By Rahul Mehra, Chief Technology Officer, Consult Red

The opportunity for telco and Pay TV providers to diversify their retail offer has arrived but those with RDK and Linux middleware-based video devices risk getting left behind.

The provision of apps to users outside of Google’s own Android TV ecosystem remains challenging. Native apps are costly to develop and maintain while control over user experience and customer data is often ceded outside of the operator’s domain.

A new advanced application delivery platform changes this at a stroke. AndApps™ from Consult Red unlocks access to the vast library of Android applications directly on suitable RDK and Linux middleware-based devices. The solution empowers telco and Pay TV providers to manage the app’s full lifecycle from onboarding to deploying and managing subscriber availability – efficiently, effectively and securely.

With AndApps, operators can deliver any number of available and maintained Android apps alongside native RDK and Linux applications for a unified user experience.

What’s more, it keeps you firmly in control of your service delivery and your customer experience.

All the upsides

AndApps means you can engage and excite subscribers with the widest range of applications such as access to cloud gaming, local catch-up content, ‘must-have’ SVOD services and social media applications – all delivered within your existing user experience and on your deployed CPE devices. You can leverage many market-available applications to cut time to market and save on associated development costs while reducing reliance on developers to port or update applications for your platform.

AndApps greatly simplifies app onboarding. Rather than having to execute big software releases on an annual or bi-annual basis, you can control App lifecycles — nimbly deploying, updating or uninstalling apps and runtime updates on in-field devices using downloadable application container technology.

Because it is built on several open source projects, AndApps enables flexible development and future scalability. It leverages AOSP (Android Open Source Project), which is maintained by Google, community-contributed, field-proven and receives monthly security patches and regular bug fixes. Because you’ll be running applications on AOSP, you can also benefit from new app releases and features as soon as they are available, typically without re-porting or additional development.

Most importantly, you’ll maintain complete control of your customer experience and subscriber data. You decide which apps you make available, and on which devices, with the future option of monetisation via advertising and in-app purchases.

AndApps components

There are three components to the AndApps solution providing operators the flexibility to tailor deployment:

AndApps Runtime is the component of the platform that is deployed on the set-top box or connected TV device. It adds a containerised AOSP image, integrates drivers optimised for hardware profile, and adds components to enable seamless operations with your UI and application lifecycle management.

AndApps Cloud delivers the operator-centric management of the platform and enabled devices, including application and runtime lifecycle management. It is used for the delivery of AOSP security and version updates, and to deliver apps to the devices in the field.

AndApps Warehouse is a global application repository managed and populated by application vendors and Consult Red. These applications are made available for operator distribution via AndApps Cloud.

AndApps Services

AndApps is designed and delivered by Consult Red alongside comprehensive supporting services that include consultancy, device and end-to-end system integrations, development and any required customisation and optimisations. Once deployed, in-life services including app onboarding, maintenance, runtime updates, and QA, will ensure ongoing security and stable operation.

Why Consult Red?

AndApps has been developed by Consult Red, a trusted partner to some of the largest global media operators including Liberty Global, Comcast, Sky and DIRECTV. We have 20 years of middleware experience, over 10 years of RDK development experience and 5 years of experience in field-proven application containerisation for video CPE devices.

Come and see us at IBC 2023 or the RDK Global Summit to explore how you can take advantage of this next-generation consumer-facing opportunity. Reach out here.

There is no long-term future for the standard Pay TV operator ‘app among apps’ model as seen on Smart TVs today, however, as this cannot support Deutsche Telekom’s big vision for what an aggregator should look like in future. Bandeira made it clear that the role of super-aggregator, multi-app subscriptions manager and holistic content discovery agent requires an elevated status for the Pay TV television screen presence. DT needs to be the primary app, not just another app, on any television, he believes.

Bandeira was speaking at Connected TV World Summit in London, and you can read about his ‘future aggregator’ and ‘future of operator CPE’ vision in a separate story, here.

Related content:

Cyta encouraging operator-as-an-app usage by selling Smart TVs on two-year instalment plan

He then made it clear that while the set-top box is the essential device for supporting these aims today, Deutsche Telekom will have to take a position directly on the glass [television set] itself, eventually, with less reliance on HDMI inputs. The company will have to enable a virtual STB scenario in collaboration with Smart TV makers – meaning an operator app replaces the STB, and this app is the default content and UI experience that someone sees when turning on their Smart TV (if that home is a customer of the Pay TV provider). If this cannot be achieved, DT will need to follow Sky’s example and launch their own Smart TVs.

Throughout his presentation, Bandeira spoke on behalf of Deutsche Telekom, outlining its plan and thinking. But this felt like his vision for an industry, too. His belief that a Pay TV provider must be present directly on the television glass chimes with the philosophy at Sky, which has already taken matters into its own hands with the revolutionary Sky Glass (a Sky OS/UX embedded into a private-labelled Smart TV designed and retailed by Sky). But where Sky moved directly to ‘building’ its own televisions, Bandeira made it clear that DT wanted to avoid this if, possible, and would first seek the Smart TV partnerships that would support the virtual STB model.

Bandeira began by outlining the challenges a Pay TV provider like Deutsche Telekom faces. “We are still in the middle of a transformation cycle that involves a shift from linear to non-linear consumption and also a very important change from service provider centric to content centric. Content brands that used to have us in the middle, as a broker, try to go direct-to-consumer to deliver their services.

“This is a fundamental change and something operators must be aware of as we prepare our TV services for the future.”

He outlined one all-embracing principle and three pillars that will underpin the future of Pay TV. First, the principle: “We must deliver an unbreakable service with the best video and audio quality. We must do a lot of background work to support this.” Then he moved onto the pillars.

