Marc Mulgrum, Senior Vice President Sales of Setplex in a conversation with the Senior Editor of TechAfrica News, Chris Green, outlined their OTT/IPTV solutions and their success in Africa
Chris: Hello! I’m Chris Green, Chief Editor at TechAfrica news. I’m pleased today to be joined by Marc Mulgrum, SVP of sales at Setplex. Marc, welcome, and thanks for joining us today. Perhaps you could tell us a bit about Setplex.
Marc: Thank you, Chris. Thanks for having me. Setplex is a pretty interesting story. It was founded in 2006 when Setplex launched direct-to-consumer businesses. We’re unique and profitable, with no debt and no venture capital. We are headquartered in New York, where we actually own the building. Fundamentally we’re just a great company, and we have an end-to-end solution for OTT/IPTV deployed globally. We’re actually deployed in Angola, Cameroon, and Ghana. We’re investing heavily in Africa to support all of the new OTT/IPTV initiatives.
1. What are the components of an end-to-end solution?
Chris: Yeah, that’s great. That sounds really good. If we can start by asking you what are the components of an end-to-end solution?
Marc: Our end-to-end solution really starts with the content whether you have live content or VOD content, that content needs to be in a streamable format. We have a transcoding solution that can take downlink satellite channels or an IP stream and convert that to a streaming format that allows people to watch it on any device.
The next piece is really the anchor — the Middleware that allows you to manage the subscribers, the content, security, the devices, and payments. There’s a whole host of features and capabilities that allow you to set up the different business models, whether it’s ad-supported or pay-per-view, subscription-based, or transaction-based. Middleware is an important piece.
Next is really the CDN. We have third-party CDN partners that allow you to go over the top, to deliver content anywhere in the world on any device. Or you might have your own private network to stream the content — which we consider IPTV.
Then the big part is the applications supporting nine different platforms to enable users to watch content on the major platforms with a good streaming experience whether you’re on a mobile device or a Smart TV.
Finally, analytics — to allow the publisher to understand what’s the consumption, how long does it take to start the player, are there any channels down, what’s the most-watched device, what’s the most-watched content. Understanding content consumption is really important as part of this ecosystem.
2. How does Setplex determine the upfront and the operational cost?
Chris: You know, obviously, there’s a number of different components of part of the solution. How do you determine the upfront and the operational cost then, Marc?
Marc: Sure, you could either be very CAPEX-focused. If you’re doing an IPTV deployment, that might mean on-premise servers, streaming servers, transcoders, and the like. If you’re doing cloud, a lot less CAPEX-focused and more operational focus, there might be recurring fees and CDN fees. It really depends on how you’re deploying. That will impact whether you have a larger capital investment in terms of physical servers versus having a cloud-based deployment in which you pay on demand based on the consumption.
About creating an OTT/IPTV system in Africa you can read in a full article on Setplex blog https://setplex.com/blog/ott-solutions-in-africa/# or watch the interview on https://www.techafricanews.com/2022/04/26/setplexs-ott-iptv-solutions-and-their-unwavering-commitment-to-africa/