Sky Taps S3 for In-Home Set-Top Testing

S3 Group has been selected by Sky (UK) for a test automation solution to enable the pay TV provider's field engineers to improve customer visit outcomes in the home.

Sky's Home Service Field Engineers visit more than 3 million customers in the UK every year. As in-home technologies become more advanced, being able to accurately diagnose a service-impacting fault becomes more difficult. The S3 solution is intended to allow Sky's field engineers to execute a series of tests on set-top boxes in the home and isolate whether the fault is in the set-top hardware or a problem with the in-home configuration.

The solution performs a series of diagnostic tests in real time using an engineer's existing tablet device to connect to the set-top. Test results are returned in a graphical format, to enable engineers to address the problem and engage with the customer to assure them they have correctly resolved the fault and that the set-top is working correctly.

The results of individual engineering tests are centrally aggregated to enable more effective root-cause analysis of set-top failures and make it easier to identify historically fault-prone components.