Graham Stephens is Group Chief Technology Officer at Astro All Asia Networks plc in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He has worked with Astro from its beginning, leading the teams that constructed and operated a variety of uplinking and production facilities for Astro.
Stephens is responsible for ensuring the ongoing security of the Astro platform, and for the development of new products and services. In addition, he keeps an eye out for new technology-based business opportunities for the Group. He oversaw the swapout of smart cards when Astro decided to switch to NDS VideoGuard conditional access in 2008. The process involved an estimated 2.7 million smart cards and was completed in less than four months.
He recently shared the latest developments at Astro with World Vision, including the decision to deploy NDS' XTV™ DVR technology this year.
World Vision: Please describe the development and growth of your platform.
Graham Stephens: Astro originally launched in October 1996 with 23 channels. At the time we were one of the first digital broadcasters in the region. We now have around 120 pay-TV channels and another 17 radio channels. 28 of our channels are Astro-branded and include content in Malay, Chinese, Indian and English. We also have a range of interactive content and services. We have access to an estimated 10 million viewers in more than 2 million homes.
Astro is Malaysia’s only DTH satellite pay-TV service. We are operated by Measat Broadcast Network Systems Sdn. Bhd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Astro All Asia Networks plc.
You have been with Astro since its inception. How has the business developed?
We began by targeting the high income end of the market. We had a relatively small number of affluent subscribers who used expensive set-top boxes. One of the advantages of this type of market is high ARPU. Over the years we began targeting less affluent subscribers. As a result our subscriber totals continue to increase even if ARPU doesn’t show much growth. Even in these challenging economic times we still expect strong subscriber growth to continue as the population opts for lower-cost entertainment options.
In addition we have a small base of early technology adopters here in Malaysia. It is important to be able to continue to offer them leading edge pay-TV solutions. Astro originally launched as a high tech company and we want to maintain that position as we look ahead. So HDTV is important for us in future, even if overall penetration of HD-ready screens remains low in comparison to the West.
What about future competition?
It looks like the government will assist Telecom Malaysia in rolling out high speed broadband services which will include fibre to the home in some urban and more affluent areas. This means they are likely to introduce an IPTV service at some point in time.
There are also plans to roll out digital terrestrial broadcasting within the next 12 months. Analogue switchoff is scheduled for 2015. The new digital service is expected to offer pay-TV options for premium services such as HDTV.
Astro has the sole licence for satellite DTH pay-TV services until 2017. At that point our licence will no longer be exclusive but we will be able to continue to supply pay-TV services on any digital distribution platform.
NDS is helping us determine our future services and technology roadmap. We’re scheduled to launch an IPTV trial using NDS technologies in 2009. With a number of possibilities in mind, it’s important to us that NDS is developing solutions that deliver content securely to and from a wide variety of devices on different platforms in different locations. Flexibility is essential.
Why did Astro select NDS as your technology supplier? What NDS solutions did you deploy originally and which have you added?
We’re still a fairly new customer of NDS-developed technologies. We began using MediaHighway® when it was still owned by Canal+. We then chose VideoGuard® conditional access from NDS. In terms of middleware, our services have remained fairly stable. But our entire base of 2.7 million legacy boxes can run MediaHighway. We have always opted for middleware-equipped STBs in order to maintain flexibility and consistency of the user experience. But the migration of these legacy boxes to NDS VideoGuard was quite involved both from the technical and logistics perspectives.
We had been discussing migrating to NDS VideoGuard for several years and announced the agreement to deploy VideoGuard in November 2007. Most recently, we decided to deploy NDS XTV DVR technology this year.
What made you choose VideoGuard?
There were several reasons. First and foremost, of course, is the fact that there have been no commercial hacks for over 10 years. Second, because we were already using NDS as our middleware supplier, NDS conditional access was a logical choice and can improve our speed to market for new products. It also gave us a chance to take advantage of the NDS product development roadmap with services like video-on-demand (VOD). We’re also considering deploying the NDS Dynamic™ audience measurement suite.
Our new DVR, based on XTV from NDS, contains a third tuner and space on the hard drive for push VOD. No single subscriber will receive all the available pushed content. It will be segmented into different language groups. In this way we can choose to push a greater volume of content than the hard drive can actually store, and to increase its relevance to each subscriber.
We also intend to offer our DVR subscribers remote booking of their recordings via the Astro website plus a series link feature.
