Video quality significantly impacts the number of support calls from subscribers, and is critical to the ultimate growth and success of IPTV, according to a new study.

Last week, Symmetricom released the results of a study done by Multimedia Research Group (MRG) revealing IPTV service providers felt their current monitoring solutions lack in the ability to provide an accurate measurement of end users’ perception of quality. The study found most service providers believe an end-to-end solution is required to monitor and understand quality issues at the headend, access network and home.

The study found:

• 84 percent reported video quality monitoring as critical or a very important part of their video initiative.
• More than 90 percent of respondents were notified about service quality problems from subscriber calls.
• 77 percent said video quality is a main reason for customer churn.
• The top three issues are video freeze, macroblocking and video blackout.
• More than 72 percent of all problems come from access and home networks.
• 77 percent of existing video quality monitoring solutions are not an accurate measure of end-user quality, and 78 percent are not end-to-end.
• Less than half of respondents conduct deep packet inspection (MPEG), P and B frames, and groups of pictures.

In December 2007, Symmetricom commissioned MRG to survey IPTV executives, including vice presidents, directors and managers, from 12 Tier One and Tier Two telecommunications service providers in North America.

To read a summary of the report, visit: http://qoe.symmetricom.com/lp/IPTV_Study1/.