution as part of our overall Next Generation Operation Support System (NGOSS) Strategy. In 2010, STC was selected as the winner of the prestigious TM Forum award for its leading edge NGOSS design, beating many major players like China Unicom and Vodafone. WinWin: Can you briefly describe your IPTV service offerings, and how the customers have responded so far? Harbi: InVision was launched on July 31, 2010 (during the month of Ramadan) in the cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. Customers have responded very well to the service, and there have been reports where people were queuing to subscribe. The InVision service has an extensive range of services and features; from the electronic program guide (EPG), linear TV, time-shift TV, TV on demand, Video on Demand (VOD), PVR and so on. As you probably know, there are no cinemas in Saudi Arabia. So the attractiveness of IPTV mainly stems from the vast and growing video catalogue, and that is the primary reason why STC has focused a lot on VOD. Our VOD contains a diverse library of the latest Arab, Hollywood, international blockbuster films and popular TV drama series. We

also have a carefully selected range of live TV channels featuring content, in both standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) that has been designed to appeal to the KSA market. The major components in the channel offering, are a good mix of Arabic and English language programs which are made up of sport, children, religious, news and science programs, with Arabic and English subtitles. Time-shift TV is another popular service. It allows customers to retrieve any program broadcast within the last seven days on any TV channel through catch-up TV technology. This service enables customers to watch any program they are interested in at their own convenience, which means they can, for example, perform their regular prayers at the correct times, and not be concerned about missing anything on TV. In fact, according to our constant customer feedback surveys, a large majority of our InVision customers admitted that it was unimaginable for them to now even contemplate TV without catch-up and time-shift TV. This has created a true paradigm shift in the TV experience. WinWin: According to STCs experience, what are the key components of IPTV success? Harbi: I would like to highlight the three most important components to achieving IPTV success. First is broadband network capability, as mentioned earlier. Then of course, platform capability. Here the important partnership between STC and Huawei was a crucial factor. For the aforementioned components, we had already laid a very solid base. However, the third, which I personally feel is the most important and vital component is content. Content is really the key, to first attracting, then gaining and of course retaining customers. In 2009, we established a daughter company called Intigral to act as our content arm. Intigral provides multitude of services ranging from content aggregation, creation, enhancing, monitoring, censorship, delivery, and promotion.

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FROM OPERATORS

VOICE

In KSA, viewers can watch more than 1000 satellite TV channels for free. The IPTV offering should match or exceed the current level of quality and user perception. To achieve this, STC has introduced numerous innovations.

WinWin: How do you plan to take your IPTV service forward? Harbi: The IPTV platform is a very futuristic platform that offers unlimited possibilities for new services. When we initially launched InVision, we were strictly focused on the basics. Now, our primary focus is to introduce much more on top of the platform. But, we must first carefully analyze which services will be profitable or not. We will not fall into the one size fits all approach, It is a fact that different services work better in different cultures and countries. We are witnessing some early signs of the anticipated boom in the market and customers. Because, we were able to anticipate this and so we are in very advanced stages of planning to launch many advanced services to run over InVision. The services are either as good or better than what many in the market are offering or promising to offer. The recently much publicized offerings by GoogleTV and AppleTV gave us a very timely confidence jump that we are defiantly going in the right direction. The pleasant consequence of what I mentioned earlier, we have had to accelerate our expansion plans, from our initial offering to the three most populated cities, to kingdom-wide coverage.

