Portugal Telecom has contracted French firm Witbe to set up a monitoring solution and carry out quality tests on its IPTV and VOD services delivered over the Microsoft Mediaroom platform, as well as on its satellite TV services.

The supervision device consists of IPTV-VOD and SD and HD satellite robots, which are deployed in large towns (Lisbon, Porto, Leiria, Coimbra, Faro, Madeira and the Azores) and connected after the set-top box, continuously reproducing user behaviour such as changing channel and buying/viewing VOD titles.  

In the Portugal Telecom labs its engineering teams use Witbe robots to test and check new SD and HD set-top boxes on a range of criteria, including channel changing time, flux decoding, image quality, reboot time and robustness over time.  The telco has also installed a central multifunction portal called Witbe Corporate in its supervision centre, delivering reports adapted to the needs of different teams, such as real-time supervision, benchmark and validation, and quality measured.

Portugal Telecom surpassed 300,000 subscribers for its pay-TV service 'Meo' last month, compared to 211,000 subscribers at the end of last September. The service is delivered via IPTV, satellite and mobile, with the same interface and largely the same content, independent of platform, offering over 110 broadcast channels and over 1,500 VOD titles.