How complicated was the process to migrate Astro's CA to VideoGuard?
Having selected NDS as our technology partner we then had to contemplate a fast-track smart card migration since we were concerned that our legacy conditional access system was about to be hacked again. We decided to use not only the NDS smart card personalisation facility in the UK but also the automated card enclosing service they offered. This avoided the risks of mistakes due to manual enclosing and bulk card losses during shipment to Malaysia.
We supplied NDS with daily files containing up-to-date programming rights for a proportion of our subscriber base and the corresponding subscribers’ account and address details. We received the new cards flown over in daily batches already enclosed in envelopes that were ready to be mailed out in Malaysia and Brunei. Because the cards were pre-entitled, the subscriber suffered no break in service when the card was swapped and, unlike previous swaps, did not receive excess entitlements either.
One of the difficulties with mailing out smart cards to subscribers via the postal system is that there are bound to be some losses because of incorrect addresses and other difficulties within the postal system.
We mailed about 2.7 million smart cards and only lost around 2%. The lost cards had little value to anyone as their pre-entitlements were set to expire after a few weeks.
We allowed subscribers two weeks to swap their cards after mailing out each batch before they were disconnected from the legacy CA in the same batches. If they had not received their new card they would thus know to call in for a replacement with their legacy service being reconnected in the meantime. This avoided excessive strain on the call centre that a mass disconnection at the end could have potentially caused.
How long did the migration process take?
Technically the process was very smooth which is impressive considering we have 21 different types of hardware and six different types of software in our legacy STBs, all of which had to have their software over-air updated to incorporate the NDS verifier software during the swapout process.
The actual card swap logistics took just under four months. We swapped and disconnected an average of 25,000 subscribers per day. I believe this is one of the largest card swaps NDS has ever undertaken.
We announced our choice of NDS in November 2007 and the entire process was completed by the end of July 2008. Since then NDS has been helping us bring a number of services back online that we postponed during the initial card migration process. For example, we only re-deployed impulse pay-per-view once the card swap was completed because it has such limited popularity in Malaysia.
What effect has this migration had on your business?
It has ended the smart card piracy we had previously and it has also eradicated control word sharing piracy which was becoming a serious issue for us. For the first time we believe our platform is fully secure.
Tell me about your interactive services and the role NDS has had in deploying them.
Actually it’s difficult to convince our subscribers to connect their back channel which is still dial-up via the PSTN. Their reluctance is not because of a fear of technology. It has more to do with the weather. Because it rains a lot in Malaysia there are numerous cases of modems being ruined by short circuits due to lightning strikes on the PSTN.
As a result, most of our successful interactive services are now one-way data-centric and do not rely on a return path. We provide mostly “red button” programme enhancement services plus a stock market data service. However we hope that when our boxes are upgraded to become IP-capable we can then encourage always-on connectivity via the domestic broadband connection that uses a more robust external modem.
What new services are you planning to launch?
We plan to launch our new standard definition XTV™ DVR with push VOD by the middle of the year. By the end of the year we expect to add the NDS progressive download service otherwise known as “pull VOD” on the DVR.
Early in 2010 we plan to offer an HD DVR as a premium product. All our next generation boxes, whether DVRs or zappers, will be IP-enabled, capable of hybrid DTH and IPTV operation and interconnection via a home network.
How effective do you expect NDS solutions to be in helping Astro remain a market leader?
Because NDS is delivering multi-platform/multi-device technology, Astro can be sure of offering secure content on a variety of platforms. This is content that can be moved around the home or from the home to other locations.
This is important because it addresses the market that we can’t always reach on a DTH-only platform.
We expect mobile broadcasting and IPTV to become very popular here. NDS enables us to address these emerging markets knowing that our content will remain secure.
Another solution we’re considering is upgrading the zapper boxes which already contain a USB port, to offer basic DVR functionality. This would be based on a secure USB key that can also extend content consumption beyond the set-top box. What is important to us is that extending content consumption to the office or home PC doesn’t compromise the overall security of our platform with content leaking out to the open Internet. NDS offers a secure USB key solution that can avoid this.
The bottom line is that the NDS technology roadmap is important to Astro -- particularly the XTV DVR and future technologies such as mobile, IPTV and home networking. In a multilingual market like Malaysia, it’s important for us to have a technology partner like NDS that can leverage its experience working with a large, diverse, multilingual customer base while offering us best-in-class security.
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