The core network of a Service Provider is carefully built, managed and monitored. This is done to ensure a high level of service to customers. Home networks, on the other hand, are built ad-hoc by users who are (sometimes) way over their heads. The complexity of home networks is further exacerbated by the wide range of home networking technologies available these days, a different combination of which appears to be in use in every single home.

Until fairly recently there was a clear demarcation point between the neat and tidy service provider network, and the Wild West that is the home network: TV service was delivered to the Set-Top Box (STB), and from there to the TV set; Internet services were provided by the service provider’s DSL or cable modem to a single PC. Nowadays, however, almost every consumer electronics device in the home connects to the Internet, and a wide range of video services can be accessed from TVs, tablets, PCs and even smartphones.

When a customer experiences an issue with any of the Service Provider’s services, it becomes a challenge to pinpoint the cause of the problem. And it will no longer do to tell the customer that the problem is not on the Service Provider’s side: users have no one else to turn to, and full support for end-to-end quality of experience is becoming a key factor in reducing churn and improving uptake of value-added services.

While the network in the Digital Home remains essentially an unmanaged network, there are several strategies available to Service Providers that want and need to extend support services into the home:

(1)    Help customers help themselves: self-care 

No matter how professional the helpdesk agents or how short the hold time, most customers would prefer to avoid making support calls.

Interception for self-care: When the Internet connection is not working, web browsers don’t give users a clue about what’s wrong. The broadband gateway can be used for ‘web interceptions’, similar to the ‘captive portal’ that offers pay-per-use packages when trying to access any website through an airport WiFi service. An interception page can appear, informing users that the WAN cable is not connected, that there is poor signal quality and more.

Using the gateway for diagnostics: A gateway that is aware of value added services, such as video or voice, can perform additional diagnostics to check the reachability of back-end servers, the available bandwidth and possible interference from other network traffic, etc. In many cases the interception page (or a recorded message, in case of voice services) can suggest some corrective action, or provide valuable information that can be used during the support call.

Self care portal or app: Another invaluable tool in reducing support calls is a self-care portal on the Service Provider’s website. Users are often more comfortable accessing such a service than using a built-in management interface in the gateway. The added benefit is accessibility outside the home.

A self-care application (or app) can come in many shapes: a native app for various smartphone or tablet platforms, a PC application or a cross-platform HTML5 app with offline capabilities. Like a web-based portal, the app can aggregate information from various sources, for instance using Web Service APIs to the Service Provider’s back-end servers, and it too can be used when away from home.

(2)    Using the gateway to improve visibility

The gateway is a key element in troubleshooting because of its unique position in the home network: it has visibility into both the Service Provider and user networks and is involved in many services that cross from network into the other, e.g. as a DNS proxy or a VoIP Application Layer Gateway (ALG).

As the home network gets more complex, a significant part of any support call is spent on establishing a common understanding of the customer’s specific setup. Fortunately the gateway can help by collecting information about the home network topology, and the CPE management platform can make this information available in a convenient way to the CSR or repair technician.

Mapping is particularly useful when it is overlaid with notifications that indicate potential problems or configuration settings such as: IP address collisions, network congestion, WiFi signal strength, parental controls etc.

In addition to its role as a probe into the home network, the gateway can play a more active role in home network management, using a variety of home network management protocols. Recent additions to TR-069 –  Broadband Forum’s CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP), enable proxy management of compatible home networking devices by the Service Provider.

(3)    Homologate, aggregate and integrate

The wide range of devices available in the Digital Home means that ‘vertical management’ of individual devices is no longer sufficient: the entire service experience must be managed, across multiple devices.

Consider a scenario in which a user starts watching a movie through the Service Provider’s VoD service on the TV connected to an IP Set-Top Box, and then decides to continue watching in bed using the second screen app on a tablet. If the user experiences any problems at this point, the CSR taking the call has to be able to quickly get a full picture. A CSR that has to juggle between different applications that each deal with individual elements, and manually correlate events, will not be able to provide effective support. The same applies to the installation & repair technician tools and the self-care tools for the user.

Modern Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) greatly simplify the building of web applications that invoke a variety of services from diverse platforms in the Service Provider’s back office, using open APIs, and creating an information “mash-up”.

The holistic view of the Digital Home enables new levels of end-user support that improve customer satisfaction, reduces churn and can even be a value-added service in its own right.

Q:  What is the interoperability challenge within the connected home?

A: New elements have entered the home – tablets and connected TVs, IP content and mobile applications. These devices and services bring massive change. The interoperability challenge also exists when these devices are taken out of the home: users expect a consistent experience regardless of where they are.

The result is a change in the focus of interoperability. In the past interoperability in the home was mostly related to IP connectivity and networking. Today the main challenge is content delivery, user experience and interaction between multiple devices.

Q: Whose challenge is it?

