FierceIPTV

IPTV consolidation: Espial to acquire Kasenna

Dan O'Shea — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:29:35 -0400

Canadian IPTV middleware vendor Espial Group said it will acquire Kasenna, a competitor based in Sunnyvale, Calif., in a move that will aid consolidation in the fragmented IPTV middleware sector. The $6.5 million deal likely will close later this month.

According to Espial, the combined company will have more than 100 service provider customers supporting about 2.4 million IPTV customers. Kasenna customers include Cavalier Telephone, CenturyTel, FastWeb, Kentucky Telephone, SaskTel, Tennessee Telephone, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications and Knology.

The IPTV middleware market also includes companies such as Minerva Networks, Innovate Systems, Quative, Thomson, Nokia Siemens Networks and many others, though some service providers also have opted to test or use their own middleware, which has made the landscape even more competitive and fragmented.

For more:
- see this report at Multichannel News

Related articles:
IPTV middleware vendors have chased opportunities at independent telcos IPTV middleware report
IPTV middleware problems reportedly delayed some carriers this spring IPTV middleware report

AT&T notifies Dish partnership to end

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:17:06 -0400

Satellite TV player Dish Network reported in an SEC filing Tuesday that AT&T had informed Dish that it is ending the companies resale partnership effective Dec. 31. AT&T has not said much at all about why it is terminating the partnership, only that it is fulfilling contract requirements by providing Dish with six months notice. Still, the move is not too much of a surprise, considering that AT&T recently asked Dish to buy back $500 million of Dish debt the telco owned. Also, while AT&T ended a resale relationship with DirecTV earlier this year--leaving Dish as AT&T's exclusive satellite partner--it was well known that AT&T still was evaluating its overall need for satellite as it continues to have solid success with IPTV.

AT&T's silence on the matter could mean it is still sizing up whether or not it will need a satellite partner in the future. At one point some months ago, there were rumors circulating that AT&T could even acquire Dish Network.

For more:
see this story at Multichannel News

Related articles:
AT&T's debt request last week raised questions about the Dish relationship AT&T report
Dish Network last month said it would get more aggressive Dish Network report

Open IPTV membership grows

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:20:46 -0400

The Open IPTV Forum, a group promoting development of IPTV's interactive and personalization features, announced that it has gained 11 new member companies since April of this year, and is continuing to make progress on specification development. The new members include: Swisscom, FastWeb, Intel, Motorola, Access Company, BeeTV, Digital Fountain, InterTrust Technology Corporation, Opera Software, Thomson and ZyXEL. Rumors of additional membership had been circulating in recent weeks.

Forum members met last month at the headquarters of Telefónica in Madrid. The group already has produced the first draft of its "Service and Platform Requirements" document, and Forum Chairman Yun Chao Hu said in a statement that members "are working round the clock to meet our target of publishing Release 1 in September this year. Release 1 will solve the problem of fragmentation within the market by standardizing an IPTV framework, enabling a 'plug and play' experience for the end-user and, by ensuring interoperability, will make IPTV independent of the technology behind it."

For more:
- see this forum press release

Related articles:
The Open IPTV Forum launched in March of 2007 Open IPTV Forum report
Amino joined the Open IPTV Forum earlier this year Amino report

China Telecom moves toward 1 million IPTV customers

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:26:34 -0400

China's telecom industry is currently undergoing an extreme makeover that will result in fewer large carriers and a fully converged industry in which all carriers offer mobile and fixed line options to some degree. So, perhaps the country's emerging IPTV market has been somewhat overlooked. China Telecom, the nation's largest wireline telco, just reported that its had more than 940,000 IPTV customers as of May this year.

The service is available mostly in cities such as Shanghai, Jiangxu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Shaanxi. The company launched IPTV a few years ago, but growth has moved at a modest pace thus far. China Telecom reportedly has recently been shopping for IPTV set-top boxes, looking to put in an order for as many as 574,000. Alternative wireline operator China Netcom also has offered IPTV services for a number of years, and Hong Kong's PCCW was among the first telco in the world to have success with IPTV.

