Managing growth and providing highest Quality-of-Service with a lean team
POST Luxembourg stands out as a case study in maximizing resources to manage growth and provide exceptional quality with a limited technical talent pool. POST Luxembourg is the number one television operator in the Grand Duchy, serving 43% of the total TV market. In addition to its residential TV audience, POST Luxembourg offers streaming services to select hotels, retirement homes and even the country’s correctional facilities. POST Luxembourg is also the nation’s primary IPTV provider.
The Challenge: Reducing Complexity, Placing Customers First with a Lean Team
POST Luxembourg’s mission to provide the best possible viewing experience involves managing a complex web of content aggregation and delivery. On the technical side, this includes monitoring 450 individual streams, encompassing every aspect of the delivery chain. From the moment content is acquired, through encoding, descrambling, and final playout, guaranteeing signal health at each stage is paramount. “Operational efficiency is critical in a market our size,” explains Romain Heynen, System Administrator, “We operate with a team of four, but we are always focused on the viewer’s experience and we never cut corners at the expense of the people we serve. We need solutions that are straight-forward, easy-to-operate and maximize our team’s expertise.”
Maintaining the health of its content is paramount to POST Luxembourg’s success. The team is on call 24/7, so having pertinent, appropriate, accurate and timely information is essential for them to act quickly and effectively in the event of incidents or outages, no matter where they are or the time of day. “We always must have a 360-degree view of everything happening in our headend, from signal acquisition to customer delivery,” explains Heynen.
The network initially integrated TAG’s Realtime Media Performance solution in 2010, initially for real-time monitoring, visualization, and problem detection, but the system has evolved to keep pace with the organization’s growth and needs. The TAG platform generates information in real-time about the quality of the video and audio, the availability of all the channels, and if outages or errors occur any time of day or night. If an error occurs after hours – a team member receives an alert on his/her mobile phone or receives a call from the NOC identifying the channel and the problem. The team member can open POST Luxembourg’s VPN, connect to the headend and see the video wall and the problem live.
TAG’s multi-viewer dashboards also provide a unified view across the delivery chain, while its sophisticated alerting and data analysis tools give their engineers a unique advantage. Nicolas Altir, Telecom Engineer, emphasizes, “The most important window into our service is the one our subscribers see. Whether it’s a traditional set-top box or a streaming device, TAG gives us that critical perspective in real-time.”
Key Benefits
- Proactive Problem Solving for an Agile Team: POST Luxembourg’s core team relies heavily on automation and efficiency. TAG’s configurable alerting, color-coded severity indicators, and the “Penalty Box” feature mean less time wasted on manually diagnosing issues. “Knowing immediately if the issue is a transient glitch or a service-impacting outage is critical for our 24/7 operations,” says Altir. “We can prioritize accordingly, maximizing the impact of our limited staff resources.”
- Innovation and Interoperability: Flexibility is a superpower for a modern broadcaster. “Evaluating new codecs, ensuring seamless integration with descrambling systems, or preparing to launch UHD content – TAG’s open architecture means we never feel locked in. We can test different solutions within our actual workflow, making decisions based on what truly works, not just vendor spec sheets,” notes Heynen.
- Data as a Foundation for Success: Seamless integration with Elasticsearch transforms TAG into a powerful analytics tool. Altir explains, “Analyzing historical trends doesn’t limit us to immediate troubleshooting. We can spot recurring issues with specific sources, assess vendor performance over time, and even predict equipment failures proactively. This not only translates to less downtime, but it allows us to budget for the future with confidence, knowing exactly where our investments will have the biggest impact.”
- Beyond Broadcast: Ready for the Future: As POST Luxembourg evolves alongside shifting audience habits, TAG’s monitoring capabilities adapt seamlessly to streaming-specific protocols and delivery methods. They’re able to support both traditional television service and over-the-top (OTT) offerings through the same platform. This ensures a consistent level of service regardless of how viewers choose to access content, while also enabling them to monitor a broader range of modern cloud-based distribution infrastructure.
Partnership for Success
Heynen reflects, “Technology is only as good as the people behind it. TAG understands our challenges because they’re focused on the same goal as us – delivering an amazing experience for the end-user.”
Conclusion
POST Luxembourg’s ongoing success exemplifies both the power of the right technology solution and a dedication to operational excellence. Their journey with TAG underscores how finding a vendor who understands both current needs and the long-term vision can produce benefits over time. In a rapidly evolving industry, POST Luxembourg positions itself for the future by always keeping sight of its true ‘north star’: the experience of the people who rely on it for information and entertainment.
