PortaOne and Telebreeze integrate their platforms for Broadlink’s IPTV offering

Broadlink, a triple-play SP from Nepal

Inaugurated in 2006, BroadLink Network & Communication Pvt. Ltd.was the first Nepalese ISP to offer data and voice products together in a bundle. The company’s initial objective was to provide internet and telephony products nationwide, with plans to add IPTV offering later and make it a full and market competitive triple-play solution for home users.

From its very beginnings, Broadlink has been operating in just about every main city throughout Nepal and is still in the growth stage.

A loyal customer for PortaSwitch

PortaSwitch, a basis for provider’s growth needs

Back then, Broadlink managed over 30K data customers and approximately 500+ voice clients. The company needed to grow its business, provide a larger diversity of offerings and become a telecom unified service delivery platform, which is why it was looking for a flexible and reliable network infrastructure. Cost-efficiency was one of the main requirements as well, since Nepal is still a developing country.

Therefore, they sought a single adaptable, powerful, and solidly built solution that could manage billing, invoicing and routing, simultaneously on the same platform. After bundling all these into one, they anticipated aggressive growth. With the PortaOne — PortaSwitch single product, the perfect solution for everything mentioned above materialized.

In 2016, years after the beginning of the cooperation with PortaOne, Broadlink decided to add over-the-top / Internet protocol television (IPTV and OTT TV) to their list of proposals. They viewed the capacity of PortaOne’s platform as the obvious choice.

Choosing the right partners for IPTV offering

A perfect solution

Broadlink needed to set up a headend station with everything IPTV project required for normal functionality, e.g. satellite dishes, IP feeds, encoders, transcoders, MPEG 2/4 and middleware servers, and then integrate it all with the company’s ISP network. In Telebreeze they found an excellent solution.

Telebreeze has since installed and launched IPTV and OTT TV software for a head-end station with live broadcasting and Voice-on-Demand for more than 800,000 subscribers in Nepal. The solution was successfully integrated with PortaBilling®, and that has since given Broadlink a complete system that includes billing, content and subscriber management tools simultaneously.

PortaBilling, a customizable billing solution for IPTV

For telecommunication companies, triple-play services is not just a buzz phrase; it is the only way to remain current and competitive and retain customers. There will always be someone who will offer cheaper Internet access, so the only way to win the competition with other ISPs is to provide value-added services like IPTV.

PortaBilling, a B/OSS platform for value-added services

With the PortaBilling B/OSS platform, telephony and Internet SPs can add IP Television, Video on Demand (VoD) and pay-per-view offerings to their portfolios that help promote the business growth.

Nowadays, end users do not want to receive separate invoices for voice, data and TV. It’s much more convenient for them to pay for everything all at once in one transaction. Once a service provider can offer a triple-play solution, it automatically becomes very attractive and customer friendly. With a single account, an end user will be able to send SMSs, watch TV, browse the Internet and make voice calls.

 

Flexibility of PortaBilling®, a real-time charging platform

PortaBilling® can import, invoice and rate xDRs (x Data Records) for any type of services, including VoD billing events from any external source, such as the Telebreeze platform.

Its flexibility supports all kinds of business models, from channel package customer subscriptions with fixed monthly payments to premium content pay-per-view IPTV in real time mode.

B/OSS-to-middleware integration is usually done with some type of web services API. The same method was used by PortaOne before. Via the PortaBilling® web interface, all charges can be added to a customer's invoice, including those for internet access, voice calls, etc.

This improves the customer's experience, makes system handling and tracking of account payments much easier and additionally, reduces operating expenses.

Proven success record for IPTV integration

The majority of PortaOne customers are independent service providers, and their chief tool for competing with incumbents is the ability to give end users the services that they want, faster than anyone else on the market.

Throughout the years, PortaOne has been building numerous examples of this kind of successful technology partnership and integrating with a variety of IPTV solution companies. As a result, a full range of interactive offerings and content delivery products have been made possible, for example:

• Kasenna (now part of Espial), provides IPTV platforms for new video and other services delivery to enable service providers to maximize their profit.
• Minerva is a leader in supplying multiple content sources, networks, applications and devices, thanks to which service providers can increase market penetration, grow their revenues and build customer loyalty.
• MatrixStream introduced a DVD quality IPTV streaming platform. These days it is still a forward-moving IPTV software pioneer.

PortaBilling, a constantly developing IPTV service provisioning platform

PortaOne is committed to excellence and continues to provide a product that constantly progresses to fit current and continually changing market demands. According to that, the introduction of any kind of new service must be done under the latest version of the platform (so-called maintenance releases). This adds to the system’s stability to remain undamaged and circumvents the breakdown of current processes. New maintenance releases are delivered every two months, on average.

• To begin providing services, an administrator configures the plans and packages within PortaBilling® and defines the charges applied to customers for using them. The entire configuration is done in one place via the PortaBilling® web interface. Once configured, PortaBilling® monitors customers’ service availability, individually, manages balances and creates reports in real time.
• To keep clients informed about exactly what they are paying for, PortaBilling® collects billing events, such as the data from the services provided to a customer (i.e. length of voice calls, data usage or watching pay-per-view content), creates detailed transaction and real-time billing reports, changes the customer balance, and performs ratings for the services provided.
• PortaBilling® ensures that different IPTV subscription packages are correctly mapped into channel bundles in a delivery platform and correctly integrates them into a single bill with other offerings (e.g. Internet telephony, messaging or data transfer).

With all of the above, service providers can market better, work with different groups of customers and enjoy versatility in their pricing.

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