Digital television
Modern competitive environment sets development challenges for telecoms operators. Main trends of such development are increase of profitability, retention and broadening of subscribers base, increase of the range of provided services. One of the most promising services, which can become the "engine" of operator’s development is digital television (IPTV), due to decrease in subscribers "turnover", increase of subscribers loyalty and raising of average revenue (ARPU).
Operators, who provide IPTV services, shall approach creation of tariff policy differentially and flexibly and take into account possible individual preferences of subscribers. In order to ensure realization of such approach, which guarantees ARPU increase, due to personalization of additional services, it is required to achieve convergence of network equipment, subscribers’ appliances and billing solution.
The billing solution for IPTV can be a component of a unified complex solution, which includes provision, accounting and tariffication of telephony services, data transfer, etc. Success of IPTV service depends on the ability of an operator to provide interesting content at competitive price and ensure reliability and accuracy of tariffication.
The Inline Telecom Solutions company offers a billing solution based on B&CC Billmaster for accounting and tariffication of IPTV services. Open architecture and modularity allow to implement solutions specifically for IPTV service alone, and as part of a multi-service billing solution.
The billing solution from Inline Telecom Solutions lets an operator to achieve required results in development, concentrating attention on optimization of financial investments, scalability, minimum launching time of new services and increase of ARPU.
Realization of the solution
The offered solution allows to organize accounting and tariffication of IPTV services, by arrangement of paid TV broadcasts in the Multicast mode or integration with software and hardware complex IPTV Middleware, which provides management of all IPTV solution components: processes queries from subscribers appliances; ensures authorization of subscribers; interacts with content systems and subscribers appliances (STB). At present the solution can be integrated with the well-known and acknowledged IPTV Middleware from SmartLab, Netris, Minerva Networks, Espial, Orca.
Main components of this solution:
- Multicast IPTV access support module;
- The module of integration with software of the IPTV Middleware class.
Multicast IpTV access support module is designed for arrangement of paid TV broadcasts in the Multicast mode. Multicast IpTV access support module ensures automatic blocking/unblocking of customer access to paid TV broadcasts. For this purpose network commutators, to which customers are connected directly, have IGMP-message filters installed. IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) is designed for subscription of customers for Multicast services.
When funds on personal accounts of customers are insufficient, Billmaster sets up a commutator is such a way, that IGMP-are blocked and are not passed to the router. Such blocking prevents customers from subscription to TV broadcasts. Unblocking means that filtration will be cancelled and it will be possible to subscribe for broadcasts.
Authorization is performed simultaneously with connection of customers to the network via the RADIUS protocol, according to the following parameters:
- customer’s MAC-address;
- number of customer port on the commutator;
- MAC-address of the commutator.
Tariffication is presented by the following possibilities:
- one-time payments for connection to services;
- charging of subscription fee;
- one-time charges.
Module of integration with software of IPTV Middleware class is designed for management of IPTV-services configuration and for their tariffication based on schemes of one-time payments for connection to services, subscription fee, one-time payments for content watching.
The module provides such possibilities as:
- registration of access to IPTV-services;
- management of user groups, IPTV-channel parameters and channel packages, technical characteristics of extended IPTV-services (VOD, NPVR);
- arrangement of billing for service usage, which include one-time, periodical and non-recurrent charges.
The module includes:
- support of API for creation of IPTV service objects on the side of Middleware:
- public objects (contracts, groups, subscription, services, bands of IPTV-channels);
- prepaid API for interaction on VOD/PPV services;
- collector of records about used services (CDR);
- tarifficator of offline (CDR) services.
Advantages of the solution
Inline Telecom Solutions offers a modern billing solution, which ensures flexibility in tariffication of provided services, high performance and reliability.
This solution has the following advantages:
- integration with existing billing systems or "side by side" operation with them;
- în-line/îff-line tariffication and management of access to a service;
- readiness for IPTV-services (PPV, VoD, TV Channel);
- wide possibilities for report making;
- availability of extended API for flexibility of interaction with third-party systems;
- possibility of integration with equipment of different manufacturers and various software;
- quick launching of new interesting and competitive offers to subscribers.