“First and foremost, aggregate, aggregate, aggregate – and when you are tired of aggregation, aggregate some more! We must have the content [that consumers want] available. This is fundamental – it is what differentiates us from the other guys who do not have that content.” He added that content is king, and today some popular content may be hosted by one streaming service, and tomorrow it could move to another. It is the Pay TV provider’s responsibility to keep track and provide the access.

“Then you need to aggregate the subscriptions, enabling ‘subscribe’ and ‘unsubscribe’ [for the multiple subscription streaming apps that are onboarded as part of the super-aggregator role]. It is one thing to have the apps [the streaming content services, within your UX] but lots of people have them, so what is your real value, because over time that [having the apps] will not be enough. You need to put smartness into your aggregation.

“In the same way that someone can subscribe [to an app] in one click, they should be able to unsubscribe in one click directly on your TV service. It is very important that we give simplicity to consumers with one single billing relationship. We should be the main touchpoint with consumers who want to take those services. We are the middleman, so we must take ownership of this position.”

Bandeira’s third pillar is content-centric discovery. “This is where we can make a huge difference. Discovery should be independent of who is delivering the content. The consumer should not have to think about where the shows are that they want to consume, whether they are in Netflix, Disney or Amazon, and they might not know, anyway, but we have the answer for that.”

He pointed out that Deutsche Telekom’s focus on content aggregation, discovery and personalisation in the UI is not unique, and acknowledged that the quality of execution is key. “We do the fine-tuning based on the data, what is working and what is not working, and that is very important,” he pointed out.

Bandeira highlighted how Deutsche Telekom’s customer premise equipment strategy must align with these requirements, which led to the conclusion that the set-top box is still essential, for now. “The STB is the only place today where we can fully deliver on our vision for super-aggregation and a seamless subscribe/unsubscribe experience. I can’t do this on a third-party device. So, the STB is still central to our strategy today, but it can become less fundamental.”

The typical Pay TV operator app on a Smart TV, as seen today, is not part of the long-term CPE strategy, Bandeira revealed. “We are not happy to be just an app on an interface; I don’t want to be just an app.” He acknowledged that Deutsche Telekom’s Pay TV service (MagentaTV) is available on Smart TVs as an app, of course. [It is available on all Tizen OS Samsung Smart TVs since 2017, Sony Smart TVs running Android TV since 2015 and on all Android TV Smart TVs running Android 7, 8 and 9.] “But I am not happy to continue in this way in the future, as just an app on a Smart TV.

“If I am just an app on a Smart TV, then over time I will lose engagement with consumers because they will spend less time with me on my experience and more time with all the other apps that are available in the same UI. I can only replace the STB if I can replicate the STB experience without one, and that means I have to be the main app on the [Smart TV] ecosystem, where I contain the other apps [e.g. Netflix, Discovery, local broadcasters] in my app, as seen in my STB.”

Bandeira continued: “Being the aggregator that manages the subscribe and unsubscribe [across multiple third-party apps] is also fundamental, but this is very difficult if you are just one of the apps in the ecosystem. You have to control the experience, like you do today on the STB.”

This brought the Deutsche Telekom executive to his future CPE roadmap, because he made it clear that despite these reservations, his company does want to look beyond STBs. “Aggregating directly on the TV panel, without an STB, is the Holy Grail, and we need to do this. UIs in Smart TVs are becoming better and better. As an industry, we had a head-start on Smart TV makers, but they are catching up, and some UIs are becoming really good.

“These [Smart TV] guys are becoming our competitors with regards to aggregation, and they are well placed for this role because they have the [television] display in the customer home.”

So, how do you work around this, Bandeira asked the audience before answering for them. “We are working on two possible paths simultaneously, A and B. Either we will be successful with A, or we move to B,” he told the Connected TV World Summit audience.

“Path A is where you can broker a deal with TV providers in which you become the [primary] app. When someone buys the television, it asks if they are a Deutsche Telekom customer or if they take their Pay TV service from named competitors. If you are a Deutsche Telekom customer, you then get the Deutsche Telekom experience. We become the [primary TV] app. This is the path we would like to follow because doing [making, private-labelling, retailing] TVs is not our core business.

“But, if we are not successful on this path, we might need to go the other route, and ‘do’ televisions, in a similar way to Sky [with Sky Glass]. That is the only way you can continue to be relevant [as a Pay TV operator] in that case [where virtual STB on third-party branded Smart TVs is ruled out].”

Finally, Bandeira declared that Deutsche Telekom’s vision to be the super-aggregator and the subscriptions manager, as well as the primary content discovery agent, should not be limited to the STB today and the Smart TV (virtual STB or ‘DT Glass’) in the future. He is interested in mirroring this Pay TV role across multi-screen devices too, which requires a promotion for the classic operator TV Everywhere mobile/laptop app.

Noting that multiscreen devices are especially important to younger generations, he asked: “Why not apply the same vision to the smartphone or tablet, with an app that aggregates other apps? Of course, you can’t be the super-app on ecosystems that Google and Apple control, but you can still recreate the concept of an app that can aggregate other content apps and provide [unified] discovery and subscriptions [management]. That will give you service continuity between the experience you offer on a TV set and the experience you offer on these other touchpoints. This is a clear part of our vision.”

The DT executive concluded: “Our vision [for the role of Pay TV operators in future and the CPE that underpins it] puts us on a long path, and one we started a long time ago, but it is fundamental to the sustainability [economic] of the TV business, because we feel the TV ecosystem is going to become more and more challenged unless we do this. There is risk, but there is opportunity to capitalise by doing things that others cannot.”

Related content:

Cyta encouraging operator-as-an-app usage by selling Smart TVs on two-year instalment plan