12 November 2009 – Russia’s largest broadband Internet provider Comstar-UTS has chosen MiriATE, the industry-leading set-top box testing system from Mirifice, for all its future IPTV service and set-top box deployments.

MiriATE is an automated testing system, enabling Comstar to achieve far superior results in the reliability and robustness of both its IPTV services and set-top boxes.  This is achieved by enabling an increased volume and depth of testing.

Victor Belov, Director of Business Development, Service Platforms and Networks, at Comstar-UTS, says ” MiriATE will allow Comstar-UTS to track the state of subscriber set-top boxes in order to update the software on time and ensure that services work correctly. MiriATE in combination with MiriMON, which was introduced by Comstar-UTS in 2008 for real-time monitoring of service quality and customer service levels, will enable the operator to obtain an effective quality management system of customer service (CEM) throughout the service deployment life cycle.”

Niall Buckingham, Director and Founder at Mirifice, says, “I am delighted that Comstar has chosen MiriATE for its test automation.  MiriATE enables extensive, accurate tests to be run 24 hours a day.  The resulting improvements in service quality and reliability will provide in a reduction in the total cost of ownership of devices and improved customer satisfaction with the service.”

MiriATE provides Comstar with the ability to automatically drive large numbers of STBs through suites of stringent tests, including realistic endurance testing.

MiriATE offers advanced features such as video analysis, motion detection, region comparison and optical character recognition (OCR); these are critical in automating the majority of tests, as they replace the need for manual recognition and verification.

Additional benefits include multiple concurrency and test scheduling on a platform which offers 24/7 availability, resulting in reduced costs and improved time-to-market.

The MiriATE system can scale from a solution for four set-top boxes to very large systems for hundreds of set-top boxes.