Against this backdrop, two areas of technology that featured prominently at the 2007 event were:

• service assurance (for services such as IPTV)
• advertising technology solutions.

Vendors were split over approaches to service assurance

Service assurance (including QoS and traffic shaping) is an important issue for operators that are investing in service delivery solutions, especially for IP services such as IPTV. These operators need to be able to deliver a QoS that matches the innovativeness of the service proposition. The question for operators is: what is the best approach to maintaining QoS and shaping traffic?

Two different approaches to handling traffic were on display. In one camp were vendors (such as Packet Logic) that use deep-packet inspection, a technology that identifies which packets are used for a particular application and throttles packets an operator wants to deprioritise in order to handle network overcapacity problems. The ease with which usage data can be pulled (at least in demonstrations) is impressive. The challenge for vendors will be to demonstrate to operators that this data can be aggregated and monetised in production environments.

In the other camp were vendors (such as Operax) that are, in effect, guaranteeing a clear lane of traffic for QoS. However, throttling solutions and prioritisation solutions are solving slightly different problems – the former being a preventive measure, the latter an optimising one. There is some commonality between the two, in that they both deal with identifying and setting the priority of specific data streams, and in this respect they can work together to help better categorise and deal with traffic.

Operax is a further example of the increasing presence of telecoms IT suppliers whose heritage lies outside the traditional service-provider market; the company has drawn on its experience in the public sector to develop QoS solutions for the commercial telecoms market. While established vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent and IBM will continue to hold a significant share of the service assurance market – especially when service assurance solutions are deployed as part of larger (IP or IP-MPLS) network projects – they will need to track the progress of non-traditional emerging players in this sector and consider further mergers and acquisitions if these players gain traction in the market.

Advertising technology is maturing but operators will need to consider the broader implications of deployment

For operators and equipment providers, mobile and IPTV advertising have the potential to provide an additional source of revenue. Such advertising technologies could allow advertisers to carry out much more highly targeted advertising campaigns than have traditionally been possible, due to the detailed level of market segmentation that would be available. Making the advertising valuable to the consumer is key.

Most major equipment vendors, such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Juniper Networks and Nokia Siemens Networks, have made recent announcements regarding some form of acquisition or service launch related to advertising technology. It was therefore no surprise to find an array of advertising technology demonstrations, comprising lab research and production systems.

Alcatel-Lucent’s recent acquisition, Tamblin, a templates-based interactivity and advertising software company, was on display at the Broadband World Forum. Lab works included context-based advertising: point a mobile handset camera at a print ad, and it will load an application that immerses the user in the advertisement (for example, a three-dimensional ad for a car that allows the user to look around the car on the screen by moving the handset around).

Packet Vision (founded in 2004) demonstrated the PV1000, an ad server that will cut its way into MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 IPTV streams and deliver highly targeted advertising – the ads can be targeted to a single set-top box or PC. Although the solution is claimed to target individuals, it actually targets a device (a set-top box or PC). Truly personalised IPTV advertising must await pattern recognition based on user profiles, learning algorithms or perhaps even the thumbprint remote controls that Ruwido was showcasing.

While there were interesting examples of advertising solutions on display, vendors will need to:

ensure that there is an adequate transition path for their technologies from the lab to the living room

ensure that they understand the commercial market, not just the telecoms technology for delivering IPTV- and mobile-advertising solutions – consumers’ engagement with advertising can be driven by offering them rewards for their time and effort

understand the operational implications of these point solutions on operators’ IT infrastructure, not least on the billing and partner-management systems that will need to manage revenue shares and third-party payments.

Contacts:

The authors can be contacted directly at gordon.davies@analysys.com  or martin.scott@analysys.com .

For more information, contact us at: UK sales: +44 (0)1223 460600 ; US sales: +1 202 331 3082 ; Email: research@analysys.com