Independent telcos lining up to compete with local cable companies are beginning to benefit from a torrent of new equipment and management systems. Most of the new tools are great, but they concentrate on the customer end of the business. IneoQuest has, for the past four years, been concentrating on helping to assure video quality by monitoring the entire network – every node, every layer – with its iVMS product.

The company has posted a good case study of how it all works at http://ftp.ineoquest.com/pub/docs/Datasheets/Ineoquest_Rural_Case_Study.pdf. It describes the situation at the aptly named Rural Telephone Service, covering more than 5,000 square miles of sparsely populated service area in west Kansas. We talked to Shane Broyles, who heads up IT there, last week. He confirmed the system’s long-term worth.

IneoQuest will be going a step further at the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual meeting April 16. There, it will be showing a new system that combines its IPTV management system with probes across all network subsystems. IneoQuest calls it IQPinpoint. We got a demonstration at the company’s headquarters and were wowed by the unified, real-time view of video network performance from head-end to core and throughout the first mile.

The probes work at speeds as high as 10GigE to let service providers monitor and analyze thousands of video streams simultaneously across all network sub-systems over time, enabling a live, real-time, multi-dimensional view of network quality. IneoQuest is also adding WiFi and 3G monitoring to the mix.

“Video quality issues due to the overwhelming requirements that IP video introduces to switched IP networks are resulting in unanticipated OPEX for service providers,” said Jeff Heynen, Directing Analyst, Broadband and IPTV at Infonetics Research. “One dimensional video monitoring solutions simply do not provide the level of granularity needed for proactive problem resolution. The requirement is for a complete video management solution, from headend to home, that analyzes, predicts and resolves IP video issues anywhere in the network including at the program layer. IQPinPoint addresses these issues and should be of high value to video service providers moving forward.”

IneoQuest’s new portfolio of network probes includes interfaces that allow deployment anywhere in the network, from head-end, to network core and throughout the multitude of available last mile technologies. Available Cricket interfaces include, Ethernet, ASI, ADSL2/2+, VDSL, HPNA, WiFi, 3G and QAM. IneoQuest also plans to support the 4G wireless broadband service WiMAX as well as the new video broadcast technologies MediaFlo and DVB-H later this year.

The iVMS product is available in a desktop and enterprise server-class version and scales to support thousands of probes. The Singulus Lite is a bundled solution comprising a Cricket with MediaAnalyzerPro and TSXPro software, for complete troubleshooting with IP Video and MPEG analysis. The standard Singulus Lite platform is orderable today with 4 to 6 week lead times and priced starting at $2995 in single quantities. Pricing varies based on probe types and quantities deployed.

IneoQuest is exhibiting at this week's NAB 2007 show, April 16th-19th, at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, booth #SU11606. More information is available at www.IneoQuest.com.