A: My view is that service providers need to address this challenge. Service providers don’t want to become “dumb pipes”; they can take a leading role in making interoperability a reality and not a nightmare.

To do this, service providers must control the gateway software. Gateway software is the only element that connects the myriad devices in the home and that can handle the mediation into the home and within the home.

Q: Which devices will dominate the connected home in future years? Will they need to be based on open standards?

A: Industry analysts predict that within 3 years more than 70% of TVs will be connected.

The approach taken today by some of the TV manufactures is to create a walled garden of content, services and applications. I don’t think this is a sustainable approach. There is definitely a need for open standards if we want to have devices from multiple vendors work properly.

Q: Considering digital TV receivers, set-top boxes, PVRs, HDTV, next generation DVD, game consoles and digital media players - what initiatives enable interoperability and collaboration between devices?

A: DLNA is the major interoperability initiative. However, if you tried to play with all sorts of DLNA controllers (at least six are installed on my smartphone), you will probably understand that there is still a long way to go.  For instance, file format conversion and media transcoding is needed to make sure that the experience is consistent.

On the networking side there are some nice achievements that enable device interconnectivity within the home. The fact that these devices don’t sit next to an Ethernet outlet created a demand for technologies such as MOCA, WIFI and some new interest in G.hn, all geared to deliver multiple HD streams within the home.

TR-069 is promoted by the Broadband forum and had some nice achievements recently, as it enables set-top box management as well as non-IP devices.

Q: Why do you view gateway software as the master of the connected home?

A: I just mentioned multiple rapid changes within the home, from new devices, through IP content and OTT, to IPv6 going in. The industry as a whole agrees that standards are not yet aligned.

This is where the gateway comes in. Its role is to help cope with the changes in the connected home and be able to both adapt and mediate in cases where standards are not aligned.

The gateway has another important role: remote management and diagnostics using TR-069.

The Jungo roadmap reflects our views. We see the gateway as having a role in content delivery, as a mediation proxy for DLNA, DRM and file format conversion.

Q: How do you see the future? What needs to change?

A: When all interests are aligned, we will see more services and a better connected home. Since much of the play is around content, TV vendors needs to understand that they can’t just try to monetize their channel to the consumer, because it needs to be aligned with the needs of the end users, the content owners and the service providers. So the connected TVs of tomorrow need to be a lot more open, enable remote UI and HTML5 instead of the current built-in UI or closed app stores and to enable DLNA.

When this happens, and it will, we will see a new combination of devices such as gateways provided by the service provider, enabling the safe delivery of content, along with connected TVs, which may be the future setup within the home, with or without a set-top box.

At the SCTE – Digital Home Symposium, Bram Verberg, Jungo’s system architect will be speaking about the digital home frontier.

At the EuroSummit 2012, Eran Rom, Jungo’s CEO will partake in “The Content Revolution: Are You A Part of It?.

Why Satellite Operators are Different

When it comes to customer support calls, satellite service providers operate in different circumstances compared to other service providers. Satellite service delivery infrastructure and CPEs are different, and there is a service difference too:  video. In addition, contrary to wireline based service providers, satellite service providers did not make use of TR-069 to monitor the devices in subscriber homes.  In the past, these differences resulted in what we call “the invisible root cause”. The service and device differences made it more difficult to determine why end-users call and to support them. There was a root cause, only the CSR could not determine what it was.

Some of the reasons for the little insight into user CPEs are historical. In the past, Satellite providers used simple set top boxes, connected to the customers’ satellite dishes. These devices were not built and deployed to provide support information and, as mentioned before, did not make use of TR-069.

As services became more advanced, these relatively simple CPEs became more complex. To support VoD delivery (and other services), they connected to the home network. This is where the environment began changing. Connectivity enables additional services, but is also a great opportunity to provide better customer service, since data from the connected device can help resolve customer complaints.

Why visibility into device/service issues matters

From the support service center point-of-view, lack of visibility is when a customer calls a customer support representative, but the rep has little or zero visibility into the actual device/service. The inability to resolve issues hurts customer satisfaction and impacts the bottom line.  When best practices and re-boots fail, the rep will either send the customer to replace the set top box at a service center close by (or via mail) or send someone to check what the problem is (truck roll).

Exchanging one CPE for another is expensive. One (indirect) cost is to get the customer to travel to a service center/post office and send the old device and get another one instead. The other cost is refurbishing and checking the device, which can amount to tens of dollars.   The CPE replacement occurs despite the fact that satellite CPEs are very reliable hardware devices, and that the root cause may be a result of issues such as service infrastructure, signal quality or software configuration. Properly identified, these issues can be resolved easily – and the right remote management system can do just this.

Why do satellite subscribers call the customer service center?

