Cisco, Avail Media Team on End-to-End Managed IPTV Solution

Telecommunications equipment giant, Cisco, and Avail Media, a provider of managed content aggregation services, announced a joint, end-to-end solution, Tuesday, that they say will enable service providers to offer IPTV services to their subscribers quickly, easily and cost-effectively. The solution consists of Cisco’s IP Next Generation Network (NGN) and IPTV platforms and Avail Media’s content service, together with systems integration from both companies and their respective partners.

According to Cisco and Avail, the new solution will process television programming and other content and distribute it via satellite to telcos. Its IPTV services will be fully managed through Cisco’s National Control Center, thus eliminating the need for operators to hire staff for headend management, the companies say, and MPEG-4 content distribution will be provided by Avail Media’s Avail Connect service. According to the companies, the latter, combined with the Cisco IP NGN and IPTV platforms, will create a complete, end-to-end IPTV service with encoding, encapsulation, middleware, digital rights management, conditional access, scrambling and descrambling, satellite receivers, set-top provision, service management, systems integration services, and program management for video hub office components. “We’re harnessing Cisco’s networking heritage and IPTV expertise and combining it with our proven IP-based video solution to give service providers the means to launch profitable IPTV services quickly while helping them control their capital costs and ongoing operational expenses,” Avail Media CEO, Ramu Potarazu, said in a prepared statement. “Our integrated solution includes an expansive composition of industry-leading technologies for aggressive launches that leverage the two companies’ proven experience.” Added Dave Davies, Cisco’s VP and general manager of IPTV solutions: “This solution greatly reduces the complexity of and time-to-market for service provider IPTV deployments. We are extremely pleased to be working with Avail Media in our efforts to help service providers deploy flexible and differentiated end-to-end IPTV solutions that are designed to evolve and help them stay competitive in an ever-changing marketplace.”