July 1, 2008

Converge Services, Grow Revenue

Tighten Up the Bundle

By Kyle Copeland, Integra5

By any measure, multi-play bundles have been a huge hit in the market. In fact, the Yankee Group has estimated that by the end of 2007 nearly 76 percent of consumers had purchased multiple services from a single provider.

While the initial phase of offering a bundle of voice, video and data services to consumers was a success, there was little differentiation between competitive bundles from a subscriber's perspective. This resulted in marketing ploys based on reduced price, higher data speeds, an increased number of high definition (HD) channels or other offers that simply reinforced the existing individual services and could be replicated by competitors.

Possibilities

Converged services - or the ability to blend communications and content across the bundle in real time - have emerged as a way to address the commoditization of bundles with truly differentiated services that span multiple devices and can be personalized and controlled by subscribers. These services, such as caller ID or voicemail notifications sent to TV sets or PCs, provide a way for operators to build customer loyalty, drive digital-tier uptake and increase average revenue per user from their existing networks.

Initial converged services deployments focused on delivering a single application - caller ID on TV - since it took a service that subscribers already know, love and pay for and brought it to a new device in the home. (See Figure 1.)

FIGURE 1: Caller ID on TV notification with subscriber personalization and call control features

While initial launches were rolled out in a deliberate and controlled fashion, consumer demand and competitive pressures are shortening the time frames for converged services deployments. With these offerings now proven, the market is moving to simultaneous deployments of multiple converged services across multiple devices with full subscriber personalization and active call control features.

The question for cable operators' engineering teams then becomes how to effectively address this accelerating converged services opportunity. While a short-term option is to develop and launch a single converged service application at a time, long-term success in the market will be based on leveraging a network-based converged services platform. This approach, leveraging a platform's extensive network connectivity, flexible service creation, and intelligent device management and service personalization, essentially turns the network into a converged services "innovation engine" that will drive bundle adoption and competitive differentiation today, next year and five years down the road when the market is saturated with bundled offers.

Network perspective

Early caller ID on TV deployments, primarily driven by satellite operators, were able to provide basic notifications on the TV set. However, they required a phone line to be plugged into a specialized set-top box that was limited to delivering notifications to just one TV set - a costly solution for limited functionality.

The market then evolved to network-based delivery of converged services to bring cost-effectiveness, scale and service velocity to deployments. The move to an open, standards-based converged services platform eliminated the need for in-home equipment or truck rolls and enabled the delivery of real-time communications and content across today's high-speed data, video (Internet protocol TV, IPTV, and HFC), telephony (time division multiplexing, TDM, and voice over IP, VoIP), and even wireless networks.

Three keys

The key to such a platform is based on three functional areas - network connectivity (signal manager), application and subscriber management (service engine and data manager), and real-time delivery to multiple devices in the home (edge device handler). The modular architecture of such a platform can be co-located or distributed, based on the network deployment model of a cable operator's telephony, data and video environments. (See Figure 2.)

FIGURE 2: Distributed, network-based architecture of a converged services platform

To successfully blend the bundle, a converged services platform must be able to interface with various networks, application servers and other communications and content sources. The signal manager portion of the platform provides this connectivity through support for a variety of network and application protocols, from session initiation protocol/media gateway control protocol (SIP/MGCP) for VoIP to integrated services digital network user part/transactional capabilities application part (ISUP/TCAP) in the SS7 networks of switched telephony environments to extensible markup language (XML), Internet message access protocol/post office protocol version 3 (IMAP/POP3), short message peer-to-peer protocol (SMPP), extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP) (Jabber), short message service (SMS) and multimedia messaging service (MMS) for data, mobile and messaging networks.

By passively monitoring these networks, the converged services platform can intercept signals sent to it from the various telephony or messaging networks - pulling information from one network so it can be translated for use on a different network. As an example, in an SS7 deployment, a signal manager can act as an active node or passively monitor control traffic and infer the existence of calls and call-related information. When working in a VoIP environment, the signal manager can terminate and interact with SIP messages as well as passively monitor SIP and/or network-based call signaling (NCS)/MGCP traffic.

Once a call has been recognized, the signal manager then communicates with the service engine, which consists of network control services for managing call setup and session establishment, modification and release, and executes application-specific code for the subscriber. Because of its primary functions - serving applications, call routing and session control - the service engine is the centerpiece of the converged services platform. Incoming communications and content from the signal manager are immediately assigned the appropriate protocol based on signal and routing information stored in the service engine's associated database, the data manager, which maintains profiles of every subscriber's converged services, in-home devices and personalized service delivery preferences.

Based on the profile in the data manager, the service engine prepares the requested converged services notification and forwards it to the edge device handler, which communicates to the converged services platform's thin client software running on set-top boxes and PCs in subscribers' homes. The thin client software then displays the application information on the TV set, PC or other device. In addition, based on a cable operator's preference, converged services notifications to PCs can be alerted through an instant messaging (IM) client using XMPP instead of the thin client software. In much the same manner, cable operators can choose to send converged services notifications directly to any mobile phone utilizing SMS text messages over SMPP.

