Most operators offer services to bulk and commercial customers today. Customers in this category can range from universities, bars/restaurants, lobbies, hotels, residential communities, new developments to gyms, mining camps, military, and prisons. This type of business can be very important as it usually involves multiple endpoints per sale and contract terms are often 3-5 years. Services offered can cover broadband, voice, video, networking, and managed / hosted services. This blog describes approaches operators can use for deployment of TV services to this bulk/commercial market.
Operators may have several motivations to offer TV services to commercial customers including demand for TV driving a revenue opportunity or customers requiring that TV is bundled before they purchase a broadband service. The operator may already have contracts in place for TV services that may be impacted by planned technology upgrades. Operators transitioning to fiber-based delivery may wish to turn off support for COAX delivery of TV services meaning the building is no longer served by coax and cannot receive QAM signals any more. Operators deploying IP based TV services for their residential consumers may wish to transition their commercial customers so they can retire their expensive legacy TV head ends.
The requirements for these bulk/ commercial customers can vary but all can be served using an IP based TV solution. Some of the key requirements we have seen include:
- Segmentation – usually a smaller channel bundle and often more basic services than those in a residential consumer offer.
- Branding – larger commercial customers may wish to brand the service for their consumers.
- Customer applications – If they are using delivery to applications then they may need their own application in the app store.
- SSO – Ability to integrate to single sign on (SSO) system so that customers of the commercial entity can use the same credentials for TV that they use for other services.
- Promotions – the ability to use the TV to communicate to consumers.
- Local channels – Ability to handle local channels. This could be a hotel offering details on their services, a condo unit lobby camera or a university media channel.
- Upsell – some commercial deployments like new developments provide a basic service as part of the condo/community fees. These deployments may also wish to support individual residents being able to purchase additional advanced services.
- Convenience – depending on the commercial deployment then support for TV / STB deployments or bring your own device models may be required.
- Legacy wiring/devices – some commercial deployments are not sited to IP endpoints because WiFi is not enabled at that location, or the customer does not wish to upgrade the older TVs.
EspialTV is a cloud based, multi-tenant TV-as-a-service offer which enables operators to deliver TV services to both residential consumers and commercial customers. EspialTV has already completed multiple commercial deployments, and more are currently in the works. We support a range of TV services including Live, catch-up, startover, nDVR, SVOD and TVOD.
Most operators have commercial customers they need to serve in their deployments, and these can represent about 20% of total endpoints served – depending on the region. Having an offer for these customers using IPTV ensures that operator business objectives can be met, whether these are focused on technology uplift (e.g., Deploying fiber for access or retiring legacy head-ends) or business (e.g., supporting bundled services for commercial customers). Commercial customers have some unique requirements for TV services, but operators can have the confidence that EspialTV can support deployment to this customer community with the features you need with the confidence of proven deployment. Visit our website to learn more and book your demo today!
