Scopus Network Technologies finds its range

April 2002

The choice of Scopus Technologies as technology partner to Korea Telecom to provide broadcast coverage of the Football World Cup Finals is another example of the convergence of digital distribution platforms. Broadband spoke to Scopus's co-founder Ovadia Cohen to discuss how the company intends to fit into this converging future

Can you give me an overview of what Scopus Technologies does?

Scopus provides digital TV platforms for broadband applications. We provide comprehensive, end-to-end compression system solutions for headend systems, which are composed of compression multiplexing, routing and conditional access.
We also provide solutions for the reception side, divided into two segments:
• Direct-to-home - where set-top boxes (STBs) are receiving Scopus signals. We supply a headend system for these applications while the STBs are provided by the operator
• End-to-end content distribution systems, like the one we have supplied for the World Cup, for example [see box out]. With this system, we provide a digital platform to deliver content from either one place to another or to multipoints. At that point the signal is re-routed and then usually re-transmitted direct-to-home.

How would you define your strategy?

We believe that in the long-term - two or three years from now - there will be a market where we are going to see more and more 'pre-encoded' digital content; and it is going to be used mainly for DTH cable applications. We are going to see the competition for DBS operators coming from the cable operators. To do this, cable operators are going to have use a significant amount of pre-encoded material, so they need to do two things:
• to have local encoding, which is our bread and butter
• to deal with pre-encoded material from a variety of other operators and content providers, decrypt the signals, re-multiplex it and then retransmit it to their customers.
Utilising their large bandwidth, cable operators are going to offer the traditional Pay-Per-View channels, as well as Video-on-Demand services. In order to deal with hundreds of programmes, we believe that in two or three years from now, we will see cable operators using headend processing or headend sophisticated machines in order to provide those multichannel applications. I am talking mainly about sophisticated multiplexers, or video routers or what we call interactive video gateways.

As an operator, why would I want to talk to you as opposed to one of your competitors?

Scopus provides both the headend and the reception side equipment. We also have one of the best picture qualities, in terms of the performance at a given bit rate per programme. We have a modular system architecture which helps us in medium-to-large-scale installations and we are very flexible. We are customer-orientated and we tailor our solutions to customers' needs. Our systems' modularity and flexibility - specially the network management system - allows us to be very competitive and very responsive.

Who are your target customers and where are they located?

We serve customers in Western Europe - particularly in Germany and the Benelux countries - and we have also had success in Eastern Europe, mainly in Russia and the Ukraine. In terms of market segmentation, in Europe the main business is coming from two major areas. One is digital satellite news gathering and the other is for pure satellite distribution.
We can also see some activity in the cable market although there has been some slow down, especially in Switzerland; but we believe it is going to go up particularly in Germany, but at the moment the giants are suffering - 'post bubble'.
Additionally, the telco operators developing their networks for video distribution are also continuing to grow. And the other growing market, but one that we are less involved with, is the DVB-T sector.

How do your products help operators generate additional revenues or cut costs?

I think the trend in the market is one of quality versus bit rate. A couple of years ago, a digital TV programme was transmitted at around 8Mbps; now you offer the same programme at around 2/3Mbps in a multi-programming environment. This means that four or five years ago one transponder could transmit eight channels, but now we can have 14 or even 16 at 36 MHz - which means you are saving a lot of money.
This is one area where - even during the digital revolution - you can see that there is definitely a trend towards saving more and more bandwidth. This is how our customers are getting immediate return-on-investment.

Are there any technical developments that either threaten or strengthen your market position?

I don't think so. There are ideas about broadcast quality content in the IP environment, but this is something that all of us know is not really there yet. The main threat comes from fibre optic infrstructure; but even with this we still believe that these operators will use digital compression technology in order to offer more services. Maybe in five to ten years from now everything will be digital. So, perhaps the question will be 'what next?' But we still have along way to go before we come to this point.

How do you see the European broadband market developing?

It depends on whether you are referring to data and IP over cable or the digital video over DSL market. A few years ago, video-over-DSL was a dream, but today we are more and more involved in this. However, it is premature; I don't think there are operators that are providing a full service and are being regularly paid by customers.
In my opinion, it is not the technology that is the main barrier. I think the issue here is that telco operators are not familiar with the broadcast market: they are not cable or satellite operators.

The question is: 'Do they have the capacity, know-how and experience to run television operations'. Also, how are they going to do it; are they going to do it themselves, or are they going to offer their infrastructure to third party to operate these services? These are all points that are yet to be finalised.

What steps are you taking to capitalise on Europe's evolving broadband industry?

We have products that address the various market segments. For example, the IP Streamer and we have a model for an IP headend where we can provide broadcast quality video over telco infrastructure using the IP protocol. One of the major issues within the IP market is interoperability. As a result, DVB has a committee called DVB-IPI that brings together manufacturers from the transmission, reception and conditional access side to develop an open system architecture for video-over-DSL. So, in terms of products and standards, we are there and we're also working with business partners to develop a complete offering.