US operators have a "clear idea of where they want to take interactive services"

Interview with Arman Aygen, Business Development Manager, Witbe

Following a busy couple of days at the IPTV World Forum North America in Chicago for QoE specialists Witbe, we spoke to Arman Aygen, Business Development Manager for the French firm, to see which North American telcos might be joining the roll-call of European Tier-1 operators such as Orange and Telefónica that make up Witbe's client list.

No names were forthcoming, but having recently launched its new FullHD monitoring solution (with heavyweight customers besides the two above mentioned including Sonaecom and Hanaro Telecom) in response to customer demand for a high-definition monitoring solution, they are clearly intent on signing more. Witbe Chairman Jean-Michel Planche previously founded business ISP Oleane before selling it on to France Telecom and starting up Witbe in 2000, and with the motto "Always do better" he is now leading the company to focus on operators' QoE requirements and the future challenges of IPTV, as we discuss with Arman.

ipTV News: Where do Witbe solutions differ from others in their approach to QoS?

Arman Aygen: Witbe provides solutions that monitor true Quality of Experience for triple-play services, both by measuring video and audio quality but also monitoring aspects of interactivity such as zapping with the remote control: we measure both the network channel change and on top of that the visual change time that would be experienced by a user, allowing us to gauge the true zapping times. Our solutions take the top-down approach of identifying the service affected and then route down to say which part of the service is wrong, then why, and so on.

What have you recently been hearing from operator clients?

We recently introduced the FullHD monitoring solution to meet the needs of some operator clients, as many now want high-definition monitoring - all IPTV operators in France are customers of ours, as well as almost all of the Tier-1s in Europe, and they have all shown considerable interest in HD. One thing that I particularly noticed at the IPTV World Forum North America last week in Chicago was that US operators have a clear idea of where they want to take interactive services, something which has been slow to start in Europe, and where the usability of interactive services has not been so good.

Where do you see Witbe heading now?

We are working right now on increasing our international business and targeting Tier-1 operators. Following the event in Chicago we have a better understanding of North America and I came away very clearly with the impression that the business model to increase ARPU by increasing interactivity needs tweaking. We recently signed Chunghwa Telecom [of Taiwan] within an unheard-of six months from delivering test equipment to signing, and I think this is proof that if you provide a telco with a solution that meets their needs they can move very quickly to make it a reality.