For more:
- check out this coverage at China Knowledge

Related articles:
China experienced some IPTV growing pains early on China report
China Netcom rolled out IPTV with vendor ZTE China Netcom report

PPV, VOD need pumping; Korea curbs IPTV ownership rules

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:01:14 -0400

> Gartner says carriers need to pump more revenue from pay-per-view and video-on-demand offerings. Article

> Korean regulators ban big business groups from owning IPTV players. Article

> John Clark departing from CEO spot at Society of Cable telecommunications Engineers. Article

DirecTV makes on-demand service available nationwide

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:29:45 -0400

Satellite TV player DirecTV announced that its on-demand TV service is now available to customers nationwide who have the company's DirecTV Plus HD DVR or R22 DVR receiver. The service carries more than 4,000 titles, including many in high-definition, and includes customized programming functions, Internet-based DVR scheduling and other free and pay-per-view programming options.

The new offering should help DirecTV become more competitive as more service providers, such as telcos (including former partner AT&T), are stalking the company's base of 17 million TV customers.

For more:
- check out this report at HD-Report

Related articles:
DirecTV posted stronger first quarter growth than Dish Network DirecTV report
AT&T announced late last year it would stop re-selling DirecTV AT&T report

RFD-TV to run on Verizon FiOS

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:03:33 -0400

RFD-TV, an eight-year-old TV network focused on rural America that already reaches about 32 million homes, has signed a multi-year distribution agreement with Verizon to run over the telco's FiOS network on a nationwide basis. FiOS can already contribute another 1.2 million or so homes served to the RFD-TV cause, but RFD-TV official also likely had an eye on the 6.5 million homes that the FiOS network passes.

For more:
- see this coverage at Multichannel News

Related articles:
Verizon cleared the 1.2 million TV customer mark earlier this year Verizon report
Verizon and AT&T both boosted their content offerings late last year Verizon report

OKI announces audience rating system

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:08:29 -0400

Japanese vendor OKI Electric Industry has announced an IPTV audience rating system--not one that rates IPTV audiences, but that allows those audiences to rate what they are watching, including the quality of the viewing experience. The new platform is first being targeted at Japan's IPTV market.

Called the OKI Audience Rating Information System, the product collects--with authorization from customers--data such as user preferences and viewer history in an encrypted audience rating library on an IPTV customer's TV gear. The information is then sent securely to a server located at the carrier's IPTV distribution center. The data can then be printed out as viewership reports which service providers can offer to programme producers.

Masa Saito, general manager of IP Systems Division at OKI, said in a statement that the company has proposed technology to handle audience rating information to ASTAP, Asia's communication standard organisation and to the International Telecommunications Union's IPTV Focus Group. "We will continue our activities within IPTV-GSI," the ITU's IPTV standardization initiative, he said.

The ITU's IPTV-GSI just held a standards meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, last week, and earlier this month, on of the ITU's study group's recommended quality of experience and performance monitoring parameters.

For more:
- see this report at IPTV News

Related articles:
The DSL Forum has been working on quality of experience standards DSL Forum report
The ITU also has been working on home networking standards ITU report

Microsoft pushes into TV ads with Navic buy

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:31:48 -0400

Meeting primarily with a telco audience at NXTcomm last week, Microsoft focused its efforts on demonstrating the capabilities of its Mediaroom TV platform and discussing its latest ecosystem partnerships. However, it should not go unmentioned that Microsoft also acquired interactive TV advertising technology firm Navic Networks last week. The Navic buy could have immediate implications for cable TV companies that use the digital set-top boxes on which Navic runs, and for Microsoft as the software giant goes toe-to-toe with Google.

For more:
- read this story at The Seattle Times

Related articles:
Microsoft announced new Mediaroom partners at NXTcomm Microsoft report
Microsoft launched a beta of the Mediaroom Presentation Framework last month Microsoft report

Shenick teams with Ciena; CableLabs' Green speaks at NXTcomm

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:05:44 -0400

> Shenick Network Systems aligns with Ciena for two-way active measurement protocol testing for IP services. Press release

> CableLabs chief Richard Green talked to telcos at NXTcomm about the virtues of tru2way. Post

> Amino launched a high-definition IPTV set-top box at NXTcomm last week. Article

IPTV vendors recognize small telco challenge

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:49:10 -0400

Just about every vendor of telecom hardware or software has the common dream--sometimes realistic, sometimes not--of landing deployment deals with Tier 1 carriers like AT&T and Verizon Communications. Even some of the vendors who claim not to have this dream would completely change their models overnight if AT&T came calling. The market for IPTV gear has been no different, as developers of IPTV middleware and other technology have lined up to compete for business at the biggest telcos.

