CDN technology firm Broadpeak has announced partnerships this week with CMS/CRM company Alpha Networks and video player provider Squadeo, to create a turnkey solution for content distribution. This includes subscriber management, and playback on an array of devices – with the end goal of improving QoE for OTT video services.
The trio have used their combined experience in the OTT field over the years to produce a product to assist pay TV operators in enhancing the overall QoE for end users watching OTT video – saying the solution “increases innovation and synergy” and also claims zero-buffering.
Broadpeak’s video analytics system enables customers to monitor various metrics in the network and servers, as well as levels in the Squadeo video player, to pinpoint issues in video delivery and adjust these accordingly to tackle issues before they are exacerbated – improving the user experience.
The Belgian business Alpha Networks, not to be confused with the giant Taiwanese DMS company of the same name, first caught our eye in 2013 when it put together the OTT video service Snow OTT for KPN in Belgium. Snow OTT was built to run over Belgacom VDSL2 lines, and used the Harmonic ProMedia Live encoders, ProMedia Origin services and Carbon coder to offer transcoding – integrated with the Verimatrix VCAS DRM.
Alpha Networks decided to change its strategy in 2015 and became a product-based company, and a more recent development is the launch of its Tucano CMS/CRM backend software product in January this year, which it says allows an out-of-the-box integration with video infrastructure and metadata providers. It also handles billing services.
Alpha Networks, founded in 2008 with just 5 engineers, also recently joined the Frog by Wyplay community to provide end to end solutions for broadcasters looking to add live or VoD OTT services to their offerings. The company is now 60 employees strong and says it manages more than 1 million subscribers for customers featuring Orange, beIN Sports, and Liquid Telecom in central, eastern and southern Africa.
“User experience is of the utmost importance when it comes to pay TV services. Together with our partners, we are offering a differentiated experience, with YouTube-like scrubbing and instant Facebook-like video startup that responds to end-users’ expectations,” said Nicolas Delahaye, CTO at Squadeo.
Broadpeak recently won a contract with Mauritius-based operator Emtel and also has installations at Romania’s RomTelekom, Maxxcom in Mexico, TCC in Uruguay, Discover Digital in South Africa, Bouygues in France, StarHub in Singapore, D-Smart Turkey, Síminn in Iceland, Telecom Argentina, and Mobily in Saudi Arabia. It also has newly added deals with fiber operator Zeop, based on the French-owned Reunion Island, and South African digital entertainment company Discover Digital.
“By bringing to market a fully integrated solution that addresses the video expectations created by big players such as Google and Netflix, Alpha Networks, Broadpeak, and Squadeo allow operators to compete on similar footing,” said Guillaume Devezeaux, CTO at Alpha Networks.
“In the multiscreen environment, pay TV operators require efficient, flexible, and future-proof video delivery platforms that can be deployed swiftly while setting them apart from the competition in terms of user experience,” said Jacques Le Mancq, CEO at Broadpeak. “Joining forces with Alpha Networks and Squadeo, we are demonstrating how best of breed can also work with end-to-end to deliver both fast time to market and an advanced feature set.”
In the run up to the NAB show next week, Squadeo has announced its video player now supports Dash and Smooth Streaming, adding to its existing support of HLS, and the French company recently won a deal at Viasat in Ukraine for its Kyivstar Home TV service for mobile devices. It has partnerships with the likes of Envivio, Harmonic, Zappware, Accenture, 3SS, Accedo, and Nordija.