channels to IPTV? Harbi: We adopted an innovative hybrid STB architecture. The hybrid STB architecture allows the customer to switch between IPTV and DVB-S with the press of a single button. In this way, customers have connectivity to IPTV and at the same time they can continue to view channels on satellite. The reason we went for the hybrid STB was actually very simple. The competition for IPTV in Saudi Arabia primarily comes from the 1,000 plus available satellite TV channels. From our market research we came to the quick realization that it was definitely the case of quality rather than quantity. So at the first phase, IPTV was launched with 50 channels, which had very high standard of focus, breadth and quality. We were able to successfully utilize the quality bullet to shoot down the quantity challenge. WinWin: We know that zapping time is a challenge for IPTV. How do you tackle this? Harbi: The minimum time required to change IPTV channels is two-and-half seconds. If the Group of Pictures (GOP) is too long, the zapping time can take three to four seconds. This is the limitation of the technology. In comparison, satellite TV zapping time is only one to two seconds. IPTV zapping time should be better, or at least match the current satellite TV zapping performance. To achieve this, we have employed a fast channel change (FCC) solution. The beauty of the solution is that the FCC server caches all IPTV channels and sends the GOP at a higher bit rate, which enables us to reduce the zapping time to less than one second. WinWin: KSA is a deeply religious country, being home to the two holiest places in Islam. What mechanism is in place to ensure the contents are suitable for viewing by the local population? Harbi: KSA is the birthplace and center of the Islamic

Technological innovations
In KSA, viewers can watch more than 1000 satellite TV channels for free. The IPTV offering should match or exceed the current level of quality and user perception. To achieve this, STC has introduced innovations in hybrid STB, fast channel change, parental control and end-to-end service assurance. WinWin: From a technical perspective, how are you encouraging consumers to shift from free satellite

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religion. It goes without saying that the IPTV offering should be in line with Islamic values. At the same time, KSA also has the largest number of expats in the Middle East. The needs of these two groups are very different. So the challenge for STC is to maintain the balance between conservative local residents and less conservative expats. To overcome this challenge, we created a number of packages. We have packages which are for local residents. Also packages that are attractive to both groups and finally packages that we knew would be interesting to expats, like Hollywood and international films from India and the Philippines, etc. To ensure that the content conformed to our culture and religion, Intigral our content arm carried out the censorship and editing of the content. Then we gave personal control to the customer through the parental control feature as part of the IPTV solution, which enables the customer to take control of the TV content, classifying any movie/program in any channel according to the category he deems appropriate for himself and for his family. Customers can create and control their own profiles, and users log in by profile. For example, the father can create his own password-protected profile, and also create a separate profile for his children. In this case, the father can view all channels, while the kids are limited to only the childrens channels. WinWin: Compared with traditional voice or Internet services, IPTV poses several operational challenges. How do you ensure service delivery quality? Harbi: We implemented a very sophisticated and endto-end service assurance solution, covering head end, IPTV platform, MPLS aggregation, Access and home network which are monitored at our 247 sophisticated

VNOC center. At the head end as well we have another dedicated 24/7 content monitoring NOC. To achieve the above we invested in placing video monitoring probes all across STC network. With the aforementioned end-toend monitoring solution, we have been able to monitor even down to the customers RG and STB. At the end we have been able to monitor the service in our Single OSS solution, through which we can monitor all related IPTV KPIs such as packet loss and jitters. This gives us real-time analysis and so we can proactively fix problems, many times resolving issues even before they occur. The solution enables us to monitor all elements, identify the root problems, and avoid customer churn. WinWin: Why did STC select Huawei as its partner for IPTV and how would you comment on the cooperation so far? Harbi: Before we went for full deployment, we carried out trials with the three big vendors. Huawei really impressed us in the trial and we subsequently awarded Huawei the contract for IPTV in 2009. One of Huaweis many strengths is the energy it has in developing, deploying services and its flexibility to adapt to changes in the customers expectations. The unique value we saw in Huawei, compared to other vendors, was the ability to understand customers challenges and difficulties, and to work around that and develop solutions. The constant pressure all operators face is to meet the time-to-market challenge. The short time Huawei spent on fixing problems really helped us when it came to time-to-market. Together, we and Huawei have developed a very visionary IPTV roadmap and we are aligned in our goals. Im confident that we can provide the best services to meet all customers needs in the future. Editor: Gao Xianrui sally@huawei.com

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