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Table of Contents:
 Truth in Billing and Taxes: Titles Tell the Tale
Report Identifies Major SMB Market Opportunities for Cable; OSS and Labor Costs a Major Factor
OCAP Brings Many New OSS/BSS Requirements to Cable
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OCAP Brings Many New OSS/BSS Requirements to Cable
By Ed Finegold
The OpenCable Applications Platform (OCAP) specification under development by the CableLabs consortium will allow the creation of applications that are compatible with any compliant cable system. This set-top middleware standard will bring into the TV stream new applications, like customized tickers and games or messaging relating to specific TV shows. It will also become a standard environment for these applications across all MSOs to build a common, open development community.
OCAP middleware would basically allow a set-top device or card in a TV to handle real-time, multi-service orchestration, as with IMS—meaning that cable operator could use IP to communicate with set-top devices in order to download new software to them. This would help slow down the rate of device turnover and keep devices up to speed with new capabilities, by giving them new firmware or software automatically via IP.
Virtually all cable operators conform to CableLabs specifications, so OCAP is on the entire industry’s radar. Trials are just beginning, and thus far MSOs have focused mostly on integrating OCAP capabilities with existing IPGs and building out the right network capabilities. Lorraine Reynolds, director of product management for cable and broadband at Convergys, discussed some of the fundamentals with Billing World and OSS Today and provided some insight into the many OSS/BSS opportunities that OCAP ultimately will present.
Billing World: What can consumers expect from the first wave of services being launched for OCAP?
Reynolds: I think it’s primarily in the digital content area. As you start to look at what the manufacturers are getting out in the market today around OCAP, it is existing applications such as electronic programming guides and digital content like video on demand. Cable operators mostly deal with the traditional programming providers, but there’s an additional amount of content they can marry up with VOD, like gaming. It’s difficult for them to get a good hold on what new content consumers will like, but the fact is, operators have to buy that content before they can find out.
However, it is the applications environment beyond the known where the creativity is needed now. It could be an unbounded action from the remote control, customer care functions or an interaction to accompany a live television show. The market is ripe.
Billing World: There has been a ton of focus on giving developers OCAP toolkits. Will this create an open environment, or do MSOs want to avoid a content explosion?
Reynolds: I think it’s a case where developers want more openness, but MSOs are hesitant. You’ve got to look at how you deliver services to your customer. It’s who owns that customer, and how you are going to manage serving up those services on the device, that are keys to success.
The cable operators have a unique step up on how to manage those devices that the mobile operators and telcos don’t have. Cable operators want to find ways they can bundle things together to create a real differentiation. You’ll see more of a concept of the user, and not just the account—maybe wallets off that account. So I think it will evolve, depending on the content or service itself and how they want to distribute it to the customer.
Billing World: What’s the impact of the real-time charging aspects of OCAP on MSO billing?
Reynolds: It definitely, absolutely has an impact. The operators have always been involved in the interactive TV world, but with OCAP it’s evolving so that there’s any application, more content, more transactions and obviously real-time functions. We’re moving away from proprietary, conditional access systems to content and transactions that hit the billing system in real time.
It means shifting away from needing to know everything about the customer before you grant them service—but you have to have some security, and be close to the network to mediate those transactions in real time. You need to know more about the network elements out there, and shield the charging pieces from the complexity of different network protocols.
Now it becomes essential to understand the different transactions coming in, and to handle real-time authentication and authorization control. Plus, you need to deal with how you want to charge for those services—pre-paid or post-paid—so you have to support hybrid charging. Besides that, you might also have wallets that can only consume a certain amount of content before being topped up again.
In contrast, the MSOs have been used to a subscription model. Now they need to implement this online charging capability and integrate it into their existing infrastructure.
Billing World: How are the MSOs addressing fraud and user security, especially given that OCAP services will be exposed to mobile access?
Reynolds: There are five or six big impact areas, and one of them is online charging, but part of that is identifying the user and understanding if they are allowed to have the service. You need to better understand this concept of the service user—identification—and the service user profile—rights.
This model needs to evolve in the data schema so that the account or wallet can be managed accordingly and the surrounding applications leverage this capability as well. Thus, operators are moving towards more SOA-enabled enterprises to help them manage and shield the existing infrastructure.
None of this is news to the cable operator; they have been dealing with and managing fraud for a while. It’s just that the scale of it gets larger, given the devices people can buy off the shelf, and they may not know all the users.
Look at the cable cards concept: manufacturers produce devices with slots for cable cards that let people take the card out of their device and go use it at a friend’s home. But operators don’t want to allow misuse, so they might only allow a different, limited level of content to be exposed if the card isn’t in its host device, or isn’t authenticated by its host user.
Billing World: Are there plans to use the data that OCAP set tops can collect for BI and customer analytics?
Reynolds: There is huge value there, and the cable operators have been looking at this for quite a while. There are applications that can grab the TV interactions and merge that information with other customer data, where you can start to see customer viewing trends and habits, and get an idea of whether a person wants to buy more of the same or some other content; or where I should be adding value as part of a bundle and using that analytics process for recommendations being driven out. This is not just about simple up-sell or cross-sell, but rather putting people on a better plan and notifying them that there are other things that they might want. It’s more about proactive customer care and working with customer interest.
Billing World: What are MSOs doing to manage information delivery to sales, care and support channels, given the explosion in the number of potential products?
Reynolds: One of the things I’m seeing as we move into more interactive and digital content is that operators are demanding more and more centralized product management capabilities in order to present a holistic view across their operations. Cable operators already have thousands of rate codes for services, and if you add content into the mix, trying to manage that in all of the different applications becomes much more of a nightmare. It increases the time to roll out new products out considerably and creates inconsistencies that impact the customer.
Having centralized product catalog management is a key application operators are looking for, especially when introducing more real-time content and online charging. Tying those together really simplifies how you roll out services and allows you to do it more quickly, and deliver it to any device the customer is either watching or using.
Comments and feedback welcome, please email Jill Morgan at jmorgan@billingworld.com.
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