China Telecom is deploying UTStarcom's mVision end-to-end IPTV system to support its new IPTV service in China to be launched by the end of the year. The first official service launch of up to 5,000 subscribers is scheduled to be in Shanghai. Financial terms were not disclosed, although UTStarcom said it did not expect revenue associated with this agreement to be meaningful in the near term.
The launch of the commercial service in Shanghai is the culmination of an integrated commercial trial of IPTV by China Telecom in five provinces throughout China.
China Telecom is partnering with Shanghai Media Group (SMG), a leading multimedia television content provider, to offer subscribers a service package of live broadcast television and video-on-demand. additionally, the service is also designed to offer subscribers "time-shift" capabilities -- the ability to pause and rewind live television, as well as an expansive amount of storage to record any program and watch on each subscriber's own schedule.
UTStarcom's mVision system is a unicast/multicast distributed system that scales to support millions of users and hundreds of thousands of content hours. It supports services such as broadcast TV, Network PVR (n-PVR), Video on Demand (VoD), and Near Video on Demand (NVoD).
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- In Japan, Softbank BB has deployed UTStarcom's mVision end-to-end IPTV system to support its new "BBTV" IPTV service, which launched on July 1. The service initially offers subscribers 28 channels of live broadcast television and 5,200 movies on demand. Softbank BB's triple play service will be available in several service tiers, with pricing starting at 4540 Yen, approximately US$40.00 per month.
Key components of UTStarcom's mVision include:
- a Content Engine that provides live encoding, transcoding and transrating of analog or digital input streams into MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Windows Media 9 video formats and MP2, MP3, AAC, WMA, AC-3 audio formats. Variable bit-rate encoding from 22.5Kbps to 15Mbps enables operators to optimize video quality based on available bandwidth.
- a MediaSwitch that leverages a chassis-based cluster architecture to scale with the number of subscribers and amount of storage required. The NEBS-compliant MediaSwitch resides in the central office and can serve multiple remote IP DSLAMs or PONs. The platform supports a density of 22,800 subscribers per telco rack. The storage capacity is rated at 100,000 hours of programming content per rack.
- a new Set-Top-Box that is codec upgradeable via software push. It initially includes support for WM9,VC9, H.264 Codecs. The console delivers services such as real-time and time-shifted television, VoD, video gaming, and video conferencing. UTStarcom plans to continue to add new functions such as WiFi capability to the boxes in the future. An Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) and HTML embedded browser are included.
- a carrier-class OSS software suite that reduces operating costs by handling media asset management, channel management and scheduling, billing, security and conditional access, system management, and other management functions. A secure data link ensures the privacy of user data. The suite also allows customers to view their accounts, change PIN numbers on their TV sets by using their remote control.
