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From The Expert Corner
November 05, 2008 Triple Play Test and Monitoring Challenges
 By Olga Yashkova,
Program Leader for the Frost & Sullivan Test & Measurement Practice Consolidation and the economic slowdown are expected to reduce the demand for the integrated triple play test and monitoring equipment. Integrated triple play test equipment continues to offer tremendous potential to test equipment vendors. The growing trends among telcos and cable MSOs moving toward bundling voice, video and data services, and delivering VoIP, IPTV ( News - Alert) and Internet Data over a single converged IP platform has led to the increased demand for integrated testing solutions. The integrated triple play test and monitoring equipment market expects to contribute $180.1 million in 2008 and exceed the $1 billion mark by 2014 according to Frost & Sullivan ( News - Alert). Even though this market offers much potential to communications test equipment vendors, it also carries certain factors that restrain the growth of the integrated triple play test and monitoring equipment market. The lack of test equipment interoperability, operator consolidation, the economic slowdown and future regulations are all amongst the challenges that test equipment vendors currently face. Lack of interoperability of test equipment from multiple suppliers is the primary challenge faced by the triple play test equipment manufacturers. Service Providers (SPs) want to choose the best-in-class equipment for each particular need. However, buying test equipment from multiple vendors often creates issues in the networks because of the lack of interoperability between these products. There are various initiatives being undertaken by groups of test equipment manufacturers to at least unify test automation environments. The deployment of triple play services will likely be delayed because of operator consolidation. The acquisitions and mergers of service providers and carriers divert them from solving the problems associated with deploying triple play services. Slow deployment of integrated triple play services expects to restrain the growth in the integrated triple play test equipment market. With the fierce competition between telcos and cable MSOs, both incumbents use all means at their disposal, including industry regulation, to hinder one another. Regulatory capture, the effort of lobbying regulatory committees to effect policy changes in favor of a special interest, has been a tool of regulated telecommunications monopolies and cable operators, for an extended period of time. Each incumbent uses a good deal of resources to slip into the market of their opponents. Currently passing through the U.S. House of Representatives, HR 3914 will make it harder for companies to avoid Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC ( News - Alert)) anti-competitive practice rules. Telecom companies can petition to be exempted from competition-related rules and are granted the exemption by default, unless the FCC explicitly denies it. This effectively allows telcos to prevent competitors from targeting their market share. This is no isolated incident; regulatory bills like this have been examined and passed through legislation before. As competition intensifies between the telcos and cablecos, future regulation will likely to be used by cable MSOs and telcos to obstruct as well as facilitate entry into the market of the opposition. The slowdown of the U.S. and global economy — the current economic crisis that will spill over to 2009 — is expected to reduce the demand for triple play test equipment. Intense competition among service providers forces them to keep their prices low, meaning the SPs will likely tighten their budgets. Unfortunately, test and measurement equipment is considered secondary by SPs. The attitude of the SPs towards test equipment is rather reactive. They do not consider test equipment to be a so-called ‘day one’ problem. However, since the majority of triple play testing is taking place in the pre-deployment stage, the economical effect on the integrated triple play test equipment market expects to be moderate due to possible high customer churn rates associated particularly with IP video services. Lessons are being learned by SPs and cable MSOs about the benefits of pre-deployment testing. Olga Yashkova is Program Leader for Frost & Sullivan’s Test & Measurement practice. She focuses on next generation services monitoring and analyzing emerging trends, technologies and market behavior in the telecommunications test & measurement industry. To read more of Olga’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Greg Galitzine
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