Q&A: Milya Timergaleyeva, Oregan Networks

Milya Timergaleyeva, VP, market strategy, Oregan Networks talks about the challenges facing pay TV operators in delivering advanced services.

What are the main challenges facing pay TV service providers as they attempt to upgrade their subscriber bases to receive advanced connected or hybrid TV services?

The biggest common challenge faced by MSOs is meeting the growing demand for bandwidth, as content consumption preferences shift toward non-linear models. Intensified by the increasing appetite for Full HD and 4K content, the ‘bandwidth bottleneck’ has the potential to stress both managed and Over the Top Services to a level where customer experience can be adversely impacted.

DRM fragmentation also continues to raise challenges for operators that deploy services across multiple devices and networks, and this is an area where goalposts are constantly changing, in terms of new security requirements from studios on UHD content, as well as ecosystem changes such as those recently made by Google to the Chrome browser.

As a platform and services vendor, Oregan employs a combination of well-established technology building blocks and innovation components that tackle these issues. During IBC this year, Oregan will showcase recent integration with the V-Nova Perseus compression technology which holds a promise of significantly reducing the bandwidth requirements, thus making premium content accessible at lower OPEX levels. Core to Oregan’s bandwidth solutions strategy is close alignment and pre-integration with leading CDN and DVR vendors, such as Alcatel Lucent.

Thirdly, the high velocity of the evolution of standards and emerging connectivity use cases pose operational challenges for operators who wish to stay relevant and competitive. On the one hand, the in-sourcing platform management strategies have proven effective for larger operators, on the other hand, the need to continuously explore, implement and trial new products in an Agile manner, have created an elevated demand for highly skilled engineering teams and product evolution methodologies that can be ‘plugged’ into a project rapidly and deliver to a high standard.

How useful is cloud technology in helping deliver advanced TV services to pay TV operators’ subscribers and which applications are likely to be prioritized by operators?

The trend to virtualize services that were once provided exclusively within the operator’s own managed headend is well underway. During the last 12 months Oregan has worked on deployment projects where many aspects of the traditional headend have been moved out into the cloud, allowing operators to reduce complexity and costs associated with onsite hosting.

We are involved in projects today with tier-1 telecoms operators, where key video delivery platform components such as the CMS, Network PVR, DRM Key Server, TR-069 ACS Server and Upgrade Management Server are all provided as managed services hosted in the Cloud.

Indeed, we see traditional cable and satellite operators deploying on-demand VOD services in some markets, where the Service Delivery Platforms I entirely outsourced and hosted in the cloud. This enables rapid time to market as well as immediate economies of scale, by utilizing pre-established cloud encoding and CDN platforms for OTT delivery to hybrid STBs and other OTT devices.

Oregan’s video client technology has been developed from the outset to bring together the worlds of traditional broadcast, with IPTV and OTT technologies. A legacy or new generation STB running Oregan’s middleware can mix-and-match content from broadcast, IPTV and OTT sources, whilst providing a seamless and unified user experience to the consumer. The latest iterations of Oregan’s Secure Media Player solution, brings this consistency to multi-screen devices and OTT platforms, as well as the more established traditional CPE.

What are the main challenges facing pay TV service providers as they attempt to upgrade their subscriber bases to receive advanced connected or hybrid TV services?

The first and foremost decision faced by an operator is the approach to the existing devices. The reality is that the initial investment that was made deploying the original CPE is frequently making it difficult to commercially justify a complete replacement. Oregan’s legacy Pay TV migration methodology encapsulates the key product evolution process that allows the operator to synchronize, wherever possible, the capabilities and features across legacy and new generation devices.

Oregan’s project experience with BT and its legacy Mediaroom STBs enables us to offer a field-proven solution to operators where the in-field upgrade process is flawless, with the entire fleet of devices upgraded remotely, courtesy of a well designed and implemented remote upgrade methodology. The crucial goal and a measure of success of any such upgrade project is elimination of any need for ‘truck rolls’. As part of the initial technical and financial analysis, Oregan carries out a thorough impartial feasibility assessment, which will determine the optimal product evolution path, feature sets, content security implications, timescales and any trade-offs related to the legacy STB’s intrinsic capabilities.

What are the principal technology choices facing operators as they seek to build next-generation TV platforms and what are the key advantages and disadvantages of each?

As technology sourcing becomes increasingly modular, with emphasis on upgradability and future-proofness, the component choices are becoming less restrictive. In this new scenario, which is made possible by the general move towards open architectures and community-sourced components, the choices tend to be related to the operating system utilized inside the CPE, the degree of association and prominence of competing OTT services offered side-by-side with the core content offering and, thirdly, the content protection technologies.

A continued exploitation of multicast delivery infrastructure for live events, especially sporting events is an option that many operators are having to determine their approach to.

And lastly, offering support for Common Encryption standards across devices, which enables operators to simplify the head-end infrastructure of a multi-DRM deployment is a transition that many operators consider as a matter of natural platform evolution.

Oregan Networks provides market-leading technology expertise in delivery of Digital TV over broadcast and IP networks, with emphasis on ensuring content security, quality of service for consumers and mitigating project risk. To schedule a discussion with Oregan at IBC, email [email protected].