This networking equipment provider has branched out into the big growth areas for ISPs, including wireless and IPTV equipment.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [June 14, 2007]

Walnut Creek, Calif.-based SysMaster was founded in 1998. Its first product was a load balancer. A VoIP billing solution followed in 2002. "In about 2006, we took it to the next level, adding billing for content objects including IPTV, Video-on-Demand, and Pay-per-View," says Martin Yosifov, SysMaster director of marketing. "We also added IPTV and wireless hardware in 2006."

The billing system offers Radius and other AAA, CRM, and covers VoIP, IPTV, wireless, broadband, and traditional ISP billing.

So who are your customers? "Our core customer segment is smaller telecommunications companies—Calling Card Providers, Wholesale VoIP Providers, Residential VoIP Providers, Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs), Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs), Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs), Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) Services Providers, Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs), and others. Now, with IPTV and wireless, we have some larger companies as well."

Products
SysMaster offers VoIP, IPTV, and wireless products. SysMaster's core Voice-over-IP product line enables the transport of voice traffic over public data networks, such as the Internet. SysMaster's VoIP products are typically used in Calling Cards, Wholesale VoIP and Hosted PBX applications.

But that's not the company's core product. "Our core product line is VoIP," says Yosifov. "One of the IPTV products with high market traction is the Tornado M10 Media Center. It's a set top box that both VoIP and IPTV, allowing our customers to offer triple play services to their subscribers.

"Although IPTV content can be delivered in real-time, time differences between the geographical zone where the content was originated from and the geographical zone where it will be delivered to often make that impractical. As a solution, SysMaster offers time-shifting of the content."

The IPTV product line supports standard definition (640 x 480) content. Yosifov says that an MPEG-4 stream in standard definition requires 1 Mbps, depending on the content (sports might require more, a more static news show might require less).

"IPTV providers," he adds, "can focus on niches that traditional cable cannot serve because IPTV channels can be delivered at lower cost."

The channel capacity can be virtually infinite, but each customer can only receive one stream at a time (this means that switching channels takes a few seconds). He says that the majority of customers deliver the triple play without owning the last mile infrastructure to their subscribers.

"Our wireless products are designed for deployment of mesh wireless networks. Such networks allow providers to offer wireless Internet access, VoIP over wireless and IPTV over wireless services. The demand for SysMaster wireless products comes from wireless ISP providers, hotels and resorts, universities, municipalities and others," he says.

Raising ARPU
Yosifov says that SysMaster's ISP customers get into VoIP and IPTV because the cost of acquiring customers drives them to look for ways to gain more revenue from each customer. "If you're like Vonage and you are paying $200 for each customer you acquire, you need to offer strong service to recoup that cost. You want to sell the customer at $40 or $60 or $90 per month and to get more from the customer you have to give more to the customer. You have to upsell the customer by offering IPTV, video on demand, and/or VoIP."

SysMaster's future
So what's next for SysMaster? "We are working on improving our current offerings across the board, "says Yosifov. For example, in IPTV, the company is adapting the H.264 CODEC, which offers better compression than MPEG-4. In wireless, the company is adapting a product designed for city-wide mesh deployments for customers who are deploying it as a local hotspot or hotel resort area.

"We remain 100 percent dedicated to the telecom space and to providing the equipment necessary to provision and bill for services," he adds. "We're a customer-driven company. A lot of our R&D is based on customer feedback."

The company's R&D occurs in Eastern Europe, he says.

—End