Technetix Case Study

Set-top Box Decoder Access Control

Company Profile

Technetix PLC is the largest UK-based manufacturer of CATV & SMATV equipment. The company uses state-of-the-art automated surface mount manufacturing equipment for volume production and has made extensive investment in product development through the use of computer aided design and RF and video test equipment.

Business Requirements

Technetix had a requirement to produce a Subscriber Management System and a System Management System to provide their customers, cable operators, with facilities to manage and configure set-top box decoders. The system had to be scalable allowing expansion from a small number of decoders and subscribers to over 100,000. In order to enable pay-per-view events to be configured, a graphical user interface was required. Quick search facilities were also required to enable call centre operators to rapidly locate customer details.

Our Solution

Beacon designed, developed and produced a number of applications and components for configuring and managing the set-top box decoders. These included the Subscriber Management System itself, together with applications to manage configurations, Pay-per-view services and a full reporting system. All these applications were connected to an underlying central database, also developed by Beacon. We produced a graphical user interface for the Pay-per-view application showing timings and durations of the selected programmes and channels. Full search utilities were also implemented to enable Technetix customers to search for and locate specific subscribers.