Viaccess

The pay-TV market

According to Screen Digest, there were more than 260 million digital pay-TV households worldwide at the end of 2008. Today, broadcast is the most popular delivery network for live-TV. However, with the growth of broadband within households, new pay-TV platforms, such as IPTV, are arriving, and with the terrestrial analogue switch off roll-out, new pay digital terrestrial television (DTT) operators are emerging.

According to Dataxis, there were more than 388 million digital broadcast subscribers worldwide in september 2011.

The increase in available pay-TV actors, and therefore content, will lead to a growing competitive pressure among the existing and new pay-TV operators.At the same time, the way in which consumers view live-TV is changing rapidly: they want their TV content anywhere, resulting in a need to develop new ways for delivery. This could be to any TV set in the house, on a mobile phone or on a PC, either at home or on the move.

The operator’s needs

The pay-TV operator’s needs vary according to the maturity of its business. New players need to quickly generate revenue streams and must identify the key factors in order to help them to do this successfully: a fast time-to-market, proven content protection solutions to enable access to premium content from studios and differentiating services. For existing operators the main challenges are increasing their subscribers’ loyalty using TV features that set them apart from their competitors, a need for a high level of customer support, and to extend their reach by addressing new customer targets.

Viaccess solutions for live-TV

Viaccess meets the live-TV needs across all key networks from broadcast satellite, terrestrial, cable and mobile DVB networks to IP based networks including IPTV, cable IP, open Internet and 3G.

When the operator launches its digital TV business, Viaccess can provide the shortest time-to-market using its:

•              Card and cardless-based and scalable conditional access system
•              Pre-integrated solution with a large choice of TV ecosystems and set-top box (STB) vendors
•              Easy to launch subscriber management system
•              Network hosting and management service 

Viaccess’ conditional access system supports various commercial options (preview, pay-per-view, near video-on demand) and payment options (prepaid, post-paid for example).

Viaccess’ state-of–the-art card-based conditional access solution, security is ensured by the PC5 card, the latest generation of its smart card, and by STB based security features such as a trusted chipset-based protection against control word sharing. Viaccess also secures conditional access modules using CI and CI+ standards.

On the cardless version, Viaccess has passed the most stringent of independent security tests by ‘Merdan’, making its solution an industry leader.

In addition to its proven expertise and reliability in security technology, Viaccess offers a unique 360° security approach that keeps operators at the forefront of anti-piracy:

•            Legal protection through the prosecution of pirates
•            An open communication policy on technology security status
•            A continuous monitoring of security risks
•            Technical counter measures 

Viaccess’ solutions enable pay-TV operators to grow and differentiate themselves from their competitors by providing them with protection for the latest generation of TV services, such as on-demand viewing in a fully unified multi-network and multi device (PC, mobile, portable video players) environment.

Everyday, Viaccess provides its customers with a comprehensive range of support services covering assistance, maintenance, training and consultancy and 24/7 access to technical support or a dedicated account manager. It also offers preventive audits of the conditional access platform.

Viaccess’ commitment is to support its clients with their long term challenges and help them to effectively leverage new technological opportunities. With more than 85 pay TV operators, Viaccess has developed a deep knowledge of their needs and a solid expertise in protecting their premium content and the resulting revenue streams.