Based on Jungo’s real life experience, the top five key complaints are:

1. Failed recordings
2. Signal issues
3. Audio / Video issues
4. Boot/Sys issues
5. Power issues

Together, our experience shows these top five reasons account for 60-70% of customer complaints.  In cases where newer services are offered, there are additional complaints, mostly VOD issues.

What’s more, we’ve seen cases where 75% of issues that brought on CPE replacement were eventually classified as “no fault found”.

Here are several examples of issues that can be resolved with the right tools, and that would otherwise result in a “no fault found”:

Signal strength and quality

Signal strength and quality are key performance indicators for the satellite provider. NDS CPE middleware is able to detect issues with signal strength and quality and to log the occurrence, so that anyone accessing the log (the customer rep in our case) can see meaningful data and not a log of accurate but irrelevant information. Jungo’s Panorama remote management system can then periodically collect the information from the CPE logger. In this case, when the customer calls, the information is already there for the customer rep to review, even in cases which the signal is OK at the time of the customer call.

The information presented over Panorama provides per tuner or per frequency views, so that Customer Service reps can determine whether the root cause is hardware related (tuner) or frequency/signal related.  The support rep can easily view if there is a trend in the events that is associated with specific frequency.  In addition, cross device problems per certain areas/devices can be detected in this manner. This mechanism highlights situations where the customer set top box is part of a group of devices that currently suffer from similar signal issues.

Failure to record:

With visibility into customer CPE, addressing issues such as failure to record – a common customer complaint – becomes simple. Panorama tracks all recorded events: successful, failed and partial recordings, with a record that explains the two latter ones.

By showing the support rep the DVR information and history, the support rep can see a disk write failure, a booking moved, a WAN connection loss, a no card detected, a power failure etc. As a result, the CSR can provide better service to the subscriber and resolve the issue.

HDMI Issues:

Alerts such as an incompatible tv model can be viewed by the customer support rep and addressed over the phone.

Conclusion

Deployed on millions of devices, Panorama provides useful information and tools to multiple groups within the service provider organization. For Customer Service Centers Panorama offers an Intuitive top-down view, comprehensive information on the user environment, root cause analysis and a customizable interface.

Some of the detailed information made available by panorama is

• STB detailed information
• Visibility into the home network, as well as the history of system alerts and an activity log
• Panorama displays rich information about main complaint scenarios: on screen display, boot history etc

The capabilities of Panorama allow the customer service rep to see issues that were invisible before and that are common in satellite service provider customer support calls. This reduces calls, truck rolls and CPE replacements.

Netia is a Polish broadband access and digital TV provider. In 2011 it began rolling out a new ADSL gateway device – Netia Spot.
When considering its gateway strategy, Netia decided to protect its gateway investment by separating its gateway hardware and software purchasing decisions and to choose Jungo’s OpenRG, deployed in 1 in 4 of the world’s residential gateways.

Netia S.A. Poland’s Fastest Growing Telecommunications Company

Originally an unbundled local loop provider, Netia is Poland’s largest alternative provider of fixed line communications, and holds approximately one-eighth of both the voice market and the broadband services market with almost a million broadband connections. In 2011 it had strategically invested in aggressive growth of its broadband services reach, and began offering triple-play and TV to its newly acquired broadband subscribers. Netia’s services include FON’s WiFi community, IPTV, Home Networking such as File and Print Servers, DLNA and more.

As part of its strategy to offer leading broadband services, Netia decided to launch a gateway to rollout ADSL connectivity and digital content to hundreds of thousands of subscribers in one of the largest and most dynamic digital markets in Eastern Europe.

With the flexibility offered by OpenRG, Netia is now quick to respond to changing market conditions and can easily introduce new services that are not available elsewhere, while keeping its service introduction and support costs low.

Creating the Competitive Edge

Netia decided to separate its gateway software from the physical device after realizing that not only would it be easier to manage one consistent software layer, but also that project completion and launch of the Netia Spot would be faster. Netia was right: it took 5 months to complete the project.

Why Netia Chose Jungo’s OpenRG

OpenRG was chosen for its ease of deployment creating a common software base that is decoupled from Netia’s hardware vendor selection process. Additionally, Netia chose Jungo for the ability to launch new services, and specifically for the professional services and project support provided by Jungo.

Using Gateway Software to Create a Strategic Service Delivery Asset:

Netia will use the flexibility offered through Jungo’s Software to launch a number of new subscriber-focused services, including a new customer support application – HomeFrame – to significantly reduce the volume and duration of customer support calls, while providing customers with the ability to manage their home IT. The HomeFrame application lets subscribers resolve problems simply and effectively, using a step-by-step approach.

File and Media Sharing: Netia chose to introduce file-sharing capabilities and a media server for storing all types of digital content such as movies, photos or music tracks. This service enables users to access their home media from anywhere. Users can play, search and share media on any device, both at home and on the go, accessing all media stores on any UPnP AV connected device at home. A wide range of media formats and metadata is supported.

