IPTV and the User Experience: Focusing on the Last 10 Feet

Date: June 26, 2006
Author & Copyright: Chris Ruff & John Cary, UIEvolution, Inc.
Trackback: UIEvolution, Inc.

How can service providers deploying IPTV create the best possible user experience while maintaining the carrier-grade reliability that customers expect? Just as importantly, how do they increase subscriber stickiness and drive ARPU in a cost-effective manner?

While there are several complex technical and commercial requirements for IPTV, they boil down to three key components: user experience, diversified services and technology. No single component is enough to sustain a competitive IPTV service, yet when building IPTV capability into the network most service providers focus primarily on the technology and neglect the user interface.

User Experience
The optimal user experience results from the combination of compelling content and an intuitive user interface that is highly adaptive, yet manageable. Operators building IPTV capability into their networks are providing a higher level of customization and personalization.

However, the traditional channel guide interface prevents customers from using available features or discovering new content. Making customers navigate an endless array of menus limits the opportunity to drive revenue-generating behavior. Nevertheless, IPTV market pressures eventually will force service providers to change static content, such as the program guide, into customizable and searchable storefronts. In addition, convergence will require context-aware applications that easily integrate mobile phones and other networked devices, as well as extend a consistent user interface.

Diversified Services
IPTV service providers must go beyond video on demand and broadcast to deliver dynamic diversified services, such as instant messaging and streaming audio. Eventually, IPTV will be just another offering within a customizable service bundle. Without the physical-world limitations of brick-and-mortar retailers, service providers can use mass customization as a highly effective means to monetize content and services.

IPTV service providers can take advantage of the potentially endless supply of digital content without incurring additional inventory and distribution costs. The "long tail" theory refers to the cultural and economic shift from a few mainstream products to several low-volume or low-demand niche products. As a business model, this means that the aggregate revenue from several less popular titles potentially can exceed revenue generated from the biggest hits. This is a clear departure from the traditional broadcast model of one-to-many, which is more dependent on the number of channels to deliver content than the content itself.

With IPTV's one-to-one model, revenue is driven by users — 5 million subscribers will have 5 million different kinds of content on their TVs, content that is personalized for each family member. The key is to develop a feature-rich and intuitive user interface that's easily updateable and cost effective to manage.

Technology
The cost of deployment is a major issue in the IPTV space. Without a standard model for end-to-end integration, service providers are searching for the right mix of technology that reliably will deliver high-bandwidth services to the broadest range of subscribers. Implementing a cross-platform technology solution can reduce the time and cost of application development. With adaptive and highly portable development solutions, content and applications run on multiple platforms without rebuilding.

As the IPTV industry matures, the ability to roll out new features and service bundles quickly will allow network operators to keep pace with the technical and commercial demands of a rapidly evolving industry, as well as monetize customer behavior.

For example, video consumes an enormous amount of bandwidth and eventually will far exceed the volume of network traffic generated by voice and data. Although cost-effective hardware solutions are optimized for the primary purpose of video streaming, they still need to enable dynamic diversified services. Lightweight and network-efficient applications are essential for enabling diversified services that will vary from set-top box to set-top box, and even from user to user on the same set-top box. Seamless integration of digital consumer electronics and services adds another dimension of technical complexity that will require reliable and scalable cross-platform solutions.

In the end, what really matters to the consumer is the last 10 feet between the TV and the couch. The best technology coupled with an infinite supply of content is worthless unless consumers easily can access and manage their content.