Research and Markets has added the "IPTV Launch Guide" report to their offering. IPTV Launch Guide is a flexible offering allowing you to leverage our experience and best-practices and implement them in your timeframe with your own resources. The Launch Guide is designed to save you time and money. Based on best-practices developed through hands-on trials and market implementations, our guide will eliminate costly trial and error implementations, provide consistency across your service provisioning workspace, and ensure the opportunity for continuous process improvement.

The IPTV opportunity and challenge

A Service Provider’s entry into consumer television services via IPTV represents an enormous market opportunity. The potential exists to double the average revenue per unit, quickly stop customer loss to competitors, and launch a growth trajectory in their revenue stream. Some Service Providers consider an IPTV play more of a defensive maneuver, required to maintain market share and mindshare with consumers who are becoming more and more sophisticated in their communications needs.

Both positions have resulted in a need quickly to mobilize an IPTV solution offering. Industry experts predict rapid expansion in the number of IPTV rollouts worldwide over the next decade. However, the early Service Providers that have launched IPTV have encountered serious operational challenges and the impact is a significant (if not fatal) delay in achieving their launch acquisition targets. The operational challenges emerge as the gating impact to customer acquisition and support. This occurs because the Service Providers’ operational processes collapse from the unexpected volumes of work; hence, operational capacity now emerges as the critical success factor.

From a financial perspective, the capital cost of IPTV has shown sharp improvements. Over the past years technology costs have declined significantly due to increased standardization and expanded manufacturing volumes. These equipment cost improvements can be expected to continue for some time. However, the operational costs have remained persistently high for the development and deployment of effective IPTV processes. This occurs because the cost drivers are not well understood and in most cases remain hidden. These poorly understood issues can be costly in terms of efficiency and represent risk to the Service Provider’s brand, as well as the IPTV service itself.

IPTV consulting work and direct participation in multiple market launches has allowed MPI to reach the following observations:

• Launching IPTV is unlike launching any other service offering in the past – the complexity of the service offering, the customer’s established TV viewing expectations and the challenges of maintaining momentum beyond launch are much more difficult than for previous service introductions.
• There is a tendency to assume the primary challenges are technical, yet the process-based, operational challenges are where most failure modes take root and significant cost is incurred.
• The organizational change that must accompany a successful IPTV launch and ongoing IPTV operations is severely underestimated.
• The complexity of the last-mile network infrastructure and CPE configurations reinforces the need for new testing and monitoring capabilities to support the need for reduced truck rolls and improved IPTV customer experience.

MPI is very familiar with the issues associated with planning, launching and operating IPTV services. Service Provider network operators can manage many of these issues proactively through rigorous planning and execution of comprehensive IPTV processes. MPI has identified the following three keys to achieving a successful launch:

1. Using a total team approach across the entire IPTV ecosystem, from the initial planning stages through to the ongoing operations of IPTV after the launch.

2. Adopting a program management method to achieving a successful launch, and then managing operations proactively throughout the life of the service.

3. Conducting rigorous process design, comprehensively testing all processes, conducting ongoing process measurement, and utilizing a feedback loop for continuous process improvement.

This guide describes MPI’s best practices to enable a successful IPTV service launch and expedite getting to an acceptable Return On Investment. Applying the principles of good process design and leveraging implementation experiences, as outlined in this document, will directly benefit the Service Provider’s bottom line and improve their customer’s experience."

Key Topics Covered:

• The IPTV opportunity and challenge
• The IPTV launch in context
• Guidance for the Executive Sponsor
• Guidance for the IPTV Program Director
• Guidance for the Service Activation and Verification Project Team
• Detailed process description
• Ready-set-go: Determining IPTV service readiness