Triple play or triple threat?

Richard A. Quinnell, Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 3/1/2006

A lot of the buzz in the communications industry is the so-called "triple play," the combination of broadband data, IP telephony, and IP television on a single connection. Consumers have indicated that they will pay for broadband access if they can get more than fast Web surfing. As a result, IP service providers are starting to follow that money.

This poses a challenge for test engineers. The inclusion of telephony in the form of VoIP complicates test considerably by imposing a quality-of-service (QoS) factor that needs investigation. Test engineers have had to move beyond simple system functional and bandwidth testing to investigate the interaction of many factors and their impact on applications performance. The system may be functioning perfectly and still not provide the right QoS for a decent voice channel.

The situation becomes even more complicated with the addition of IP video. Now added to sound-quality issues are video quality and a host of other behaviors that affect the user's experience of the product offering. Test can no longer stop at checking function and adherence to specifications. It must account for the interactions of systems and software to help identify and pinpoint problems.

Test engineers will need to add application expertise to their system knowledge, or vendors will need to provide more automated and intelligent test tools. Most likely, a little of both will be needed to tackle the triple threat of data, VoIP, and IPTV.

Contact Richard A. Quinnell at richquinnell@att.net.