Video traffic today accounts for 50 percent of all traffic and is on a trajectory to reach the 70 percent mark in a few years. YouTube alone accounts for 27 percent of all mobile video traffic in North America. Consumer frustration grows because of constrained bandwidth, stalling playback and poor video fidelity. As nearly three quarters of mobile video consumers have experienced video quality of experience (QoE) issues, it’s no wonder that 63 percent are willing to pay for value added services to improve their viewing experience. Video traffic growth has outpaced the development of video analytics and business intelligence tools. Now more than ever, service providers need the ability to capture, analyze and understand the subscriber experience.
At the core of Avvasi solutions is a unique technology that offers a scalable, passive measurement capability that reports video-based quality of experience (QoE) for over-the-top (OTT) video content such as Netflix®, YouTube™ and Hulu™. Much like MOS scores, Avvasi’s Q-VUE offers a perceptual measurement that accurately reflects the subscriber’s perceived experience with video content. This innovative technology provides a powerful analytics and assurance solution when combined with congestion awareness and the ability to break down video traffic by device, source, content, media format, media duration and network topology.
Video QoE factors and impact
Video QoE is a perceptual measurement of what the subscriber experiences while viewing video content on a mobile device. The QoE measurement reflects the end-to-end delivery of video from source to destination. Therefore, the measurement takes into consideration all of the aspects that affect video quality in that chain. This includes source content quality and resolution, network delivery quality, device capability and screen size, and the video streaming protocol and player behavior.
Knowing your subscriber’s video QoE
Mobile data demand is growing exponentially and streaming video is the fastest growing traffic category. Service providers must understand subscriber video QoE in order to intelligently manage network resources, thereby reducing subscriber churn under very scarce and dynamic bandwidth conditions. Video-based QoE measurements can show the impact of network congestion on subscriber experience, which enables service providers to proactively address network congestion issues and maximize QoE.
The KPI-video QoE gap
Service providers have a plethora of network quality of service (QoS) key performance indicators (KPIs); however, those indicators have no correlation to subscriber experience for video. Video QoE needs to be measured by a video application aware solution that understands the intent of the user and is able to ascertain the degree to which the service provider met that intent. Avvasi QoE technology provides the intelligence to determine subscriber QoE through awareness of the content, network, device and application.