THE SITUATION
ATN International is a US investment firm that operates, owns and invests in telecommunications companies and renewable energy assets, in the US and internationally. Their communications portfolio includes telcos with triple play services, such as One Communications in Bermuda, Viya in the US Virgin Islands, Logic in the Cayman Islands and GTT in Guyana. They also own communications companies in the US that focus on direct-to-consumer and wholesale wireless services.
THE PROBLEM: HOW TO TRANSFORM TV AND VIDEO
ATN identified that video services were consuming between 70 – 80 percent of all traffic on their network. But, even though these services were bringing in a lot of revenue, they were not generating a lot of margin. And ATN realized that this was part of a larger trend: Internet video traffic continues to increase, but traditional operators are losing subscribers to their video services.
ATN saw the need to transform how they deliver, and especially how they monetize video services. The proliferation of full OTT packages such as Netflix and Amazon Prime has brought about a new way of watching TV and videos. Many subscribers are dropping the traditional channel tier model in favor of less restrictive streaming TV offers, and they are actually starting to expect that their TV will be interactive and not tied to fixed schedules. Viewers today want to watch programs, including those that they have recorded, on any device and wherever they may be. And they expect a broadcast quality, always-on viewing experience, regardless of how they actually receive their TV services.
[bctt tweet=”Many subscribers are dropping the traditional channel tier model in favor of less restrictive streaming TV offers, and they are actually starting to expect that their TV will be interactive – Anevia and ATN International Case Studies”]
THE SOLUTION: BUILD A NEW SERVICE BASED ON OTT TECHNOLOGY
To keep customers on their service, ATN knew that they would need to provide a wide range of features, including live streaming, video on demand, time-shift TV, replay or catch-up TV and Cloud DVR.
After analyzing several different business models, ATN concluded that the best option for their businesses was to take a two-step approach. Phase one would be to build a centralized hybrid platform to deliver the most in-demand content over a dedicated IPTV or HFC video network, with the majority of the channels being delivered OTT. In phase two, ATN will deliver ALL of their video content OTT.
HOW DID ANEVIA HELP?
Anevia worked with an ecosystem of technology partners to build a centralized network for ATN that ingests, encodes and transcodes video before sending it to an origin server for encryption and packaging. Anevia’s origin / packager is built on key technologies that help lower storage costs and reduce bandwidth requirements, such as Just-in-Time packaging, to remove the need to store content in a different format for each and every device; Infinite Buffer, to record and store content only once; and Embedded Distributed Storage, to create a ‘virtual NAS’ directly on the origin servers.
Anevia also deployed edge caches and origin servers on the different islands, so that locally created content, including home security and IoT content, can be cached close to where it’s consumed.
[bctt tweet=”Anevia worked with an ecosystem of technology partners to build a centralized network for ATN that ingests, encodes and transcodes video before sending it to an origin server for encryption – Anevia and ATN International Case Studies”]
THE RESULTS AND NEXT STEPS
With the upcoming launch of FibreWire TV, One Communications aims to revolutionize the way their subscribers enjoy on-screen entertainment. FibreWire TV offers an advanced guide and search functionalities, 4K Ultra HD picture quality, access to the latest releases with On Demand, the possibility to watch shows on laptops, smartphones, and tablets, and hundreds of hours of Cloud DVR. One Communications will also enhance the value to their TV services through the continuous addition of new programming options.
From a technical point of view, the centralized nature of ATN’s network means that their other Caribbean operators can quickly follow suit. And by putting edge servers close to users ATN’s operators can reduce delays and improve the overall subscriber experience. According to ATN Executive Director Mark Jensen, this solution pays for itself, in the transportation costs on the sub-sea network alone!
[bctt tweet=”From a technical point of view, the centralized nature of ATN’s network means that their other Caribbean operators can quickly follow suit – Anevia and ATN International Case Studies”]