This network-based platform approach to converged services ensures a seamless provisioning process that does not require cable operator or end-user involvement. More importantly, it enables advanced services promised by future rollouts of IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) infrastructure to be available today by making legacy set-top boxes and other non-intelligent devices appear integrated into the network to the core infrastructure. By representing each in-home device to the various communications and content networks and applications, the converged services platform leverages the capital spent on existing network infrastructure to deliver new services.

Evolving to IMS

As cable operators work to define how their video services fit into a much bigger convergence picture by incorporating wireless, fixed (wireline) and data architectures, any discussion of converged services merits mention of tru2way, IPTV and IMS.

Despite the inherent benefits, IMS, tru2way and IPTV by themselves are not likely to provide network operators with all the functions needed to cost effectively deploy converged services in the near term because they are designed strictly for IP-based networks and newer IP-based devices. Given that existing TDM and video networks and legacy in-home devices are not going away any time soon, a converged services strategy requires a hybrid approach to reach the entire subscriber base.

Therefore, a converged services platform's core strength is that it can serve as the service integration layer across IMS/IPTV/tru2way and legacy worlds. For example, by layering the converged services platform over IMS, service providers can provide third-party developers with a secure, high-level interface that maps down onto IMS without compromising network integrity and without factoring cost, complexity and time into the converged services lifecycle.

The personalized bundle

As alluded to earlier, a key feature of a converged services platform is the ability to empower subscribers with management and personalization of their converged services and in-home devices.

Seamlessly integrated with an operator's broadband portal, the converged services platform's customer control portal provides a standards-compliant Web interface for subscribers to create accounts for household members, subscribe to or modify a current subscription to any converged service, and designate which services are routed to which devices in the home. (See Figure 3.)

FIGURE 3: Web-based portal for subscribers to personalize converged services

As an example, a subscriber who has personal and business phone lines at home could use a customer control portal to differentiate personal and business callers by category, banner colors, pictures and define that calls to the home office line only get notified on the mobile phone and PC in the home office, while personal calls get notified on the living room TV set, other family member mobile phones and other PCs within the home.

The result of this intelligence is a "household identity" that includes the various devices in the home, the different users, and their personalized service and device preferences. Combining this with the information the converged services platform has already collected about the cable operator's networks results in a critical, cross-platform database that can not only identify the types of devices that are in a home, but also can identify which person/demographic in the household uses those devices, for which services and when.

More importantly, personalization of the blended bundle further cements customer loyalty and differentiates a multi-play bundle.

Platform in action

To better understand how the architecture of a converged services platform functions, the following is a session flow example of how such a system processes caller ID alerts to a TV set, PC and mobile phone for an incoming phone call:

1. A TDM or VoIP call comes into the cable operator's telephony switch on a network with a converged services platform.

2. The signal manager identifies the TDM or VoIP call using an appropriate protocol (ISUP/SIP/MGCP) and communicates with the service engine. Based on the signaling information and routing information stored in the data manager, the service engine locates the appropriate converged service application and starts a session for caller ID to TV, caller ID to PC, and caller ID to the mobile phone.

3. The service engine checks the user's record (also located in the data manager) and extracts vital information such as the type of devices that require delivery and the subscriber's unique service delivery preferences for the incoming caller, such as a caller photo, nickname, ringtone, etc. The service manager then creates the personalized TV picture caller ID, PC picture caller ID, and mobile phone SMS messages, and sends them to the edge device handler.

4. The edge device handler locates the set-top boxes and/or PCs of the subscriber who is being called and sends the personalized TV picture caller ID and PC picture caller ID notifications to the appropriate devices over the IP and video networks. Text notifications are also dispatched to the SMS core for delivery to mobile phones.

5. In the subscriber's home, the personalized TV picture caller ID and PC picture caller ID banners appear on the subscribers' TV sets and PC. The subscribers' mobile phones also get a text message notifying them of the inbound call at their home.

The entire process happens in real time, with the notifications often appearing before the phone even rings.

Blending in

Based on its extensive network connectivity, a converged service platform intercepts incoming phone calls, voicemails, text messages and other real-time communications and content, analyzes the signaling and media information, creates the proper personalized display and delivers it simultaneously to subscribers' TV sets, PCs and other devices. In essence, it plays a new service blending and mediation role between the various communications and content networks in the core and subscribers' services and device preferences at the edge.

This approach enables cable operators to deliver advanced, cross-platform services that offer a differentiated user experience and drive ARPU growth from their existing network infrastructures and legacy in-home devices while supporting a seamless evolution to IMS and tru2way technologies in the future.

Kyle Copeland is director of advanced technology for Integra5. Reach him at kyle.copeland@integra5.com.