Appear provides Sappa with modulators, encoding and scrambling modules to support live video distribution with low latency to TV and IPTV subscribers
Overview
Leading Swedish telecoms operator Sappa has deployed Appear’s X and XC Platforms to deliver live TV services to its subscribers.
Sappa is one of Sweden’s largest telecoms operators, providing telephony, broadband, TV and streaming, along with a digital care services. To meet increasing demand for live TV experiences, Sappa has chosen Appear to support the delivery of live video for its television and OTT service, Sappa Play. The strategic partnership enables Sappa to deliver high quality TV services to over 400,000 households in Sweden via cable and IPTV networks.
Challenge
As one of the largest telecoms and TV providers in Sweden, Sappa is responsible for delivering live TV services to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Which means it must deliver live video in high quality, with as little delay as possible.
With 50 headend locations across the country, Sappa needed a technology solution that could be deployed and work with no intervention—call outs are costly due to the location and distance between its 50 headend sites. It is also for this reason that Sappa needed technology that was future-proof, meaning it must be compatible with both new and existing compression standards.
Solution
Sappa has deployed Appear’s X and XC Platforms at all its headend locations to ensure the seamless distribution of live video to its subscribers. While Appear’s XC chassis houses analog and QAM modulators, its X Platform guarantees the most efficient use of Sappa’s network bandwidth by using Appear’s encoding, transcoding and scrambling modules.
Together, Appear’s solutions are the perfect fit for Sappa. Not only is the X Platform designed for high-speed video networking, enhanced IP security, video distribution and contribution, but the modularity of the XC Platform means Sappa could select the modules it needed to meet its individual requirements. As a result, Sappa has a flexible, easy to use, low maintenance solution that ensures it delivers the best live video viewing experience.
Why Appear
Operators need to be able to deliver the best possible television experiences in order to retain subscribers, which meant Sappa needed technology it knew it could rely on. Appear’s heritage in supporting live TV delivery, combined with its unrivalled technology, made it the perfect partner for Sappa.
“Viewers expect nothing less than the best viewing experience, and live television is no exception—content needs to be delivered in real time and in high quality. We selected Appear not only because it has the best-in-class technology, but because it is a partner that can support our needs today, and in the future. With so many headend locations, we needed solutions that we could plug in and would just work—it becomes time consuming and costly to send engineers out when technology doesn’t work the way it should. What’s more, Appear’s solutions are compact, energy efficient, and can handle huge amounts of bandwidth, which makes it an efficient, sustainable and cost-effective option for us,” Hasse Svensson, CEO of Sappa.
Results
With the deployment of Appear’s solutions, Sappa has been able to deliver a better live TV experience to its customers, resulting in fewer calls to customer services.
Next steps
Appear is committed to supporting Sappa in delivering live TV for its cable, IPTV and OTT services. Appear will continue to be an integral technology partner for many years to come, and is dedicated to helping Sappa achieve its goal of the delivering the very best customer experience to its subscribers.
