With the spiraling importance of video in IP-based communications, quality is a key factor. Anyone who used early video technology remembers how poor the quality of video calling really was. In the past few years, video quality improved. In the last year, with advances from companies like SightSpeed and Skype, we've seen huge leaps in quality and performance at the individual consumer level.

Here's some news about a study done by Symmetricom in conjunction with MRG that looks into the issue.

Study Confirms the Vital Importance of Video Quality to the Success of IPTV
Service Providers Say Existing Video Quality Monitoring is Critical and Identify Key Problems Affecting Customer Support and Churn

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Feb. 19, 2008 - Symmetricom, Inc. (NASDAQ: SYMM released a study today conducted by Multimedia Research Group, Inc. (MRG, Inc.) that assessed telecommunications service providers' requirements for IPTV test, measurement and monitoring solutions. Results of the study confirm that video quality is critical to the growth and success of IPTV, significantly affecting customer support calls and customer churn. Importantly, the study also revealed that service providers feel their existing monitoring solutions lack an accurate measurement of perceptual end-user quality. In addition, most service providers believe an end-to-end solution is required to monitor and understand quality issues occurring at the headend, access networks and the home - where the majority of video quality problems can occur.

Key results of the study show:

• 84% reported video quality monitoring as critical or a very important part of their video initiative
• Over 90% of respondents were notified about service quality problems from subscriber calls
• 77% say video quality is a main reason for customer churn
• Top three issues are video freeze, macroblocking and video blackout
• Over 72% of all problems come from access and home networks
• 77% of existing video quality monitoring solutions are not an accurate measure of end-user quality and 78% are not end-to-end
• Less than half of respondents conduct deep packet inspection (MPEG), P and B frames, and groups of pictures

President and Principal Analyst of MRG Gary Schultz commented on the study's findings, "Service providers understand the importance of video quality to their bottom line, yet feel they do not currently have the right solution for monitoring and managing video quality from the content ingest point at the headend to the customer premises equipment (CPE) in the home. This Symmetricom study strongly suggests that video quality is top-of-mind with IPTV service providers and a main driver for telco customer churn."

"Service providers need a true end-to-end solution for monitoring IPTV services to deliver a high quality video experience to their customers," added David Cox, Symmetricom's EVP GM of the Quality of Experience (QoE) Assurance Division. "The demand for high-definition TV programming is exploding, raising the video quality bar by consumers as they become dissatisfied with anything less than an HD experience. Service providers need to implement a comprehensive perceptual video quality monitoring solution that can ensure they meet their customers' expectations, or risk losing some customers."

Survey Methodology
In December 2007, Symmetricom commissioned MRG to survey IPTV executives (VP, Director, Manager-level) from 12 Tier One (very large or regional incumbents) and Tier Two (mid-size, non incumbents) telecommunications service providers in North America. The study was conducted using a written survey questionnaire, along with telephone calls if clarification was necessary.

The first half of the questionnaire focused on recognition of quality issues, the use of video quality monitoring, and the origin of any video quality issues. The second half of the questionnaire related to analysis of video content, video delivery and test infrastructure, customer satisfaction and budgeting for video test, measurement and monitoring solutions. To view a full summary of the report, visit http://qoe.symmetricom.com/lp/IPTV_Study1/.

About Symmetricom's QoE Assurance Division Symmetricom's QoE Assurance Division provides perceptual video quality monitoring and diagnostic solutions for cable operators, telcos and other CSPs to deliver mission- critical QoE solutions for IP-based switched digital video services. For more information, visit http://qoe.symmetricom.com.

About Symmetricom, Inc.
As a worldwide leader in precise time and frequency products and services, Symmetricom provides "Perfect Timing" to customers around the world. Since 1985, the company's solutions have helped define the world's time and frequency standards, delivering precision, reliability and efficiency to wireline and wireless networks, instrumentation and testing applications and network time management. Deployed in more than 90 countries, the company's synchronization solutions include primary reference sources, building integrated timing supplies (BITS), GPS timing receivers, time and frequency distribution systems, network time servers and ruggedized oscillators. Symmetricom also incorporates technologies including Universal Timing Interface (UTI), Network Time Protocol (NTP), Precision Time Protocol (IEEE 1588), and others supporting the world's migration to Next Generation Networks (NGN). Symmetricom is based in San Jose, Calif., with offices worldwide. For more information, visit www.symmetricom.com.