In the 12 months since IBC in September 2008 Microsoft has seen the number of Mediaroom subscriber households more than double from 1.5 million to almost 4 million, including nearly 2 million in the EMEA region. At the current growth rate, Microsoft expects Mediaroom households to pass the 4 million mark in October 2009.
In just 3 short years, Microsoft Mediaroom has become the most deployed IPTV software platform, according to data from Screen Digest, and with nearly 4 million of the total estimated 24 million IPTV subscriber households worldwide, that means approximately one-in-six IPTV subscribers is now connected via a Mediaroom powered service.
In the past six months du (UAE), Beeline (Russia), Hellas Online (Greece) and SureWest (USA) have all announced IPTV services using the Mediaroom platform. At the same time, existing Mediaroom operators, including Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom, Portugal Telecom, AT&T and others, have all reported strong subscriber growth.
In Europe, Deutsche Telekom increased the number of customer for its ‘Entertain’ service from nearly 500,000 from the beginning of 2009 up to more than 800,000 now and is on track to achieve its target of 1 million by end of 2009. Swisscom has seen the number of subscribers for its IPTV service ‘Bluewin TV’ more than double in 12 months from 80,000 in June 2008 to 165,000 in June 2009. In the US, AT&T reported 248,000 net additions for its ‘U-verse’ TV service in the second quarter of 2009, driving the total installed base of U-verse TV households to over 1.5 million subscribers.
“This growth, during challenging economic times, reinforces the value proposition these operators are offering to consumers and has allowed them to retain subscribers, increase their overall ARPU and secure solid market positions with their triple and quad play offerings versus entrenched subscription TV operators in their regions,” said Ted Malone, senior director of product management for the TV, Video & Music Platform Business at Microsoft. “We’re now seeing our Mediaroom customers introduce their own interactive apps and what I call ‘triple-screen’ services to offer personal and connected entertainment experiences.”
In July this year Deutsche Telekom introduced a triple screen cloud-based service for its Entertain customers enabling them to store videos, photos, music and other personal media files, as well as personal contact lists and email, in a “Media Center” and access them and play them back through their TV, mobile phone or PC.
Entertain was also extended in August to include a range of web services including LIGA total!, an exclusive Bundesliga soccer package. With LIGA total! subscribers can enjoy all 612 Bundesliga premier league and second division games live and all games of the premier league in high definition, or at the press of a button access each and every game from the entire season. LIGA Total! also includes an interactive application for calling up individual goals or vital piece of action, live tickers, goal statistics and more.
HD is seen as a key growth driver for Deutsche Telekom’s Entertain.
"German consumers have a big appetite for HD content and by delivering a wide choice of compelling live and on-demand HD content we are accelerating mass market appeal for the Entertain service,” says Christian P. Illek, Head of Marketing T-Home, Deutsche Telekom. “We are the leader in the German HD VoD market and our HD strategy for Entertain has proved a key driver for subscriber growth.”
In the Topaz Lounge at IBC 2009 Microsoft will be showing a number of live Mediaroom services, giving visitors the opportunity to see live demonstrations of how operators around the world are delivering compelling TV experiences on the Mediaroom platform.
While Mediaroom’s initial success was centered on the major tier-1 Telcos, Microsoft has now optimized the Mediaroom platform, making it more accessible and more compelling for operators and deployments of all sizes. It has also proven the viability of the platform over a DOCSIS cable infrastructure with the launch earlier this year of Guangzhou Digital Media Group’s Zhujiang Digital service.
In response to demand from smaller operators, Microsoft announced in May this year is was adding virtualization support for Mediaroom – an industry first – reducing costs for all operators as they launch and grow their IPTV businesses. Reservation Telephone Cooperative in the US and Viapass in France are the first customer to announce plans to deliver IPTV services using Mediaroom with virtualization.
Microsoft also continues to expand the Mediaroom partner ecosystem to support customer deployments and drive scale of its Mediaroom business. A number of partners are making Mediaroom announcements at IBC 2009:
- JDSU has announced it will extend its offering of communications test and measurement solutions used in support of Microsoft’s Mediaroom platform for IPTV services.
- S3 will announce it has been selected as Microsoft’s first testing partner to deliver set-top box testing services to Mediaroom OEMs and manufacturers who want to build a set-top box that is fully compatible with Mediaroom.
- Broadcom Corporation will announce Broadcom’s BCM7405 set-top box (STB) System-on-a-Chip (SoC) has completed Microsoft Mediaroom client integration. This represents a significant milestone for the expansion of the Microsoft’s Mediaroom ecosystem by providing our service provider customers and set-top box OEM partners additional choice in silicon.
- Sigma Designs will announce the first STBs based on the SMP8654 will be delivered by Samsung. This provides service provider customers and set-top box OEMs additional choices in SoCs.
For more information
The Microsoft Mediaroom Team, Edelman London, +44 (0) 203 047 2575, emeatvm@edelman.com.
Useful links
Microsoft Mediaroom http://www.microsoft.com/Mediaroom
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