Monitoring QoS and QoE to Help Reduce Churn

Have you ever watched a football game and heard “Touchdown!” seconds before you saw it happen? Or watched a singing competition with a lip-sync delay? Or maybe you were absorbed in a suspenseful movie when the screen went black. These are examples of poor quality of experience or QoE. They are frustrating reasons that consumers might complain or turn away to another brand.

Viewers like yourself expect the same level of video quality whether they are watching on a smartphone, tablet, PC or TV. Therein lies the media content providers’ challenge: to ensure the viewers’ QoE across multiple platforms and distribution networks. Each network contains many multiple points where faults and errors can be introduced.

First, what about QoS?

Audio and video delays or a black screen can be the result of poor throughput, packet loss, jitter or delay that occurred in the distribution network. These network performance factors are usually measured and monitored against quality of service or QoS parameters. If these QoS parameters are not met and issues go unrepaired, they could be transferred across the distribution chain to impact the viewer’s QoE. Is there is a way to collect data all along the distribution chain to the end subscriber to fully monitor QoE?

How to monitor the viewer’s QoE

To provide a true picture of QoE, content providers need an end-to-end monitoring system with specialized probes from origin to the viewer. Operators would find it nearly impossible to watch every channel all day long for errors. Monitoring by exception displays alarms on errors as they occur so operators can focus only on problematic streams. Using root cause analysis tools helps to mitigate issues before they affect the consumer. Qligent’s Vision provides a comprehensive solution that monitors both QoS and QoE so that operators can stay on top of customer churn and maintain competitive advantage.