However, while a Tier 1 deployment can help make or break an IPTV technology vendor, so can the lack of anything else but a Tier 1 deployment. With the IPTV roll-outs by Tier 1 telcos now well in hand, many vendors are turning their attention toward smaller independent telcos. These companies represent a vast market of very small opportunities, and one-size-fits-all vendor approaches need not apply. That means adapting existing IPTV gear and software to the unique cost and scalability needs of the small guys. Vendors like Innovate Systems, Quative and Thomson are just of few of the vendors currently making the effort.

For more:
- see this report at Telephony

Related articles:
SureWest is one independent telco that is making IPTV work SureWest report
Canadian independent Bruce Telecom is an IPTV player worth watching Bruce Telecom report

North America IPTV not yet eating from satellite's dish

Dan O'Shea — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:21:00 -0400

While IPTV growth was very strong in North America last year, telcos offering IPTV are not yet taking a significant number of customers away from satellite TV companies, according to market research firm iSuppli. A few telcos, notably AT&T, have had resale relationships with satellite companies that might have driven them to be more careful not to compete with satellite in the past, though the more likely reasons for this lack of IPTV-satellite competition could be that IPTV has not yet extended into markets where satellite adoption has been particularly strong. Case in point: I live in a neighborhood in Chicago where satellite dishes seemingly out-number houses. You can always tell when there is some local interference because half the neighborhood emerges from their homes armed with tools to bang on and re-position their gear. AT&T's U-verse TV service, in any case, is not yet widely available in this particular area, but I have to believe the satellite firms will not rule this area for much longer.

iSuppli shows that while IPTV subscribership actually almost quadrupled last year in North America to reach 1.2 million, many of those subscribers were net addition to the pay TV market as a whole, rather than stolen from satellite (though a couple of cable TV firms and telcos have indicated cable companies didn't get off so easily). Satellite TV adoption continues to grow in North America, iSuppli says, but for how much longer?

For more:
- check out this post at IPTV News

Related articles:
IPTV revenues in the U.S. alone reportedly could hits $14 billion by 2012 IPTV revenue report
The European IPTV market is in the process of doubling by next year European IPTV report

Portugal Telecom hits 100K IPTV subs

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:00:17 -0400

You can add Portugal Telecom to the list of telcos in Europe that have had success with IPTV services. The carrier now has more than 100,000 customers for its IPTV service, having added 53,000 during the second quarter alone to already surpass its previous goal for the end of 2008. Not bad for a telco that turned back an acquisition bid by rival carrier Sonaecom.

For more:
- see this story at IPTV News

Related articles:
Portugal Telecom started off the year with surprising IPTV growth Portugal Telecom report
Sonaecom, meanwhile, has been working on a big FTTH build Sonaecom report

Spotlight: AT&T's DISH debt request raises questions

Dan O'Shea — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:39:55 -0400

When AT&T earlier this year ended a satellite TV resale arrangement with DirecTV, it left DISH Networks in the enviable position of being AT&T's only partner on the service. There also was much speculation that AT&T could even acquire DISH, but now the telco giant has asked DISH to buy back $500 million of DISH debt owned by AT&T. This has raised question about the ongoing relationship between the two companies.

Many industry observers, including FierceTelecom, have wondered all along if telcos and satellite TV companies would remain partners in the long run with the telcos launching more of their own wire-based IPTV services. AT&T denied the debt request had anything to do with the status of the DISH partnership, but we may find out soon how interested AT&T will be in satellite in the future.

For more:
- read this report at The Wall Street Journal

Related articles:
DISH last month was looking to jump-start after a bad quarter DISH report
Dish Network couldn't match DirecTV's Q1 customer numbers Dish Network report