Customer Profile
The Channel One Russia is the first television channel to broadcast in the Russian Federation. The channel replaced channel "Ostankino" in 1991 as a successor to the First Channel of the central television of the USSR. Having the highest daily share in Russia (19.2 % average) Channel One reaches 99.8 % households on the territory of Russian Federation.
First among the Russia's country-wide channels, Channel One is operating globally and has more than 250 million viewers worldwide. International broadcasting covers Ukraine, the CIS and Baltic countries, Europe, North and South Americas, countries of Asia and the Pacific and Australia. Channel One Russia feed is accessible everywhere across the planet where there is demand in high-quality Russian-language television. Today, Channel One Russia is the most widely distributed and trusted Russian-language channel in the world.
Business Challenge
Channel One Russia broadcasting network consists of 3000+ transmitters broadcasting in analog SEKAM, and more than 35% of them are located in non-habitant sites. About 10% of the transmitters (especially ultra-high power – 10 kW and more) were developed in installed more than 20 years ago and are almost near their end of life. The network is operated by a dedicated state-owned operator RTRN, satellites feeds are delivered to RTRN sites via dedicated SAT operator RSCC. 170 cities with 100K+ population have local splicing provided by Video International Advertising Agency. Since 2009 the digital rollout has been in progress, resulting in implementing of highly complicated SFN networks mixed of DVB-T and DVB-T2 broadcasting of total 4962 transmitters all over Russia. Channel One premium HD programs are delivered to households on subscription fee basis via DTTH sat and digital cable providers’ networks and Channel One has a very strict regulation regarding the minimal QoS parameters to be guaranteed by the operators.
Long term digital transition period operations (still ongoing since 2009 and scheduled to be completed by 2015) bundled with operating of end-of-life equipment, satellite links outages (including complete ExpressMD1 loss) resulted in numerous faults of broadcasting. Errors in local ad splicing due to poor SAT feed reliability and human-related errors in local splicing agencies leading to potential losses in ad budgets and affecting channel’s reputation.
Existing network control approach based on reports from manual monitoring done by RTRN operators has been considered unreliable and Channel One demanded new solution, which could guarantee rapid problem detection, root cause analysis and evidence collection in the country-wide scale with no additional staff required.
Channel One Russia has a dedicated network broadcasting department responsible for monitoring and verification quality and stability of broadcasting programs all over the Russia. Located in company’s headquarters in Moscow the staff of the department had no way to do manual monitoring of such a huge network and had to rely on the reports provided by RTRN, RSCC and Video International.
The requested solution after been deployed should replace the unreliable human generated reports and act as a monitoring and report-proofing system for Channel One’s broadcasting.
As Channel One’s purchasing strategy avoids CAPEX where possible the SaaS model for monitoring was a “must have” requirement.
Technology Solution
The solution is based on a Qligent ™ Vision product. The system is organized as a cloud-based service, capable of monitoring quality of service and quality of experience for analog and digital terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasting, compliance recording and on-line streaming, rule-based alarming, notifications (GUI, SMS and e-mail), reporting and local splicing verification. The results are represented via Webbased UI compatible with all major PC (Windows, Mac, and UNIX) and Mobile (iOS, Android) platforms. The monitoring probes are located in the coverage area of the appropriate transmitter in the corresponding city of Russia with the central aggregation, DB and UI servers located in a dedicated NOC, deployed by Tecom special for Channel One’s SaaS service, providing 24/7 e-mail, on-line and phone support to the customer’s engineers.
Each monitoring probe is located in a well-equipped data center with high-speed internet access via dedicated channels with at least triple redundancy in ISP channels available, stable and UPS-protected power-lines with at least 48 hours of outages protection and verified roof-top antennas for SAT and terrestrial reception or cable feed, guaranteeing excellent reception quality for the monitored source (TX, SAT or cable). Monitoring results from probes are delivered via encrypted and VPN secured links to aggregation server, where they are stored for 1 year and processed to generate notifications and alarms according to the rules applied. Compliance recording is saved to the probes’ local storage for 90 days in high-res and proxy copies for remote review and download with recorded video preview and playout and live streaming available via Web-UI on any customer device.
Business Value
- Provide 24/7 uninterruptable high-quality broadcasting. With Qligent ™ Vision system in place reaction time for any fault was significantly decreased resulting in better service from the operators’ side and more investments done by operator to increase the stability and reliability of broadcasting while improving the quality of signal where required to provide better service delivery metrics and comply with federal regulations. The amount of unexpected outages dramatically decreased and service schedule has become very accurate at the regions, where system is operating.
- Control costs of service provided. Migrating from operator’s provided operators’ generated reports to a fully automated Qligent ™ Vision monitoring system guarantees that all the invoices provided by operators are correct and does not includes payments for outages or improper quality of signal delivery. Also, the data gathered allows Channel One to charge penalties for improper content quality of service delivery to SAT and Cable operators for HD content provided.
- Minimize reputation and financial losses from incorrect ad-splicing. Content verification solution allows controlling local splicing in fully automated mode and verifies the results against DPI markers and splicing schedule. Such approach dramatically increased the accuracy of the reports provided by Ad agency and significantly decreased the amount of mistakes in splicing and local content insertion. Large advertisers and regulators are now able to receive on demand any necessary proof about the actual amount of ads shown by the Channel One in any of the monitored cities of Russia to guarantee compliance with contract signed or federal regulations applied.