Swisscom is the leading telecommunications provider in Switzerland, delivering telephony, Internet, and TV to homes across the country. With the development of Swisscom TV air—a web-based service accessible through all computers and most smartphones—the company planned to re-launch its mobile TV offering. Success depended on delivering a consistently high quality of service across all devices. To achieve its goal, Swisscom began integrating Microsoft Silverlight into the Swisscom TV air core video-on-demand and live TV services. It took advantage of Smooth Streaming and Microsoft PlayReady to deliver and protect video content. Since going live, Swisscom TV air has been successful, giving Swisscom the best return on investment for any service.
Situation
Swisscom, headquartered in Worblaufen, is the leading telecommunications provider in Switzerland. With around 5.7 million mobile customers and 1.8 million broadband connections, the company generated approximately CHF2.95 billion (U.S.$2.55 billion) in the first quarter of 2010. The business—which has 19,427 employees—is also helping increase access to the web in Switzerland through initiatives such as Internet for Schools and Swisscom Help Point.
In addition to fixed and mobile telephony and Internet, Swisscom offers TV services. For a monthly fee, customers can choose from two offerings—Swisscom TV basic and Swisscom TV plus—and watch more than 140 channels through set-top-boxes (STBs) in their homes.
As part of its investment in TV services, Swisscom launched a mobile TV offering to complement its STB-based products. It was a smart move, reflecting the rapid adoption of mobile devices and people’s desire to consume content through a range of platforms. However, the service—based on the digital video broadcast-handheld (DVB-H) format—soon showed its limitations, being incompatible with a number of the most popular devices. The company decided to re-launch the service.
Swisscom planned to develop a new mobile offering—called Swisscom TV air—which would overcome the challenges of compatibility and deliver a high-quality, web-based TV experience on all computers and most smartphones. Markus Gisi, Head of TV and Entertainment at Swisscom, says: “This was going to be the next successful chapter in Swisscom TV. We wanted to deliver the same high quality of service that our customers had come to expect from the Swisscom brand.”
Solution
Given the importance of Swisscom TV air, it was vital that the service’s underlying technology was reliable. Swisscom TV air would incorporate a variety of transmission technologies such as digital subscriber link (DSL), and universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS), and feature a number of different protocols to support multiple devices. Dario Vieceli, Project Manager for Swisscom TV air at Swisscom, says: “The key was to develop a cross-platform mobile TV solution, whose tight integration ensured a consistent experience for viewers across all devices.”
Swisscom began building some of the service’s key features in Adobe Flash, but stopped development work after the release of Microsoft Silverlight 3. Vieceli says: “We accepted a proposal from Microsoft to see the performance of the Silverlight rich-media applications such as Smooth Streaming, and compare the two platforms.” In a proof of concept, software developer Monostream built a client for the service’s video-on-demand offering, which included Silverlight Deep Zoom and Microsoft PlayReady, which, as a digital rights management (DRM) solution, would protect Swisscom content from being used illegally.
After the success of the proof of concept, Monostream began integrating Smooth Streaming and PlayReady into the Swisscom TV air core video-on-demand and live TV offerings. Adrian Liechti, Chief Executive Officer at Monostream, completed the development work using a number of tools, including Microsoft Expression Blend 3, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, and the Microsoft .NET Framework.
In March 2010, Swisscom officially launched Swisscom TV air to consumers in Switzerland. The offering delivers TV to all computers and a wide range of smartphones, including the iPhone, using streaming protocols such as Smooth Streaming, Apple’s hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) live streaming, Adobe real time messaging protocol (RTMP), and third generation partnership project (3GPP).
Benefits
The number of subscribers to Swisscom TV air since it went live has made it one of the most successful projects at Swisscom. Its popularity is attributable to a number of factors, not least the great end-user experience provided by Silverlight. During the project, it was shown that zapping times of Silverlight —the average time to change channels—were noticeably faster.
High Demand from Consumers Ensures Rapid Return on Investment
Within days of Swisscom TV air going live, it became clear that Swisscom had created a mobile TV solution with widespread appeal. Gisi says: “The number of consumers that subscribed to Swisscom TV air showed that it had achieved our goals. This was a successful project at Swisscom with a fast return on investment.” The feedback from customers also validated the organisation’s choice of technology. Vieceli says: “We gave customers the cross-platform experience that they wanted from a mobile TV provider.”
Tight Integration Delivers High-Quality, Cross-Platform Mobile TV
According to Vieceli, the project confirmed the excellent integration that Silverlight offers organisations building cross-platform solutions. “The most interesting point for me as project manager was how well Silverlight fitted with the overall system,” he says. “The fact that Monostream could integrate Smooth Streaming and PlayReady so easily with the solution’s core platform and deliver such a high-quality end-user experience was tremendous.”
Silverlight Development Takes Half the Time of Adobe Flash
During development, Liechti was able to compare Silverlight with Adobe Flash and found that it took 50 per cent less time to develop in Silverlight. Says Liechti: “We were working on a Smooth Streaming video player and a Flash-based video player at the same time. Thanks to the user-friendly tools in the Smooth Streaming development kit, it was twice as fast as developing in Flash.”
Liechti was also impressed with the time saved by using Expression Blend 3. The interface design tool helps developers and designers work together more closely, potentially speeding up development. “Expression Blend improves developer productivity,” says Liechti. “They can dynamically create sample data, for example, and edit code directly.”
Silverlight Streaming Proves Faster than Competing Technologies
Swisscom found that Silverlight delivered quicker zapping times than any competing platforms. Says Vieceli: “Fast zapping times are incredibly important to the end-user experience, so we wanted to keep them down to one second. With Silverlight, we could achieve faster zapping times than when we used other technologies.”
The organisation also discovered that Silverlight was more cost-effective thanks to the integrated PlayReady DRM technology. Vieceli says: “Every organisation is cost conscious in today’s business climate, and so we also looked for technologies that offered great value.”
Swisscom Ensures Continued Growth with Silverlight
Both Gisi and Vieceli are confident that Swisscom TV air will become an important TV service from Swisscom in the future. They also believe that because Silverlight is such an integral part of the service, the company will capitalise on the expected growth in Windows-based mobile devices with the release of Windows Phone 7 later in 2010. “We’re in a great position,” says Vieceli. “A key part of our Swisscom TV air service is built on Microsoft software, giving us access to reliable technology that is quick and easy to develop. In addition, we can ensure that we feature on some of the most popular devices in the years ahead.”
Microsoft .NET
Microsoft .NET is software that connects people, information, systems, and devices through the use of Web services. Web services are a combination of protocols that enable computers to work together by exchanging messages. Web services are based on the standard protocols of XML, SOAP, and WSDL, which allow them to interoperate across platforms and programming languages.
.NET is integrated across Microsoft products and services, providing the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use connected, secure solutions with Web services. These solutions provide agile business integration and the promise of information anytime, anywhere, on any device.
For more information about Microsoft .NET and Web services, please visit these websites:
www.microsoft.com/net
msdn.microsoft.com/webservices
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Monostream products and services, visit the website at: www.monostream.net
For more information about Swisscom products and services, visit the website at:
www.swisscom.ch
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