Public WiFi: The Netia Spot gateways also power a public Wi-Fi network, offering subscribers free Internet access on the go. This service turns gateways into a network of Wi-Fi hotspots. The public Wi-Fi network is secure and fully isolated from the subscriber network and broadband performance in the home is not reduced. A public Wi-Fi service gives service providers the opportunity to enhance current subscribers’ experience, add new subscribers and earn additional revenues.

3G Fallback: The new gateway also supports 3G communication, providing a way for users to establish data fallback to the cellular network. Upon detection of a landline connection failure, the gateway provides seamless data fallback to the HSPA network. Fallback can occur automatically or manually, with or without notification. When the landline connection becomes available, the gateway automatically re-establishes the connection, and the HSPA connection returns to idle mode.

To read more about Netia and Jungo, go to the Netia Case Study.

Rather than developing a theory on why broadband customers call support and then offering operators a product-based remote management and CSR application to reduce support calls, Jungo decided to validate its product vision in a real life situation. We conducted a trial with a major European tier-one broadband operator to check why customers call, and then tested whether our solution reduces those calls and their duration.

The trial measured the following:

- Number of support calls per root cause, so the top reasons to call will be easily identifiable

- Support call length, and

- Truck rolls

Subscribers were provided a broadband service gateway with Jungo’s software, and Jungo’s self-help capabilities. Call center representatives used Jungo’s TR-069 remote management software and customer service application, Panorama, to treat calls and resolve customer issues.

Why do broadband home subscribers call customer support?

While broadband home subscribers call the customer support center for a variety of reasons, some reasons are more popular, presenting an opportunity: if the  most common reasons to call can be reduced, overall support costs can be cut and customer experience be improved.

The ten most common reasons to call support account for more than 70% of calls. This means that dealing with those ten most common reasons can radically affect the operations of the call center, making it more efficient and providing a better customer experience.

The ten most common reasons and their occurrence are as follows:

# 1: wireless password issues (18%)

# 2: account provisioning (9%)

# 3: configuration isses (7%)

# 4: hardware & wiring issues: (7%)

# 5: ISP network issues (7%)

# 6: wireless coverage issues (6%)

#7: initial set up and provisioning: (5%)

# 8: gateway freezes: (4%)

# 9: PC setings (4%)

# 10: No Sync (3%)

How can calls be reduced?

The key to Jungo’s approach is the end to end management of the digital home, at the device and service level, equipping customer support representatives and subscribers with a range of tools to quickly identify and resolve problems, based on a robust methodology and Jungo’s products. By removing the support barrier, digital home management solutions also ease the introduction of new value added services and increase customer and service retention.

The breadth and strengths of Jungo’s Digital Home Management and Support solution is based on our residential gateway software, remote management software, user enablement tools and application framework offering.

The solution lies in two key approaches Jungo takes to reduce support costs:

(1)    User enablement: Jungo’s gateway software discovers issues with the customer connection. It either removes the reason for the problem proactively (e.g. by rebooting the gateway) or alerts the customer to the problem, guiding him through a step by step problem resolution process.

(2)    Service provider enablement: using Jungo’s remote management software gives a holistic view of the service, or any device. Many issues that lie at the heart of customer calls, such as radio interference issues with wireless networks can be resolved in this way, using the capabilities of Panorama, Jungo’s remote management software.

Reducing calls to the customer service center

Some call categories, like wireless password (-66%), hardware and wiring (-65%), wireless coverage (-72%) and gateway freezes (-50%) were reduced by more than 50%. This changes call volume and length considerably. Some issues that are beyond the control of the operator, like ISP network issues and PC settings, remain unchanged.

This graph illustrates the reduction in call, by root cause:

Overall, the total number of calls was reduced by 35%, and the call cost (as calculated by a reduction in call duration) was reduced by 25%, with truck rolls cut by 20%. Overall, service provider support costs were almost cut in half (a 47% reduction).

About Jungo’s Panorama

Managing millions of devices, Panorama gives service providers  the tools they need to control gateways, set-top boxes, and other CPE types as well as broadband voice, data and video services. The result is better customer service and operational excellence, reducing costs and churn and extending the service providers’ visibility into the subscriber experience.

Rather than browsing through device data models with hundreds of parameters, Panorama’s CSR application presents customer support representatives with meaningful data. It aids CSRs in identifying and resolving problems, based on the real-life experience of both NDS and Jungo.  Panorama supports a flexible portlet-based GUI, and provides the choice of solving problems using a top-down approach that lets CSRs zoom-in on the issue or a structured predefined problem solving approach.

Together with OpenRG gateway software or NDS MediaHighway set-top box middleware the functionality of Panorama extends beyond the standard TR-069 data model, enabling better and faster fault discovery, analysis and resolution.