CHICAGO – Zouheir Mansourati’s task Wednesday morning was to show delegates to the IPTV World North America conference what Telus has learned so far, two years into its IPTV deployment.
The vice-president technology strategy for the Canadian telco noted first that choosing a “best-in-class” product for every piece of the IPTV pie is probably not the best idea.
“It’s far more important to have an overall system, that works together well,” he said. “You can’t have ‘best-of-class’ in every component if they don’t work together.”
Most important, though, of those components, is to choose the right set top box. “It’s the window to the service and in the eyes of the user, a reflection of that service.” That means a robust STB is key. “Set top box responsiveness and robustness is a very important part of the puzzle, he said, adding “they’re still not as robust as we’d like them to be.” (Ed note: Which echoes some cable operators we’ve heard…)
“Set top box integration is ten times harder than you think,” Mansourati added.
And when it comes to trouble-shooting STB problems, it’s best just to swap a new one in.
The biggest issue all IPTV operators have to overcome is the length of time it takes to install a new customer. This is common across all IPTV carriers in North America since installs generally take in the two-hour range.
“It is extremely painful,” said Mansourati. “Those who have achieved self-install, I’ll buy you lunch, I’ll buy you dinner, too, and you can tell me how.”
Telus, he added, considers every new Telus TV install to be a custom install, and even with the best installer, “it does take a long time… one to two hours.”
It’s not a simple thing to tie multiple TVs and set tops into what is essentially, the phone line, so IPTV companies use the coax cables already in the house, hoping there isn’t a bad connection hidden somewhere. Or they’ll run more cat 5 and they have to recondition the twisted pair already in the home. Ideally, Mansourati said he can’t wait for the day using wireless or the power lines can work for TV delivery in the home network.
“Content makes TV different than any other telco service. We must attract and retain both customers and content providers,” noted Mansourati.
In the end, though, it’s of critical importance to get the TV experience right before worrying about any other interactive applications or extra ways to monetize the service. Right now, people are primarily changing away from cable to Telus TV for a better television experience.
“Once you get the user experience correct first for television, then it can be enhanced through interactivity and convergence,” he said.
“And today, that takes a lot of time.”
