February 16, 2006

Signal to Noise

Caller ID Dials Up TVs

Caller ID on TV isn't going to revolutionize the video world, but it is a nice way to tie a bow around bundled digital voice and video services.

Time Warner Cable launched Caller ID (CID) on TV in August of last year. Currently, 12 of TWC's 29 markets have the service, which is free and available to customers who have both digital phone and digital video services.

"It's actually very popular. People really like it," said TWC CTO Mike LaJoie. "We cooked this (Caller IT on TV technology) up on the inside. Basically, what it involved was passing the signaling from the BTS (broadcast television switch) through a proxy server to the set-top-box so we would be able to associate the telephone account with digital video account.

"It was a bit of challenge just to figure out the signaling between those two systems, but you'll see more and more of these kinds of applications coming up where we use signaling methods in the headend to tie voice, video and data applications together."

When the signaling comes through to ring the phone, a message is sent to the set-top box as well. If the service is turned on, the box will put the caller's name and phone number in the left-hand corner of the TV screen's display. Additionally, the call log feature stores the information from the last 10 calls, and customers can turn the function on and off by using their remote controls.

TWC is working on a revised version of Caller ID on TV that will allow more numbers to be stored and have additional features such as tagging numbers for callback, as well as playing voice mail through the TV set.

Everest tigthens bundle with Caller ID

Kansas City-based Everest has had its CID on TV application deployed for almost a year now. David Ballew, Everest's marketing director, said the company knew it had hit pay dirt with the service when customers said they look at their TV sets now when the phone rings.

"It's a convenience thing, and any time you can provide your customers with more convenience, that's a good thing," Ballew said. "We wouldn't have known before (the launch), but people really love that feature."

Everest charges for its Caller ID service, and it raised the price of that service when it added Caller ID on TV. Like TWC, its customers also need to subscribe to its phone and digital TV services. Everest passes 78,000 homes, and as of December it had about 23,000 subscribers using the CID on TV feature.

How it works

To provision the application, Everest used Intergra5's Service Delivery Platform, which entails running Interga5's software on customized Sun Microsystems servers. The Integra5 platform is deployed in Everest's one main headend in a redundant set-up.

On the telephony side, the Integra5 platform connects via an "A-Link" to a Class 5 switch. An A-Link is a signaling link that connects a signal transfer point to a service control point in an SS7 network. SS7 is the "intelligence" of the PSTN and provides out-of-band signaling in support of call-establishment, billing, routing and information exchange functions between switches and other equipment in the PSTN. The platform receives the incoming call signaling information from the telephony switch on this A-Link and then processes the appropriate TV Caller ID information and sends it to the appropriate subscriber's TV set via the video infrastructure.

On the video side, the Integra5 platform connects to a Scientific-Atlanta Digital Network Control Server (DNCS), which is also in the headend. The DNCS then uses standard protocols to communicate with the subscribers' set-top boxes to display the TV Caller ID banner notification.

 The deployment took about three-and-a-half weeks from the start of plugging in the gear to actually launching the service to customers.

Ballew said Everest was looking at other applications such as Caller ID on computers in the future, but there's no timetable.

For now, Everest is content to be the only triple-play provider in its area to offer Caller ID on TV, which not only gives it an edge over its competitors, but also further tightens its own bundle.

"It's a great opportunity to link our company's services, especially with something as innovative as Caller ID on TV," Ballew said.

- Mike Robuck