IBBS Plans New Cable Broadband Solutions, Expands to Latin America

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By Brendan B. Read, Senior Contributing Editor, TMCnet.com

Integrated BroadBand Services, which provides outsourced customer services, support, and network solutions for cable providers in small/midsized markets, has in the works a pair of new services that it will be offering to its clients later this year. The firm will also be delivering these and other services into the Latin American market.

The new IBBS features are:

A video diagnostic service that will enable cable firms find and resolve problems with TV set-up boxes
Operators will have the ability to monitor digital set top boxes. This new feature will provide operators robust diagnostics capabilities across the triple play in a single tool. The service will enable greater visibility into non-responders and quality of service metrics for set top boxes.

"Currently there is no way at present for cable operators remotely to understand what went wrong at the set-top box level," says IBBS Chief Executive Officer David Keil (News - Alert). "Our solution will address that need."

The new service complements its core data support service and the diagnostics for VoIP that it had launched last year. Down the road the video application will be adapted for video over broadband i.e.IPTV ( News - Alert).

"As the set-top boxes become more complex, and as more video is transmitted over the Internet the value of our solutions will increase for our clients," explains Keil.

Support for cable firms' business-level IP and data services
IBBS will be refining its solutions to support cable operators' entry into the small/midsized business markets. Tapping into them is an incremental play for cable networks as these businesses' locations are adjacent to the cable networks.

"These businesses are seeking VoIP as well as data but it was not until recently that our clients had a robust enough capability, with high-reliability QoS, to adequately serve them," explains Keil. "Now that the technology is in place we can help them support these new customers."

There are more solutions in the works for early 2010, some of which will come out of IBBS's acquisition of Parasun, its largest competitor, from Uniserve in October 2008. For example, IBBS will be incorporating aspects of Parasun's bandwidth management application tool into its tools.

"We will be taking the functionality from the IBBS and the Parasun platforms and roll out a best of breed set of applications," says Keil.

IBBS will also be expanding its market to Latin America: Mexico, Central America, and South America in 2009. It presently serves U.S. (including Puerto Rican) and Canadian markets. According to research from SNL Kagan, the projected number of cable subscribers in Latin America in 2008 is 20.5 million, in 2009, 21.8 million, and in 2010, 23.1 million.

"The Latin American market is growing and wide open," reports Keil. "We are pursuing specific markets that support strong broadband pricepoints and revenue streams yet do not have the powerful solutions that we offer."

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