Swisscom's Bluewin subsidiary is preparing to launch a trial IPTV over ADSL service next month in collaboration with Microsoft. Bluewin will initially provide 600 homes with 25 TV channels. IP video will be streamed from the Bluewin computing centre via ADSL to the customer's set-top box, where the IP signal is converted for viewing on any TV. The service require between 1.2 and 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth.
Bluewin is the first operator in Europe to trial pay-TV services powered by the Microsoft TV IPTV platform.
The offering also includes 5 pay-TV channels, video-on-demand and an integrated video recorder, which also features a live pause function for TV broadcasts. Bluewin plans to price a standard subscription at CHF 23.90 (21 channels from all categories plus 4 Swiss SRG channels) per month. The basic subscription tier can be supplemented with additional channels for CHF 1.00 each.
The trial will last for around four months, after which work will begin on the market launch of Bluewin TV in 2005. http://www.microsoft.com/tv/http://www.bluewin.ch
- In June 2004, Lucent Technologies and Microsoft announced a non-exclusive partnership to integrate the Microsoft IPTV software platform with Lucent's network access solutions. This integration enables the delivery of standard-definition, high-definition and on-demand programming to the Microsoft TV IPTV-based set-top box via the Lucent Stinger IP-Enabled DSLAM and Lucent ADSL2+ modem. At SuperComm, the companies demonstrated high-definition content delivered over a single ADSL2+ connection.
