Telecom provider altafiber modernised distribution workflows to a scalable solution on Ateme PILOT Media, managing complexity without losing efficiency or the customer experience.
altafiber, originally known as Cincinnati Bell, is a telecommunications and entertainment provider in the United States that delivers high-speed internet, television and phone services to residential and business customers across the Midwestern states of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, as well as in Hawaii.
altafiber’s fibre-optic network spans over 17,300 route miles (27,840km), reaching nearly 100% of business and single-family home addresses in Greater Cincinnati, where the company is headquartered, and Northern Kentucky. The company has invested over $2 billion in its fibre infrastructure, making it a dominant player in the Midwest and Hawaii. altafiber will make Hawaii the first fully fibre-enabled state in the US by the end of 2026.
In 2023, altafiber made plans to actively expand its fibre network to new communities, targeting approximately 400,000 further addresses outside its existing territories. This includes urban and suburban areas, as well as rural areas that were previously unserved and underserved in terms of broadband. One example is the City of Dublin, Ohio, at the edge of Columbus, where over 17,000 single-family homes are now in line to gain access to its multi-Gbps XGS-PON (passive optical) fibre network.
Bridging the Digital Divide
altafiber’s customer base includes a mix of urban, suburban and rural communities, with a goal of bridging the digital divide by supplying high-speed internet to underserved areas. The company’s services are designed to support everyday household connectivity up to modern businesses requirements, prioritising reliability and scalability for all user types.
As a localised provider, altafiber is well-integrated into the communities it serves, overseeing not only connectivity but also access to local and regional content, such as Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Cavaliers and Columbus Blue Jackets sports events through its free Fioptics+ platform. The Fioptics+ TV app uses an Android phone or tablet as an extra TV screen where users can watch live TV while connected to a home wireless network. Through altafiber, it features voice search, TV recommendations and access to mainstream streaming services
With a workforce of about 2,100 employees and annual revenue above $1billion, altafiber itself is in a position to help drive digital transformation in the Midwest, giving users access to modern technology and an infrastructure ready for the future.
Seeking Modernisation
altafiber works with content providers, from live TV and on-demand video to streaming services, to deliver a diverse range of programming. Its infrastructure supports approximately 150K subscribers, making content delivery quality critical to their operations.
Aware that the broadcast industry is rapidly evolving toward streaming and personalised content, altafiber is now focussed on modernising its legacy systems. The main challenge is making the transition from rigid workflows to a scalable solution prepared to handle the growing complexity of content distribution without compromising efficiency or the customer experience.
Legacy ADI Workflows
altafiber receives content from content providers as packages formatted on the ADI (Asset Distribution Interface) standard for exchanging media assets and metadata between content providers and distributors. ADI enables the packaging, delivery and management of media assets such as video, audio and still images along with their associated metadata, allowing the assets to be integrated directly into distribution platforms.
By simplifying content ingest, transformation and delivery, ADI workflows make it easier for companies like altafiber to receive, validate and prepare content for their platforms. However, ADI systems tend to be rigid and are unable to scale, and therefore can become a limiting factor. As content distribution has evolved, the ADI workflows have proven unable to support the newer, more flexible workflows.
Delivery – Metadata and Automation
As a result, altafiber’s existing system was no longer coping with the demands of a dynamic media environment. Reliance on ADI workflows left their team with incomplete automation and a fragmented, script-dependent process that lacked end-to-end visibility.
altafiber required a system capable of fully automating ingest, validation and processing of media assets to improve efficiency and reduce operational bottlenecks. The new solution also needed to automate and extend validation processes. Ensuring the accuracy and completeness of metadata was essential for consistent content delivery, and would guarantee that all assets met altafiber’s quality and compliance standards before reaching end-users.
The company’s delivery platform, TiVo, required that content assets be transformed to align with its technical specifications. This included adapting metadata to match TiVo’s requirements, ensuring consistency and compatibility across all content, and automating the conversion of still images to the correct formats and resolutions for optimal display on TiVo and other platforms. The final delivery process would also have to be automated to make sure the transformed, validated assets integrated smoothly into the TiVo platform without manual intervention.
Managing ADI Operations
Finally, altafiber still needed to manage complex ADI-specific operations. For example, purge requests were implemented by automating rule-based processes that remove outdated or irrelevant assets from the system, as a way to maintain efficient storage and compliance. They also wanted to support partial updates to metadata without requiring full asset reprocessing, reducing redundant tasks and improving agility.
To gain options that would allow them to scale and evolve with the industry and support new content types such as ads and interactive media, altafiber aimed to transition toward a unified, adaptable workflow. To address its content distribution challenges, altafiber chose to work with Ateme’s PILOT Media workflow orchestration platform, a system that addresses most of the modernisation issues outlined above.
Also, as a generic workflow orchestration tool, PILOT Media is not limited to ADI workflows. altafiber is able to consolidate multiple types of workflows including ad management, VOD and linear content into a single, unified system. Altafiber’s team will have the scope to adapt quickly to new content formats, distribution channels and emerging industry standards.
Regarding ADI metadata management, PILOT Media includes a rules engine specifically designed to parse, validate and modify ADI metadata. This capability allows altafiber to efficiently apply complex business rules outside of the core workflow, keeping the process straightforward, transparent and manageable. By offloading these rules, PILOT Media makes it possible to adapt ADI workflows to evolving requirements without sacrificing flexibility or control.
Visibility
The platform gives the altafiber team a comprehensive view of the media lifecycle so that they can track assets from receipt through transformation, validation and delivery. This kind of end-to-end visibility avoids the inefficiency of the earlier script-dependent workflows.
PILOT Media has a native asset repository, or library, that intelligently uses metadata to determine precisely how assets should be processed. This ensures that each piece of content is handled from ingestion to delivery, without manual intervention.
altafiber is also using PILOT Media for the purge requests mentioned above, to define and apply granular purge rules for both media files and metadata. It means that outdated or irrelevant content is automatically removed, optimising available storage and maintaining compliance with content agreements.
By deploying PILOT Media, altafiber shifted its content distribution operations from a rigid, legacy-bound process into a dynamic, scalable system ready for developments in the future. The solution not only addressed immediate challenges but also laid the foundation for continued innovation and efficiency in the evolving media landscape. www.ateme.com
